Astronomers see planet commit ‘suicide’

US EPA to stop collecting emissions data plus extra interesting reads!

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Coffee Table Science
April 14, 2025

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Juno is back

NASA's Juno mission data reveals that the solar-powered spacecraft entered safe mode on two separate occasions on April 4 during its Jupiter flyby. During safe mode, Juno prioritizes essential functions such as communication and power management by suspending nonessential operations. Following this protocol, its science instruments were powered down for the rest of the Jupiter flyby. 

The mission team has restored high-speed data with Juno, and the spacecraft is now running software diagnostics. Juno experienced two safe mode entries near its 71st perijove (an hour before and 45 minutes after), and each time rebooted, shut down nonessentials, and pointed its antenna to Earth as planned. The intense radiation belts around Jupiter probably triggered Juno's two Perijove 71 safe modes during its passage. Juno uses a titanium vault to protect its electronics from this radiation.

Since its 2016 Jupiter arrival, Juno has unexpectedly gone into safe mode four times (orbits 2, 39, and twice during Perijove 71), with full recovery each time and expected performance. In the coming days, the team will focus on sending the engineering and science data gathered around the safe-mode events back to Earth. On May 7, Juno will make its next perijove, which will also include a pass by Jupiter's moon Io at a distance of roughly 55,300 miles (89,000 kilometers).

The insights were published by NASA.

US EPA to stop collecting emissions data

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to do away with established regulations requiring polluters to track and report their emissions of climate-warming gases. The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program tracks facility-level emissions of CO2, methane, and other warming gases. This public data informs policy and contributes significantly to the government's international greenhouse gas pollution reports. The program has collected emissions data since at least 2010, with about 8,000 facilities reporting annually now.

Many companies depend on this data and incorporate it into their annual sustainability reports. Beyond sustainability reports, companies use this data to show environmental progress to shareholders and satisfy international reporting needs. The absence of this data will make it more difficult to ascertain the greenhouse gas emissions of an economic sector or a specific factory and to follow their trends over time. Thousands of industrial facilities nationwide, including oil refineries, power plants, coal mines, and petrochemical, cement, glass, iron, and steel plants, would be affected.

EPA officials have directed program staff to prepare a rule that will lead to a substantial decrease in data gathering. The world's capacity to mitigate the disastrous impacts of a warming climate could be devastatingly affected by the loss of that data. International collaboration is essential to tackle dangerous and expensive extreme weather, and the lack of data collection could incentivize other nations to stop their own reporting. 

The findings were published in ProPublica.

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Like humans, ants can perform life-saving surgery

Despite being seen as a human trait, research suggests some ants perform their own "medical support" to save lives. Study shows how Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) treat severe injuries in their colony. 

A common, large, reddish-brown ant with a darker head and abdomen, the Florida carpenter ant favors existing cavities for nesting over chewing wood. Scientists studying these ants were surprised to find the insects employ a unique strategy of wound cleaning combined with limb removal.

They work on mechanical means by using their mouthparts for cleaning and in some cases follow up by removing the entire limb. The ants' wound evaluation suggests they can determine when amputation is preferable to just cleaning. 

The study showed that femur injuries in ants were always cleaned first and then the leg removed, while tibia injuries only received cleaning. Treated ants had much better survival than untreated ones. This could be because a damaged femur muscle is more detrimental than a damaged tibia, which has less muscle and a smaller role in blood flow.

When ants act as medics, it makes us wonder how such organized responses arise in a social insect. What's even more unexpected is that these responses appear to be unlearned. Due to ants' age-based roles, the medics likely have inborn skills that emerge at a specific life phase. This work also questions ant’s pain perception, as injured ants are conscious during limb removal. 

Researchers are currently investigating if other ant species also employ similar amputation strategies.

The insights were published in the journal Current Biology.

Astronomers see planet commit ‘suicide’

Originally astrophysicists believed that when a star expands it consumes the planets nearby in a fiery haze of clouds. Surprisingly, the astronomers working with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have unveiled a new way for the planet to meet its end. They were studying a star 12,000 light years away which was not actually swelling but caught their attention in 2023 when it flashed brightly.

The observation captured on a 1.2-meter telescope indicated the star had engulfed a planet during its red giant phase, a stellar end-of-life expansion. Astronomers had never before directly observed such a planetary ingestion. The researchers intended to re-observe the "crime scene" with the much larger JWST. The original narrative is now challenged by new observations showing the star is too young for its red giant planet engulfment.

The astronomers suggest that a Jupiter-sized planet likely spiraled inward from Mercury's orbital distance over millions of years, eventually merging with the star in an "astrophysical suicide" that ejected the star's outer layers as cooling dust. The study suggests the planet's death spiral began with tidal deformation by the star, leading to friction, orbital decay, atmospheric drag, and eventual disintegration within the star.

The new analysis is preliminary, relying on indirect evidence to rule out the swelling star theory. Future JWST observations across a wider infrared range could further test the new dust cloud narrative. Starting observations later this year, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will give astronomers the highest definition cosmic snapshots yet.

The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Until next time,
Adya

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