January 21, 202514 min readCrushed Rocks Could Be the Next Climate SolutionSpreading crushed stone across farm fields could inexpensively pull CO2 from the air while also increasing yields. But it would require a mountain of miningBy Douglas Fox edited by Mark Fischetti Jared Unverzagt/Getty ImagesThe scene that unfolded on a cold November day in central Illinois might seem commonplace, but it was part of a bold plan to pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stuff it into the ocean.A few miles south of Urbana a dump truck trundled past bare fields of dirt before turning into an adjacent lot. It deposited a cottage-size mound of grayish-blue sand190 metric tons of a crushed volcanic rock called basalt. Farmers spread the pulverized basalt across several fields that they sowed with corn months later. This was the fourth year of an ambitious study to test whether the worlds farmlands can be harnessed to simultaneously address three global crises: the ever rising concentration of planet-warming CO2 in the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans and the shortfall in humanitys food supply.The trial results, published in February 2024, were stunning. David Beerling, a biogeochemist at the University of Sheffield in England, and Evan DeLucia, a plant physiologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, led the study. They found that over four years, fields treated with crushed basalt and planted with alternating crops of corn and soy pulled 10 metric tons more CO2 per hectare out of the air than untreated plots. And crop yields were 12 to 16 percent higher. In other research, they found that adding crushed basalts to soils improved the harvest of miscanthus, a tall grass that is used to make biofuels, by 29 to 42 percent, and the fields captured an estimated 8.6 metric tons of CO2 per hectare of land each year, compared with untreated fields. It was exciting, Beerling says. We were pleasantly surprised.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Their findings added to positive results elsewhere. In 2020 researchers in Canada reported that adding the mineral wollastonite to fields growing lettuce, kale, potatoes and soy sequestered CO2 in the soil at rates as high as two metric tons per hectare per year. And last spring Kirstine Skov, a natural geographer at the start-up company UNDO Carbon in London, showed that crushed basalts improved the yields of spring oats by 9 to 20 percent while reducing soil acidity in several fields in England.Scientists, start-up companies and large corporations are experimenting with elaborate technologies to slow global warming: High-altitude planes that release sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block some incoming sunlight. Machines on Earths surface that pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. Iron sprinkled across the sea that enhances the growth of algae that absorb CO2. These deployments could buy humanity some extra time to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy while preventing the climate from crossing dangerous thresholds in a permanent way. But the exotic approaches require gobs of money and energy or could threaten ecosystems. Simply spreading crushed rock on fieldsas farmers have done for centuries with limeseems refreshingly low tech. Thats part of its elegance, Beerling says.The basalt in Illinois came from a quarry in southern Pennsylvania, where it is mined for roofing and building materials. Basalt is the most abundant rock in Earths crust. As it naturally weathersgradually dissolving in soil waterit captures CO2, converting it into bicarbonate ions in the water, which cannot easily reenter the atmosphere. The reaction also releases into the soil nutrients that are important for plant health, including calcium, magnesium and silicon. Grinding and spreading basaltan approach known as enhanced rock weathering (ERW)speeds up those processes greatly. It could help cash-strapped farmers around the world by increasing crop yields, reducing fertilizer use and potentially allowing them to sell carbon credits.Seeing how this landed with the public and press strengthened our belief that this was the right way to go. David Beerling, University of Sheffield If ERW were to be scaled up globally, it could remove up to two billion metric tons of CO2 from the air every year, according to Beerling. That would cover a significant share of the atmospheric carbon humanity must draw down to keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, widely acknowledged as the necessary goal to prevent widespread catastrophe. But ERW would require mining and crushing billions of tons of rock every yearenough to build a mountainand transporting it to farms, all of which would release CO2. Still, calculations suggest that those emissions would pale in comparison to the amount of CO2 that the rock stores away for centuries or longersequestered more permanently than it could have been in a forest of trees.ERW is newer than the other so-called negative emissions strategies, and so far only a few trials have been fielded. Yet companies are already looking to sell carbon credits tied to the technique. Noah Planavsky, a biogeochemist studying enhanced weathering at Yale University, sees promise in these unsettled circumstances. But he worries that if ERW expands too quickly, before the technique is refined, it could produce disappointing results and generate a backlash. This has the potential to be something truly impactful, he says. And there are so many ways you can imagine it going poorly.The idea of ERW is based on a fundamental insight about how Earth naturally functions. Across geological time, lava eruptions spewed huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, heating the planet. Subsequent weathering of the erupted rock over millions of years pulled the gas out of the atmosphere, cooling the planet back down. Basalts are effective in capturing CO2 because they are high in calcium and magnesium from deep in the planet. Today vast swaths of North and South America, Africa, Asia, and other areas are covered in these solidified lavas.Scientists have long wondered whether humans could accelerate CO2 removal by speeding up rock weathering. In 1995 Klaus Lackner, a physicist then at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, proposed heating basalts to absorb CO2 more quickly. Over time this basic idea fermented into other forms: injecting concentrated CO2 into hot layers of basalt underground where they would form carbonate minerals, or spreading powdered basalt across the ocean, which would absorb CO2, sinking the carbon.A worker spreads pulverized basalt on a recently harvested cornfield in central Illinois.Jordan Goebig/University of IllinoisIn the late 2000s Phil Renforth, a Ph.D. candidate at Newcastle University in England, noticed that the demolished remnants of steel mills in his area accumulated white crusts of carbonate minerals on the ground. Fragments of steel slag and concrete, both high in calcium, were reacting with CO2. In 2013 he and Jens Hartmann, a geochemist then at the University of Hamburg in Germany, published a paper suggesting that calcium-rich rocks could be crushed and spread on farmland to capture CO2 while also improving soils.At about that time, Beerling was studying how grasslands influence the weathering of bedrock and the natural capture of CO2. When he read Renforth and Hartmanns paper, he realized he could use his model to predict how basalt weathering would unfold on farmlands. In 2016 Beerling published calculations predicting that a millimeter or two of basalt dust spread annually over the worlds tropical lands could reduce CO2 levels by 30 to 300 parts per million (ppm) by 2100. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is currently around 425 ppmup from 280 ppm before the industrial revolutionand is expected to hit 500 to 1,200 ppm by 2100. The modeling suggested that ERW could prevent 0.2 to 2.2 degrees C of warming by that date.Common climate scenarios predict that if humans are going to limit warming to two degrees C, we need to remove five to 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually by 2050. In 2018 Beerlings team published updated calculations predicting that if crushed basalt were spread yearly across 700,000 square kilometers of corn and soy croplands in the U.S., it could remove 0.2 to 1.1 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually.In 2020 Beerling and his collaborators, joined by Renforth, published a refined analysis in Nature. They estimated that if two gigatons of CO2 a year had to be captured worldwide through ERW, China, India, the U.S. and Brazil could cover 80 percent of that amount, even after accounting for the CO2 emitted while mining, crushing and transporting the rock. Obviously a combination of carbon capture methods would be needed to reach 10 gigatons a year. But, Beerling says, If you can do two [gigatons] of it with enhanced weathering and improve food security and soil health, thats 20 percent of the way there.The Illinois trial provided strong validation. Farming of corn and soy typically releases CO2 through the respiration of roots and soil microbes, but the basalt-treated corn-soy fields released 23 to 42 percent less CO2. Multiplied across the U.S., thats 260 million tons of CO2 potentially avoided each year.Unlike geoengineering approaches such as hoisting sulfur into the sky or scattering iron across the sea, which people often view as risky tinkering with nature, ERW was well received when papers were published, Beerling says. It was important to see how this landed with the public and the press, he says. The reactions strengthened our belief that this was the right way to go.ERW is fundamentally different from two other soil-based carbon strategies that have been around longer. In a method called biochar, farmers partially burn leftover plant matter, turning it to charcoalnearly pure carbonwhich is plowed into the dirt for long-term storage. In the second method, leftover plant material is plowed back into the soil without being charcoaled; this stores carbon as organic molecules that can nourish crops, although the molecules can also return to the atmosphere.ERW traps CO2 as dissolved bicarbonate in soil water, which eventually runs off farm fields into streams that ultimately lead to the sea, storing CO2 in the ocean water as bicarbonate or as solid carbonate minerals on the seafloor. Studies predict that ERW would reliably store bicarbonate in the ocean for 100 to 1,000 years, which could also help reduce climate-related ocean acidification. Whats more, ERW could alleviate another major problem, not addressed by the two other methods, that plagues farmers around the world.One of the most striking examples of how rock weathering has regulated atmospheric CO2 levels over the eons can be found along the western coast of Indiaone reason some of the earliest efforts to roll out ERW by start-up companies are happening in this country. Indias coastal plain, dotted with rice paddies and villages, abruptly rises 1,000 meters through a chaotic maze of sharp ridges, V-shaped canyons, rushing rivers and waterfalls to a high plateau. The canyon walls are striped in alternating layers of yellow and brown basalt, marking the edge of the Deccan basalts, formed from a massive series of lava flows that started around 66 million years ago. By 50 million years ago Earth was unusually warm, with CO2 levels nearly four times what they are today. Around that time, the Deccan basalts began altering the planets climate in a slow but potent way. Continental drift carried them into the equatorial belt, where abundant rainfall and warm temperatures caused the rocks to weather more quickly. The weathering minerals pulled CO2 from the air and washed it down rivers to the sea, trapping it there.Over the next 30 million years, estimates indicate, weathering basalts drew more than one million gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere, some of it becoming buried as carbonate on the seafloor. Atmospheric CO2 declined, temperatures cooled, and an ice sheet began growing across Antarctica.Ben Gilliland; Paul Nelson/James Cook University (scientific reviewer)The village of Sarekha Khurd, in central Indias Madhya Pradesh state, sits near the eastern, inland edge of the Deccan basalts. The people there have farmed rice for centuries, in a patchwork of paddies divided by rows of teak and red-blossomed gum trees. Many of the farmers live tenuously, working little plots the size of one to two soccer fields. They earn an average of $1,500 a year, spending up to 30 percent of that on fertilizers and other chemicals. And they face constant hazards. Heat waves as high as 48 degrees C (118 degrees Fahrenheit) can stunt crops and disrupt needed monsoon rains. Constant agriculture has slowly acidified the dark, rich soils, depleting their stores of calcium and magnesium, as farmers harvested plants rather than leaving them to decay and return their minerals to the soil. The average pH of soils in this area is slightly acidic, around 6.4 (7.0 is neutral), similar to saliva. This is not ideal for growing rice because acidification impairs the plants absorption of nutrients, such as phosphorus, and it may even alter the mix of soil microbes, allowing pathogenic bacteria or fungi to spawn disease outbreaks that can damage crops.Farmers worldwide have dealt with soil acidity since long before they understood it. Dozens of pits found in the forests north of Paris suggest that as early as 6,000 years ago, farmers dug into the limestone bedrock and scattered pieces of it on the fields where they grew wheat, barley and peas. Later on, Romans would scatter chalky calcium carbonate rocks onto croplands to reverse sour soil. For centuries farmers in Europe and North America neutralized acidity by sprinkling fields with crushed limestone, rich in carbonate.But people in many areas, including India, dont have easy access to limestone. And the process of neutralizing acidic soil with lime can potentially release CO2 into the air. In such places, ERW is appealing because it can reverse that dynamic, converting airborne CO2 into dissolved bicarbonate in soil.Last May farmers in Sarekha Khurd started trying ERW. Workers with Mati Carbon, an ERW start-up based in Houston, Tex., trucked in 1,250 metric tons of crushed rock from nearby quarries that mine the Deccan basalts for road construction materials. The company is currently providing basalt, free of charge, to more than 180 farm villages in Madhya Pradesh and its neighboring state of Chhattisgarh. They plan to add more basalt each year. Rice yields have increased by 15 to 20 percent on average, and in some cases by up to 70 percent.Imagine the farm of the future. Part of the farmers view of their mandate is carbon dioxide removal. Noah Planavsky, Yale University Mati Carbon recently expanded its operations to a handful of villages in Tanzania and Zambia. Our mission is the farmer, says Mati founder Shantanu Agarwal, especially these smaller, climate-vulnerable farmers. The company hopes to earn money by selling carbon credits. Agarwal and Jacob Jordan, Matis lead scientist, estimate that improved soils, increased crop yields and reduced spending on fertilizers could raise poor farmers income by 10 to 30 percent, making them less vulnerable.As promising as early trials have been, a large-scale rollout of ERW would have to overcome some stark realities, starting with the staggering amount of rock it would require. Beerlings calculations suggest that if ERW were used to capture two gigatons of CO2 a year, it would consume 13 gigatons of basalt annuallyabout 4.5 cubic kilometers of rock, roughly equal to the volume of the Matterhorn. That would require 30 percent more mining than the 40 gigatons or so of sand, gravel and crushed rock that are now quarried worldwide annually for industry. Such an increase might not be possible for some kinds of rock, but the worlds reserves of basalt are truly vast, distributed widely across the planet.Crushed basalt thats already produced in quarries as an unused by-product could pick up some of that slack. So could calcium-rich industrial by-products, such as crushed concrete, mine tailings, ash from sugarcane milling and coal burning, and wastes from cement, aluminum and steel production. But many of these by-products contain chromium, nickel, cadmium, and other toxic elements, so they could maybe be used to capture CO2 in factory yards or tailings piles at mines but not on croplands. When additional basalt mining and crushing is needed, it will cost about $10 and emit around 30 kilograms of CO2 per ton. Beerlings team considered these factors when it estimated that ERW would cost $80 to $180 per ton of CO2 captured, after emissions are subtracted.Two farmers harvest rice from paddies in India that had been treated with ground-up rock. Rice yield was about 25 percent higher than in the past, when no rock was spread.Deepak Kushwaha/Mati CarbonBut there will be other costs. In China and Indiatwo countries with the most agricultural potential for ERWthe thriving rock-quarrying industries have been criticized for poor protection of human rights. Indias sandstone-quarrying industry, for example, employs more than three million people. A 2020 report published by the Washington, D.C.based Center for Human Rights found that many of them are bonded laborerspeople who work at low wages to repay loans with annual interest rates up to 20 percent, making it difficult to ever repay debts and trapping them in the job. Such workers may face dangerous temperatures, rock collapses and swirling mineral dust.A 2022 study found that quarry workers in northeastern India suffer poor lung and heart health, with low levels of blood oxygen, high pulses and poor lung airflow. If a quarry worker is injured, dies or falls ill, wives or children may be forced into work to repay the debt. These problems arent limited to India, says Bhoomika Choudhury, a lawyer and labor researcher with the Business & Human Rights Resource Center in Dubai, who wrote the 2020 sandstone report: We are seeing these patterns everywhere in countries across Asia, Africa and South America.Any large increase in quarrying would also translate into more landscapes being torn upsome of them in potentially sensitive areasalthough this is also true for other materials that will have to be mined to support the broader transition to renewable energy, such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements. It is also possible that even if mining challenges are surmounted, ERW wont work as well worldwide as it has in the small trials that have been done thus far. For example, many scientists assumed ERW would work best in the warm, wet tropics, where basalt weathers more quickly. But two recent studies complicate that picture.A 2022 trial that Beerlings group supported in Malaysia, where basalt dust was spread across parts of a palm oil plantation, produced inconclusive results. Beerling suspects that the benefits are being temporarily masked by local conditions. The dark, pungent soils contain more decaying organic matter and more clay than the soils in Illinois; those charged materials can latch on to the breakdown products of basalt, keeping them from converting CO2 into bicarbonate. Theres a delay in capturing carbon dioxide, Beerling says. It doesnt happen until the soils capacity to bind the dissolving minerals has been saturated, which may take a year or take five years, he says. This remains to be seen.Acidity is the other complicating factor, according to a trial on tropical sugarcane fields in northeastern Australia. The soil there is acidic, so it can potentially consume the basalt before it has a chance to react with CO2. Initial results, published last October, show that CO2 capture rates are only about 1 percent of those in Illinois. Paul Nelson, a soil scientist at James Cook University in Cairns who helped lead the study, says it may be hard to fix the problem just by neutralizing acidic soils before adding basalt because in wet tropical areas the acidity may extend many meters down, to the bedrock.Right now researchers are just trusting that wherever ERW is done, from Illinois to Australia, the CO2 that is captured as dissolved bicarbonate will seep into streams, flow through rivers and reach the ocean without encountering a highly acidic environment. If it does flow through an acidic environment, Nelson says, some of it could be converted into CO2 along the way, returning to the atmosphere.Despite the uncertainties, some two dozen companies have emerged to try to exploit ERW. Many are selling anticipated carbon-capture credits, in some cases to companies such as Microsoft and Stripe that hope to zero out their carbon footprint. This activity makes Planavsky, the Yale biogeochemist, uneasy. Hes aware of lessons learned in another carbon market that grew too quickly. In recent years companies have sold more and more voluntary carbon offsets for protecting forests, but some of the projects have subsequently been revealed as worthless. ERW is a potentially really valuable opportunity to remove CO2, Planavsky says, but its not going to work everywhere. If companies cut corners, he says, ERW could blow up on the launch pad.Yet for ERW to have a large impact by 2050, it will need to expand quickly, says Gregory Nemet, an energy scientist at the University of WisconsinMadison. Last May he and his colleagues published a study analyzing the combined potential of novel CO2 removal methods such as ERW, direct air-capture machines and the use of biofuels with CO2 captured from smokestacks. Between now and 2050 these methods need to grow by something like 40 percent per year, every year, Nemet says. That sounds extreme, although he says that electric cars and solar energy have expanded even more rapidly for 10 or 20 years. And if enhanced weathering ends up costing $80 to $180 per ton of CO2, as Beerlings group predicted, it may be cheaper than direct air capture ($400 to $1,000 per ton right now), and similar to biofuels with smokestack capture ($100 to $300 per ton today).If ERW does pan out on a large scale, Planavskywhose family farmssees potential societal benefits that go beyond CO2 removal. Building machines that capture CO2 from the air or from smokestacks will generate profits for big companies. But with a low-tech approach like ERW, even small farmers could sell carbon credits. Imagine the farm of the future, he says. Part of the farmers view of their mandate is carbon dioxide removal.

January 21, 20256 min readJWST Photos Reveal Bizarre Physics of Supernova ExplosionsThe best view yet of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant reveals new secretsBy Clara Moskowitz NASA/CXC/SAO (x-ray); NASA/ESA/STScI (optical); NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/Caltech (infrared); NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand (image processing)As soon as a star is born, it starts fighting a battle with gravity. A burning star constantly releases enough energy to counteract gravitys inward pressure. But once its fuel runs out, gravity wins: the star implodes, and most of its mass becomes either a neutron staran ultradense object about the size of a cityor a black hole. The rest explodes outward, flying into space like bullets.Astronomers recently captured new images of the aftermath of this violence by training the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on the young supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A. The light from its explosion reached Earth about 350 years ago, around the time of Isaac Newton. This particular object is very important because its relatively nearby and its young, so what you see is a frozen-in-time picture of how the star blew up, says Dartmouth College astronomer Robert A. Fesen.Astronomers have studied this nearby spectacle for decades, but JWST got a closer look than any past observatory. The Webb images are really amazing, says Fesen, who led the first team that studied Cassiopeia A with the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble observes in primarily optical lightthe wavelength range human eyes can see whereas JWST captures longer-wavelength infrared light, and it does so with a larger mirror that captures images in higher resolution.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The recent photographs are helping scientists answer some of their most pressing questions about supernovae, such as which types of stars explode in which ways and how exactly those outbursts unfold. There is a lot of complicated but beautiful physics in understanding how this explosion takes place, says Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavljevic, who led the team behind the JWST images.Stars start off burning hydrogen into helium inside their fusion furnaces. When the hydrogen is used up, they fuse helium to make carbon, then carbon to make neon, and so on, until they reach iron, which costs more energy to fuse than it releases. At this point the star begins to collapse under gravity, and its matter falls in until most of the protons and electrons inside its atoms have been smushed together to form neutrons. Eventually the neutrons cant collapse any furtherthey become a neutron star, where particles experience such extreme pressure that they trigger a repelling shock wave. (Only the most massive stars end their lives in supernovae. The sun, for instance, will fade to become a white dwarf.)Astronomers still cant entirely account for the explosive power of a supernova. It was thought that this rebounding shock thats produced when the neutron star forms could explode the star, Milisavljevic says. But decades of simulations on the worlds fastest computers showed that the rebounding shock isnt strong enough to overcome the massive layers on top that want to fall in. For now the core driver of supernova explosions remains a mystery. Researchers suspect the answer involves neutrinos, nearly massless particles that tend to pass through matter unimpeded. Perhaps at the intense temperatures and densities at the core of a star, some of the neutrinos energy goes into reviving the shock. But more observations are needed to verify this idea.Among JWSTs revelations about Cassiopeia A is a layer of gas that escaped its star during the blast. These JWST images show the gas before it interacted with material outside the star and before it was heated by a reflection of the shock wave the star expelled during its eruption. This pristine ejecta from the supernova displays a weblike structure that offers clues about the star before it exploded. JWST gave us basically a map of the structure of that material, says Tea Temim, a Princeton University astronomer who collaborated on the JWST images. This tells us what the distribution of the material was before it was ejected in the supernova. We havent been able to see something like this before.The investigation also exposed an unexpected feature of Cassiopeia A that scientists have named the Green Monster. Astronomers think this layer of gas was expelled by the star before it exploded. The Green Monster was an exciting surprise, Temim says. Scientists are interested in what happens when the supernova debris flies into the material in the Green Monster. This is important, Temim says, because when we observe extragalactic supernovae, their light is very much influenced by the surrounding material.Deciphering the details of supernovae could even help us understand how Earth and its life came to be. Stars create the elements heavier than hydrogen and helium that life requires. Their end-of-life eruptions spew these elements into space, seeding galaxies with the raw materials to form new stars and planets. As citizens of the universe, its important we understand this fundamental process that makes our place in the universe possible, Milisavljevic says.Astronomers will keep studying Cassiopeia A, although their success makes them eager to turn JWSTs eyes toward some of the other roughly 400 identified supernova remnants in our galaxy. Getting a larger sample will help researchers connect differences in how remnants look and evolve to differences among the stars that produced them.Celestial FirecrackerNASA/CXC/SAO (x-ray); NASA/ESA/STScI (optical); NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/Caltech (infrared); NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand (image processing)Cassiopeia A is the aftermath of the closest known young supernova to Earth, a blast that occurred some 350 years ago. Recent data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) combine in this image with earlier observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope to reveal a clearer picture of Cassiopeia A than ever before.HUBBLES BIG STEPNASA, ESA and Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: Robert A. Fesen/Dartmouth College and James Long/ESA/HubbleBefore the JWST images, Hubbles observations of Cassiopeia A were revolutionary. In photographs taken in 2006, Hubble improved on the resolution of ground-based observations by a factor of 10. In the process, it was able to resolve clumps of material ejected during the supernova that were traveling shockingly fast, between 8,000 and 10,000 kilometers per second. The explosion is ridiculously violent, Fesen says. The outer layers of the star appear to fragment into clumps of gas, almost like the star shattered into thousands and thousands of pieces. Scientists hadnt realized that the blast would produce such clumps, Fesen says. Nature had to show us that stars actually do that.JWSTS VIEWNASA, ESA, CSA, Danny Milisavljevic/Purdue University, Tea Temim/Princeton University, Ilse De Looze/University of Ghent; Joseph DePasquale/STScI (image processing)JWST is the most powerful telescope of all time, and its portrait of Cassiopeia A shows never-before-seen details. The observatorys Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) captures various bands of infrared light, which have each been converted into respective visible-light colors in this picture. Orange and red flows on the top and left of the image show spots where material from the exploding star is smashing into gas and dust in the surrounding area. Inside this shell are bright pink strands released during the explosion. The dark red web toward the center left represents pristine structure from the blast that could hold clues about the star before it blew up.THE GREEN MONSTERNASA/ESA JWST, Danny Milisavljevic/Purdue University, Tea Temim/Princeton University, Ilse De Looze/University of Ghent and HST, R. Fesen/Dartmouth College; J. Schmidt (image processing)Zooming in on the JWST image reveals a surprisea green bubble scientists are calling the Green Monster after a green wall at Fenway Park in Boston. This blob is made of gas layers the star cast off before it burst apart. It looks weird and has this bizarre distribution of rings and filaments, Milisavljevic says. Encoded in this puzzle is information about how the star was releasing mass before the explosion.Holes apparent in the Green Monster seem to provide evidence of the clumps of ejecta Fesen and his team observed with Hubble. The images from JWST show little holes, almost like bullet holes, that are almost perfectly round, he says. Scientists think the fast-moving clumps of supernova material are punching through the surrounding sheet of gas like shrapnel to create the holes. The size of the holes betrays the clumps gigantic sizeroughly 500 astronomical units (the distance between Earth and the sun). As these clumps have been sailing through space, theyve expanded to become bigger than the solar system, Fesen says.CRYSTAL CLEARNASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Danny Milisavljevic (Purdue University), Ilse De Looze (UGent), Tea Temim (Princeton University)Another JWST instrument, the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), showcases Cassiopeia A in shorter-wavelength light than MIRI. The benefit of NIRCam is resolution, Milisavljevic says. When you zoom in like this, its astounding. Im going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand the supernova at these scales. He hopes to use these data to understand how the shock wave of the explosion has shaped the gas it encountered, as well as how dense the supernova material can get, to garner clues about how the cataclysm unfolded.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 movie gets a release date, but it's still a few years awayRing it in your diary.Image credit: Sega/Paramount News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on Jan. 21, 2025 We already knew it was coming, thanks to Paramount's announcement at the end of last year, but the Sonic the Hedgehog 4 movie now has a release date. It is, however, still a fair way out - with Sonic's next big screen undertaking currently not due until 2027.More specifically, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is - as reported by Variety - currently expected to hit cinemas on 19th March, 2027. No further specifics have been revealed, but we do, of course, have a pretty good idea of who'll be joining the Sonic crew in instalment four.Over the course of its three previous entries, the Sonic movie series has established a tradition of including a big character reveal during its credits. Sonic 1 suggested Tails would be along for the second Sonic movie, while Shadow the Hedgehog emerged from his slumber in a mid-credits sequence for Sonic 2. And as for the recently released Sonic 3, that made it pretty clear [SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS] Amy Rose will be entering the fray - oversized hammer in hand - for Sonic the Hedgehog 4 [END OF SPOILERS].Sonic the Hedgehog 3 trailer.Watch on YouTubeRegardless of where the story heads next, it seems unlikely Sega and Paramount will be ready to wrap up the series when Sonic the Hedgehog 4 arrives in 2027. As noted by Variety, Sonic 3 proved to be a huge success when it released in December, generating $422m at the box office globally so far - a figure officially making it the movie series' highest grossing entry so far.Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale was also won over by last year's movie, calling it an "authentic Sonic romp with added Keanu cool" in his four star review. "Sonic 3 is a resounding success and fitting finale to the Year of Shadow," he wrote. "It's quippy and self-aware... while its flashy action thrills alongside an unbridled sense of cool that's only enhanced by Reeves as Shadow."

GDC's State of the Games Industry survey says one in ten respondents laid off in 20248 percent of devs creating for Switch 2.Image credit: Adobe Stock / Shopping King Louie News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on Jan. 21, 2025 Game Developer Conference organisers have shared the results of this year's State of the Game Industry survey - intended to provide a snapshot of current trends and sentiments among developers - revealing, among other things, that one in ten respondents lost their jobs in 2024, following the devastating wave of layoffs seen across the industry.This year's State of Games Industry report surveyed over 3000 developers across a range of topics, but layoffs were once again front of mind as the widespread industry job cuts of 2023 continued into 2024 - with figures suggesting 13000 employees lost their jobs last year. According to GDC's survey, not only did one in ten developers report having been laid off directly, 41 percent of respondents said they'd felt the impact of layoffs in some way. The area reportedly most affected by layoffs was game narrative at 19 percent.Respondents cited restructuring, declining revenue, and marketing shifts as the main reason for job cuts, with many blaming "specific issues like Covid-era over-expansion, rising production costs, declining player interest, unrealistic expectations for the 'next big hit', poor leadership and mismanagement" as the reason why layoffs have continued to impact the games industry.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Newscast: Switch 2 and Mario Kart 9 revealed - but questions remain.Watch on YouTubeElsewhere, unionisation remains a talking point, with one-fifth of respondents saying they'd discussed unionising over the past 12 months. 29 percent said their companies were supportive of the discussions, while 19 percent were mixed and 12 percent opposed unionisation.GDC also questioned respondents on average working hours, with 57 percent saying they worked 40 hours or less a week. 13 percent of those survey worked more than 51 hours per week - up from 8 percent last year - with two-third attributing their hours to self-pressure.As for the platforms developers are currently focusing their attention on, PC once again leads the charge by a significant margin, with 80 percent of those surveyed saying they were currently developing PC games - up from 66 percent last year. While GDC wasn't able to confidently state a reason for this increase, it speculated a link to the popularity of Steam Deck - with 44 percent expressing an interest in Valve's platform.Over on console, 38 percent of developers reported they're currently making games for PS5, compared to 34 percent for Xbox Series X/S, while 20 percent are developing for Switch. As for Nintendo's recently unveiled Switch 2, eight percent of developers said they're developing for the platform - the same figure reported in last year's GDC survey.Respondents also shared their thoughts on live service gaming - another area generating headlines right now, as studios continue to pull the plug on floundering or still-in-development titles. 42 percent of those surveyed said they weren't interested in working on live service games, but those who saw value in them did so for various reasons: "not only on the financial side, but also in player experience and community building".Those with less enthusiasm blamed "declining player interest, creative stagnation, predatory practices and micro-transactions, and the risk of developer burnout", as well as concerns around market saturation and the difficulty of building a sustainable player base.And as for AI, 30 percent of respondents said they believed AI is having a negative impact on the industry - a 12 percent increase from last year - with many sharing concerns around "intellectual property theft, energy consumption, a decrease in quality from AI-generated content, potential biases within AI programs and regulation issues". Despite these reservations, 52 percent said their companies have implemented generative AI - with respondents in business and finance most likely to use AI tools (51 percent), followed by production and team leadership (41 percent), and community, marketing, and PR (39 percent).GDC's full State of the Game Industry report can be downloaded from its website (registration is required) and is well worth a read, offering a fascinating snapshot of current developer sentiment and trends following an extremely challenging year for the industry.

This 540-square-foot apartment is on the fifth floor of its building in the 10th arrondissementin other words, this means unobstructed views and lots of light. Light is the key word for this small space, says interior designer Lauranne lise Schmitt. But it was partitioned into many small spaces. We had to reimagine the plan and figure out a way to improve the circulation.After Schmitts intervention, the space is now divided between a large living room (measuring roughly 345 square feet) and a bedroom (of around 215 square feet) that includes paired dressing rooms that also serve to separate the toilet from both the bedroom and the bathroom. In the end, every function has its place and no square inch is wasted. From the entrance, you can access the dressing room and the toilet, to the left of the kitchen. The bedroom is past the kitchen and to its right. This beautiful, natural symmetry is typical of Schmitts work. The apartment also takes advantage of a row of three sloping windows and a translucent pocket door to the bedroom to create a space that is filled with light. Facing the kitchen, which is rather small but it has everything anyone would need, a extra long and thin table creates a visual separation between the kitchen and the living room without taking up too much space. It can be used as a console, island, office, or dining table and can accommodate up to six people seated around it.The three niches in the apartments living area have reflective brushed stainless-steel backs. In front of two 1970 vintage armchairs by Adriano Piazzesi (Galerie Paradis), three small glazed stoneware coffee tables. In the niches, aluminum vases, pieces from Anna Zimmermans Vessels of Imperfection series, and glass vases Momentum 14, 16, 17, and 18 by Rinke Joosten (Galerie Scne Ouverte). On the wall, Melting Summer by Jade Marra (Amlie, Maison d'art). Walls and ceilings painted in Calcaire (Argile).The owner grew up in Andalusia and the colors of Southern Spain were the inspiration for the ochre, caramel, and earth-colored palette that Schmitt chose. The kitchen, the center of life in the apartment, is in a rustic red that complements the large custom table and the Alicante marble credenza. The same hue continues in the two dressing rooms and down the legs of the large table. The brushed stainless-steel base and wall units, on the other hand, contrast with this warm, Mediterranean color to create a modern look as well as reflecting light throughout the apartment. The same stainless steel is also found lining the back of three mahogany oak niches on one wall in the living area. Illuminated by LED lights at night and by sunlight during the day, the reflective niches help to create a cozy yet contemporary living area. The arches of two of the niches introduce curves into the apartment while providing a contrast with the straight lines that the interior designer is also fond of. This curved shape is found in the arched bathroom door and the bathroom mirror, Schmitt says. They are subtle touches that are integrated with the rest of the apartment, never overshadowing other elements.

One of the most iconic homes in cinema is finally off the market. The Home Alone houseas seen in the 1990 Christmas classic starring Macaulay Culkinhas officially sold for $5.5 million, per People.Located in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois, the five-bedroom, six-bathroom dwelling first hit the market in May 2024 with an asking price of $5.25 million. An offer was made a week after it was listed. The famous pad then went under contingency, meaning an agreement would be reached once certain conditions (like inspections and financing) were finalized. The sale was reportedly marked as pending in December 2024, the houses listing agents, Dawn McKenna and Katie Moor of Coldwell Banker Realty, tell People.Home Alone follows the hijinks of 8-year-old Kevin McCallister, who was mistakenly left home alone after his family went on Christmas vacation abroad. Since its debut over three decades ago, the property has become a beloved landmark.The residence was built in 1921 and still sports the same red brick exteriors and wrought-iron gate fans will remember, though it has undergone a slew of renovations over the years. However, the dwellings previous longtime owners, Tim and Trisha Johnson, were careful not to alter aspects featured in the movie. The couple purchased the property in 2012 for $1.58 million and opted to maintain the foyer staircase, living room, and dining room over the years to preserve its movie magic.An additional 5,100 square feet of space have been tacked onto the home since its turn on screen, bringing it to a total of 9,126 square feet. Its new features include a revamped gourmet kitchen, a basement, and an enclosed porch with a dual-sided fireplace. It also comes packed with luxury amenities, among them, a fully-equipped gym and a seven-seat home theater with a bar. Other highlights include a junior primary bedroom in the former attic space, an indoor sports court, two laundry rooms, a second living room, and a heated three-car garage.Join NowNew Year's Sale: Become an AD PRO member for only $20 $12 per monthArrowWere thrilled with the way this home captured everyones attention and hearts due to its well-deserved place in cinematic history and the timeless holiday memories it evokes, the homes listing agents told People in a statement.While the identity of the new owner has yet to be revealed, Culkin previously admitted that he considered purchasing the fictional home just for giggles. While he never planned to move in himself, Culkin says he considered transforming the home into a movie fun house where fans could reenact scenes from the film.

SubscribeJoin the newsletter to get the latest updates.If it wasnt already obvious, the last 72 hours have made it crystal clear that it is urgent to build and mainstream alternative, decentralized social media platforms that are resistant to government censorship and control, are not owned by oligarchs and dominated by their algorithms, and in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere easily and without restriction.Besides all of the normal problems with corporate social mediathe surveillance capitalism, the AI spam, the opaque algorithmslets take stock of what has happened in the last few days.First, millions of small business owners and influencers who make a living on TikTok were left to beg their followers in TikToks last moments to follow them elsewhere in hopes of being able to continue their businesses on other corporate social media platforms. This had the effect of fracturing and destroying peoples audiences overnight, with one act of government.TikTok has since come back, but it is still unclear what the future of the platform is, and TikTok now exists at the whim of President Trump and is beholden to him to an unknown extent. TikToks status in the Untied States is still up in the airit is still not available for download in the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store, and it could disappear at any moment if service providers like Oracle decide that Trumps executive order and assurances that they will not be prosecuted or fined are not enough assurance to keep the app online.Elon Musk, who had already turned X into a cesspool of hate and an overt tool to get President Trump elected, is now formally part of the Trump administration, meaning the platform is literally owned by a member of the Trump White House.Meta has made an overt shift to the right, and Mark Zuckerberg has himself become a Trump booster. The platform is making its content moderation worse, has declared that immigrants and LGBTQ+ people are legitimate targets for hate speech, and has made many of these changes at the behest of the Trump White House and Stephen Miller, according to The New York Times.This post is for paid members onlyBecome a paid member for unlimited ad-free access to articles, bonus podcast content, and more.SubscribeSign up for free access to this postFree members get access to posts like this one along with an email round-up of our week's stories.SubscribeAlready have an account? Sign in

Anti-Trump Searches Appear Hidden on TikTok After App Comes Back Online: 'TikTok is Now Trump's Propaganda'One video showed that #f***biden was allowed, but #f***trump did not pop up.By Elizabeth Urban Published 01/21/25 AT 12:07 PM ESTSearches for anti-Trump content are reportedly appearing hidden on TikTok for many users after the app came back online in the U.S.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla; Getty ImagesSearches for anti-Trump content are now appearing hidden on TikTok for many users after the app came back online in the U.S.TikTok users have taken to X to share that when they search for topics negatively related to President Donald Trump, a message pops up saying "No results found" and that the phrases may violate the app's guidelines.One user said that when they tried to search "Donald Trump rigged election" on a U.S. account, they were met with blocked results. Meanwhile, the same phrase searched from a U.K. account prompted results.Another user shared video of them switching between a U.S. and U.K. VPN to back up the user's viral claims, which has since amassed more than 187,000 likes."Apparently this is a bit inconsistent depending on the phrasing used, but remains something that is (as far as i can tell) exclusive to Americans, and IS still part of a blatant effort to censor progressive discussion," the user added in a comment under the viral post.Other users shared that searches for the same content that contained spelling errors would result in the content being shared with U.S. users. In one video of a user sharing searches for different hashtags, #f***biden was allowed but #f***trump did not pop up."Just tried and basically they're censoring certain words.. so if you make typos they're going to show up... TikTok is now Trump's propaganda arm," one user commented."So I guess the stipulation for TikTok to stay was to turn into a Trump propaganda machine," another user wrote.Some users added that they received warnings from the app while trying to repost political videos. One user explained that they were told they had connectivity issues despite no previous issues scrolling through the app."I'm trying to repost a video criticizing Trump for his anti-trans political agenda and it's claiming I am not connected to the internet even though I'm clearly connected and can scroll with no issues..." the user wrote on X.While American users shared that they had no issues with the app, others suggested that the blocked terms could be related to restricted searches following the 2020 election.However, many users expressed dismay at the situation. "We are in a bad place," one user commented. "'The land of the free' my ass," another user wrote.TikTok is not the only platform that users have expressed problems searching for political content on. Several users reported that #Democrats was being restricted on Instagram or was not available for them.Meta said in a statement to the BBC that the "error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum" was being addressed.TikTok has not yet publicly commented on users' claims of restricted political searches.Originally published by Latin Times.Donald trump Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

0:05:00 The journey to recording the podcast amidst LA fires0:09:30 Growing up in a creative household and early inspirations0:15:00 Early days at ILM and learning from top VFX supervisors0:20:40 Collaborating on Tron: Legacy with Paul Lambert0:25:25 Founding Wylie Co. and transitioning to running a VFX company0:30:10 Challenges of balancing creative and technical aspects in VFX0:35:45 Insights from Dune: Part One and preparing for Dune: Part Two0:41:20 How Wylie Co. adapted to the rise of AI in visual effects workflows0:47:15 Contributions to The Last of Us and episodic content0:53:50 Reflecting on Alien: Romulus and working on sci-fi projects1:00:10 The evolution of VFX and staying relevant in a competitive industry1:05:40 Final thoughts on the future of filmmaking and upcoming projects

Update: Confirmed for March 2027.We're just one day away from the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie which introduces Shadow the Hedgehog to the blockbuster franchise hitting cinemas worldwide. But Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures has already greenlighted a fourth film.Shocked? Nope, not us. According to the report, the movie is aiming for a Spring 2027 release. We know nothing else yet, but given that director Jeff Fowler has stuck around for the first three movies, we wouldn't be surprised if he's also on board for a fourth run.Read the full article on nintendolife.com