In the Search for Life beyond Earth, NASA Dreams Big for a Future Space Telescope

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December 07, 2023

This week, we're preparing to run a marathon—an arduous uphill slog toward a distant-but-visible finish line. Our lead story is about the critical first steps in what will be a decades-long journey to build, launch and operate a wildly ambitious space telescope, NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which is meant to answer one of humanity's most timeless questions: Are we alone? Although not intended to liftoff until at best the late 2030s, HWO's epochal outlines are already coming into focus, via meetings of freshly formed scientific teams to hammer out the telescope's key design features and capabilities. Read our story to learn more about how this future facility could seek out alien life on planets around dozens of nearby stars. Elsewhere this week, we have stories about light traveling backward through time, troubling workforce woes at NASA's top science lab, quantum jazz, a dark matter gold rush, and more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Astronomy In the Search for Life beyond Earth, NASA Dreams Big for a Future Space Telescope Astronomers are moving ahead in planning NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory, a telescope designed to answer the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe? By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Space Exploration NASA Lab's Workforce Woes Threaten Major Space Missions A brain drain from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory could pose problems for the space agency's ambitious science plans By Shannon Hall

Engineering Light Can Travel Backward in Time (Sort Of) Light can be reflected not only in space but also in time—and researchers exploring such "time reflections" are finding a wealth of delightfully odd and useful effects By Anna Demming

Space Exploration Mars Can Wait. Questions Surround Settlements on Other Worlds Establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future makes little sense. The weakest reason for doing it is also the strongest—and not in a good way By Kirsi Lehto,Oskari Sivula,Mikko M. Puumala

Artificial Intelligence AI Teaches Robots the Best Way to Pack a Car, a Suitcase--Or a Rocket to Mars Robots that can fit multiple items into a limited space could help pack a suitcase or a rocket to Mars By Nick Hilden

Engineering Inside the Satellite Tech Revealing Gaza's Destruction Amid restrictions on optical satellite images, researchers have developed a radar technique to gauge building damage in Gaza By Lauren Leffer

Dark Matter A Small Town Waits for a Dark Matter Gold Rush A mining town waits for economic recovery while physicists under their feet wait for answers from the universe. By Carin Leong

Astronomy How to Find the Darkest Night Sky for Stargazing Where can you find the best sites for stargazing—and why is a dark sky important? By Phil Plait

Geology Primordial Helium May Be Leaking from Earth's Core Helium gas may be seeping from Earth's core, say scientists who found extremely high helium isotope ratios in lavas on Baffin Island By Tom Metcalfe

Mathematics How Quantum Math Theory Turned into a Jazz Concert A mathematician and a musician collaborated to turn a quantum research paper into a jazz performance By Rachel Crowell

Mathematics How Cryptographic 'Secret Sharing' Can Keep Information Safe One safe, five sons and betrayal: this principle shows how shared knowledge can protect secrets—without having to trust anyone By Manon Bischoff

Quantum Computing IBM Releases First-Ever 1,000-Qubit Quantum Chip The company announces its latest huge chip—but will now focus on developing smaller chips with a fresh approach to "error correction" By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine

QUOTE OF THE DAY "You can't keep hydrated if you work in there. People need to drink water. People need to go to the bathroom...But we're not thinking about people's needs--we're just thinking about the mission's needs." Zahra Khan, a former employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), on the difficult demands of working in JPL cleanrooms for spacecraft assembly and testing.

FROM THE ARCHIVE Troubled U.S. Neutrino Project Faces Uncertain Future--and Fresh Opportunities A new two-phase approach to building the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment ignites controversy among particle physicists By Thomas Lewton | April 2022

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