June 16, 2023: The bubble around our solar system, a lost world of microbes and our most popular stories of the week. Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | The Boundaries of Our Solar System | The heliosphere is a bubble of plasma that surrounds our entire solar system. The plasma is ionized gas that billows out from the sun. It flows outward along magnetic field lines in radial spirals tied to the sun's rotation. But just how the interstellar magnetic field of the rest of the galaxy wraps around the heliosphere of our solar system has been hazy until now. A new study of the region uses data from the two Voyager missions and from an Earth-orbiting satellite to describe the lopsided distribution of the interstellar magnetic field at the boundary of our heliosphere.
Why this is so cool: Understanding the geography of our heliosphere will help us to plan future missions that pass out of the solar system. Our solar system is currently traversing the Local Interstellar Cloud, so astronomers will be able to use this new map to access that interstellar medium.
What the experts say: "This study is all about connecting what we have measured to make sense of the bigger picture of what our place in the galaxy looks like," says Jamie Rankin, deputy project scientist for the Voyager mission and a space physicist at Princeton University. | | | An outside-in visualization of the heliosphere, the protective bubble of plasma that surrounds our solar system within the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab/Walt Feimer
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Why this matters: Scientists have long thought that eukaryotes did not exist before 800 million years ago, because traces of a biomarker for their existence could never be found. This new study looked for a different biomarker to identify the fossils–an intermediate set of fat-like molecules found in modern eukaryotes that the researchers hypothesized might have been an end-product made by ancient eukaryotes.
What the experts say: Using hypotheses about the evolution of biosynthetic pathways to guide the search for ancient life could reveal more about early life, says Susannah Porter, a paleontologist who focuses on early eukaryote evolution at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It's thinking about the record of biomarkers from an evolutionary perspective. And I think that's needed." | | | • Space and physics editor Lee Billings discusses this week's discovery of Population III stars--the earliest stars in the universe--on this week's episode of Cosmos, Quickly. | 5 min listen | | | • Young people suing Montana to take action on climate change wrap up their arguments in a first-of-its-kind trial. The state takes the stand next week. | 5 min read | | | • In May, the Supreme Court slashed federal protections of wetlands protections. This was a remarkably bad decision, writes Adam S. Ward, the chair of the Department of Biological & Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University. "Americans should expect more floods and droughts, worse drinking-water quality and degraded ecosystems, all springing from the inevitable loss of the now-unprotected wetlands adjacent to our bays, lakes and rivers," he says. | 6 min read | | | A Florida marsh home to many birds threatened by a recent Clean Water Act legal decision. Credit: Bkamprath/Getty Images | | | ICYMI (our most-read stories this week!) | | | • World's Largest Fusion Project is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal. | 11 min read | | | • Why Dying People Often Experience a Burst of Lucidity. | 8 min read | | | • In a First, Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Coal in U.S. | 4 min read | | | Reach out anytime to let me know how you're enjoying this newsletter: newsletters@sciam.com. See you Monday! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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