NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead

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By Paul Voosen, Science. 

Excerpt: After years on life support, NASA’s plan to collect martian rocks and ferry them back to Earth has died. Yesterday, Congress released a compromise spending bill for the present financial year that backs the White House’s effort to kill the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. Although the bill must be passed by both congressional chambers and signed into law, it effectively signals the end of MSR.... 

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Early universe’s ‘little red dots’ may be black hole stars

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By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: It’s as if the baby universe had caught a case of measles. Since NASA’s JWST observatory began peering into the distant universe in 2022, it has discovered a rash of “little red dots”—hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation. Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of bright, hot gas, larger than the Solar System, powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole. ...JWST couldn’t resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny—less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars . 
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The Moon Was an Inside Job

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Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate

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