Dear Lifeboaters! My book ***Why Space? The Purpose of People*** just hit #1 in Astronomy of the Universe on Amazon! Help us keep it there: grab a copy today — or if you already have one, share this post, buy copies for friends and your team, and PLEASE leave a review if you like it. BTW — the KIndle version is FREE with a subscription!
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Why Space?: The Purpose of People — Kindle edition by Tumlinson, Rick N… Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
An international team that included Southwest Research Institute has shown how complex organic molecules (COMs), considered essential chemical precursors to life, may have become part of Jupiter’s four largest moons as they formed. The results appear in companion papers published in The Planetary Science Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Together, the studies shed new light on how the ingredients for life could have reached the Jovian system.
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We’ve known that the universe is expanding since 1929, and that its expansion is accelerating since 1998. The culprit behind the acceleration is unknown, so we live with a stand-in term \.
Project Hail Mary, a story by Andy Weir (author of The Martian), features some of the most creative speculative evolution scenarios in modern science fiction. With the release of the film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling, now seemed like a great time to explore the speculative biology of the aliens in this story: the Astrophage and the Eridians (Rocky’s species).
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🌌 You were told the universe is 93 billion light years across. That number is a lie. Not because it’s wrong — but because the concept of \.
Researchers at Cranfield University have created WANDER-bot, a low-cost, 3D-printed robot that is powered by wind energy. Designed to spend long durations in hostile, windy environments such as certain deserts, polar regions or even other planets, WANDER-bot doesn’t need a battery to power movement, enabling longer operations without having to pause and recharge.
Movement accounts for around 20% of battery use in most robots, so running on natural energy makes WANDER-bot an efficient solution for long-term exploration or mapping of unknown terrains. As a result, any electronic elements added to future versions for data collection or transmission purposes could have their own smaller, lighter power source. Using natural energy also counters the issue of performance degradation over time in traditional power sources, such as solar cells and radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
Designed by Dr. Saurabh Upadhyay and Sam Kurian, Research Associate in Space Engineering, the robot uses parts that are entirely 3D printed, with the design deliberately simple to allow for quick repair and replacement. This means that, in theory, you could print and construct WANDER-bot anywhere and make replacement parts in situ as needed, removing the need for time-consuming and costly resupply missions.
In this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice speak with physicist Sean Carroll about whether entropy actually creates time. Sean explains that entropy does not generate time itself, but it gives time an arrow—a direction from past to future. Even if the universe were to stop expanding and begin collapsing, entropy would still increase. The key distinction is between time (which can exist without direction) and the arrow of time, which entropy provides through statistical mechanics and phase space dynamics.
From ‘The Complex Universe, with Sean Carroll’: • The Complex Universe, with Sean Carroll.
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Written by Colin Stuart.
Check out his fantastic astronomy newsletter here: https://colinstuart.substack.com.
Edited and animated by Siji Sheehan.
Narrated by David Kelly.
Thumbnail Art by Ettore Mazza.
Audio editing by Jack White and Peter Halstead.
Mastering by Craig Stevenson.
Extra animations by @ArtandContext (Manuel Rubio)
Extra animations by Jero Squartini https://www.fiverr.com/share/0v7Kjv using Manim — MIT License, © 2020–2023 3Blue1Brown LLC
A huge thanks to our Ho’oleilana Patreon supporters — James Keller, Unpunnyfuns, Ramsay Chambers, Matthew Williams and Mike Cumings, Jr.
Footage from Videoblocks, Artlist. Other footage from NASA and ESO.
Music from Epidemic Sound, Artlist, Silver Maple and Yehezkel Raz.
Images of scientists frequently from the AIP
Icons from The Noun Project.
Quantum Fluctuations by Derek Leinweber.
00:00 Introduction.
04:18 Will The Universe Go On Forever?
17:42 What Lingers In The Long Night?
33:20 What Would It Mean?
46:20 Everything Everywhere
Friday, March 20, 2026: See our latest news and updates on NASA’s Artemis 2 moon rocket’s return to Launch Complex-39B.
Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.
If utilized on the lunar surface, the material may help build sturdy, nontoxic habitats and tools for future astronauts, capabilities that would be vital to the NASA Artemis missions that aim to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by the end of the decade.
But to assess how well this new construction material may work in space, the team tested their fabrication process under a range of different environmental conditions, revealing that the overall quality of the material depends greatly on the surface onto which the soil is printed.