Mars’s interior more like Rocky Road than Millionaire’s Shortbread, scientists find
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 3-Nov-2025 00:11 ET (3-Nov-2025 05:11 GMT/UTC)
The inside of Mars isn’t smooth and uniform like familiar textbook illustrations. Instead, new research reveals it’s chunky - more like a Rocky Road brownie than a neat slice of Millionaire’s Shortbread.
Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer a self-sustaining power solution for marine regions abundant in resources but constrained by energy availability. Since their pioneering use in wave energy harvesting in 2014, nearly a decade of advancements has yielded nearly thousands of research articles in this domain. Researchers have developed various TENG device structures with diverse functionalities to facilitate their commercial deployment. Nonetheless, there is a gap in comprehensive summaries and performance evaluations of TENG structural designs. This paper delineates six innovative structural designs, focusing on enhancing internal device output and adapting to external environments: high space utilization, hybrid generator, mechanical gain, broadband response, multi-directional operation, and hybrid energy-harvesting systems. We summarize the prevailing trends in device structure design identified by the research community. Furthermore, we conduct a meticulous comparison of the electrical performance of these devices under motorized, simulated wave, and real marine conditions, while also assessing their sustainability in terms of device durability and mechanical robustness. In conclusion, the paper outlines future research avenues and discusses the obstacles encountered in the TENG field. This review aims to offer valuable perspectives for ongoing research and to advance the progress and application of TENG technology.
Clues about how worlds like Earth may have formed have been found buried at the heart of a spectacular 'cosmic butterfly'. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers say they have made a big leap forward in our understanding of how the raw material of rocky planets comes together. This cosmic dust – tiny particles of minerals and organic material which include ingredients linked to the origins of life – was studied at the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, which is located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a never-before-seen portrait of a dynamic and structured planetary nebula. They have been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
New research has found that a type of automatic chest compression is more effective to carry out CPR in space than the ‘handstand method’ that is currently recommended in emergency protocols for spaceflight. Treating cardiac arrest during spaceflight is challenging because both the rescuer and the patient are floating due to microgravity, which makes doing chest compressions challenging.
The research was conducted in a ‘flying laboratory’ in a modified A310 aircraft at the CNES (French space agency). Freefalling phases of parabolic flight were used to accurately recreate microgravity so CPR could be tested by researchers on a floating mannikin.
The researchers say they hope their findings will influence future guidelines (1) about CPR in space. They suggest that space agencies will need to balance risks from cardiac arrest against space and weight constraints when deciding whether to include automatic chest compression devices on future spaceflights.
Using a cutting-edge adaptive optics system developed at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, a growing planet outside our solar system has been discovered to inhabit a gap in a disk of dust and gas. The images provide a glimpse of what our solar system likely looked like during its infancy.