An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that around this same time, Mars's moon Phobos would complete its slow death spiral into the red planet's surface. A community of 1,533 editors have since expanded the timeline to 160 events, including the heat death of the universe. I like to imagine these people on laptops in living rooms and cafes across the world, compiling obscure bits of speculative science into a secular Book of Revelation.

Like the best sci-fi world building, the Timeline of the Far Future can give you a key bump of the sublime. It reminds you that even the sturdiest-seeming features of our world are ephemeral, that in 1,100 years, Earth's axis will point to a new North Star. In 250,000 years, an undersea volcano will pop up in the Pacific, adding an extra island to Hawaii. In the 1 million years that the Great Pyramid will take to erode, the sun will travel only about 1/200th of its orbit around the Milky Way, but in doing so, it will move into a new field of stars. Our current constellations will go all wobbly in the sky and then vanish.

Some aspects of the timeline are more certain than others. We know that most animals will look different 10 million years from now. We know that the continents will slowly drift together to form a new Pangaea. Africa will slam into Eurasia, sealing off the Mediterranean basin and raising a new Himalaya-like range across France, Italy, and Spain. In 400 million years, Saturn will have lost its rings. Earth will have replenished its fossil fuels. Our planet will also likely have sustained at least one mass-extinction-triggering impact, unless its inhabitants have learned to divert asteroids.

Newsweek writes that the missing atmosphere of Mars "may be locked up in the planet's clay-rich surface, a new study by MIT geologists has suggested." According to the researchers, ancient water trickling through Mars' rocks could have triggered a series of chemical reactions, converting CO2 into methane and trapping the carbon in clay minerals for billions of years...

The dominant explanation relies on an interaction between the sun's rays and gases in the atmosphere. Mars lost its protective magnetic field billions of years ago, likely allowing high-energy solar particles to strike the upper atmosphere, kicking molecules off into space, according to NASA... But this might not be the whole story. The researchers focused on a type of clay mineral called smectite, known for its ability to trap carbon. These minerals, abundant on Mars, contain tiny folds that can store carbon molecules for aeons. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

"There is plenty of evidence for a thick clay layer on the Martian surface. Almost 80 percent of satellite spectra detect these high-surface-area clay minerals on the Martian surface. Clay has been detected in craters as deep as 17 kilometers [10.5 miles]," [lead author Joshua] Murray said... Their model suggested that Mars' surface could contain up to 1.7 bar of CO2 — roughly 80 percent of its early atmospheric volume — sequestered as methane within clay deposits. This methane could still be present today, lying beneath the planet's dry and barren crust. "We know this process happens, and it is well-documented on Earth. And these rocks and clays exist on Mars," Oliver Jagoutz, the study's author, said in a statement. "So, we wanted to try and connect the dots."

The discovery that Mars' ancient atmosphere could be hidden within its surface clays offers a new perspective on the planet's history and raises intriguing possibilities for future exploration. For example, if the sequestered carbon could be recovered and converted, it could serve as a propellant for future space missions between Earth, Mars and beyond.
"In some ways, Mars' missing atmosphere could be hiding in plain sight," says the study's lead author — and the article adds that this raises some interesting possibilities.

"For example, if the sequestered carbon could be recovered and converted, it could serve as a propellant for future space missions between Earth, Mars and beyond..."

Scientific American has surprising news about the possibility of black holes the size of an atom but containing the mass of an asteroid — the so-called "primordial black holes" formed after the birth of the universe which could solve the ongoing mystery of the missing dark matter.

These atom-sized black holes "may fly through the inner solar system about once a decade, scientists say... And if they sneak by the moon or Mars, scientists should be able to detect them, a new study shows." If one of these black holes comes near a planet or large moon, it should push the body off course enough to be measurable by current instruments. "As it passes by, the planet starts to wobble," says Sarah R. Geller, a theoretical physicist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of the study, which was published on September 17 in Physical Review D. "The wobble will grow over a few years but eventually it will damp out and go back to zero."

Study team member Tung X. Tran, then an undergraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, built a computer model of the solar system to see how the distance between Earth and nearby solar system objects would change after a black hole flyby. He found that such an effect would be most noticeable for Mars, whose distance scientists know within about 10 centimeters. For a black hole in the middle of the mass range, "we found that after three years the signal would grow to between one to three meters," Tran says. "That's way above the threshold of precision that we can measure." The Earth-Mars distance is particularly well tracked because scientists have been sending generations of probes and landers to the Red Planet...

In a coincidence, an independent team published a paper about its search for signs of primordial black holes flying near Earth in the same issue of Physical Review D. The researchers' simulations found that such signals could be detectable in orbital data from Global Navigation Satellite Systems, as well as gravimeters that measure variations in Earth's gravitational field.
"For decades physicists thought dark matter was likely to take the form of so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)," the article points out. "Yet generations of ever more sensitive experiments meant to find these particles have come up empty."

California astrophysicist Kevork Abazajian tells the site that now in the scientific community, "Primordial black holes are really gaining popularity."

New research suggests that Mars' missing atmosphere may have been absorbed by minerals in the planet's clays, in a process similar to geological reactions on Earth. It may explain Mars' loss of its atmosphere and potential to support life, with methane possibly still present and usable as an energy source. Longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes: Conditions on early Mars were highly likely to have had CO2 carried down into the ground by water, where reactions with rock resulted in iron oxide (and Mars' rust-red surface) and released hydrogen, which in turn reacted with the water to form methane that was bound in smectite clays. It's all still there, just under the surface. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report: Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.

More details on that report about NASA from the Washington Post: NASA is 66 years old and feeling its age. Brilliant engineers are retiring. Others have fled to higher-paying jobs in the private space industry. The buildings are old, their maintenance deferred. The Apollo era, with its huge taxpayer investment, is a distant memory. The agency now pursues complex missions on inadequate budgets. This may be an unsustainable path for NASA, one that imperils long-term success. That is the conclusion of a sweeping report, titled "NASA at a Crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and published Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report suggests that NASA prioritizes near-term missions and fails to think strategically. In other words, the space agency isn't sufficiently focused on the future.

NASA's intense focus on current missions is understandable, considering the unforgiving nature of space operations, but "one tends to neglect the probably less glamorous thing that will determine the success in the future," the report's lead author, Norman Augustine, a retired Lockheed Martin chief executive, said Tuesday. He said one solution for NASA's problems is more funding from Congress. But that may be hard to come by, in which case, he said, the agency needs to consider canceling or delaying costly missions to invest in more mundane but strategically important institutional needs, such as technology development and workforce training. Augustine said he is concerned that NASA could lose in-house expertise if it relies too heavily on the private industry for newly emerging technologies. "It will have trouble hiring innovative, creative engineers. Innovative, creative engineers don't want to have a job that consists of overseeing other people's work," he said...

The report is hardly a blistering screed. The tone is parental. It praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its triumphs while urging more prudent decision-making and long-term strategizing.

NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars. But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. NASA's overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow," the report states.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the report "aligns with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce, and technology that NASA needs for the decades ahead," according to the article.

Nelson added that the agency "will continue to work diligently to address the committee's recommendations."

Annapurna Interactive's entire gaming staff has resigned from the company following a leadership dispute, according to a Bloomberg report. From a report: The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, as well as the entire remaining staff of Annapurna Interactive, joined him.

"All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned," Gary and the resigned staff said in a joint statement to Bloomberg. "This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly." While negotiations were still ongoing, Annapurna Interactive re-hired former Epic Games executive Hector Sanchez as its president of interactive and new media, and Paul Doyle as its head of strategy. IGN understands that Sanchez was expected to head up Annapurna's gaming efforts in Gary's absence once his part of the company was spun-off. With Gary now having resigned, Sanchez has taken the lead. Annapurna has earned success and awards for games including Cocoon, Stray, Neon White, The Artful Escape, and Sayonara Wild Hearts.

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years," Elon Musk posted on X.com this weekend.

Musk said the launches will happen when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, which the science blog NextBigFuture identifies as "about November through December 2026." Musk noted that the 2026 missions "will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars," but "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."

"China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned," writes the South China Morning Post, a change that one space policy research believes "suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation." On Thursday, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China's Mars mission, told the Second International Conference on Deep Space Exploration in Huangshan, Anhui province, that the team aimed to bring back around 600 grams (21 oz) of Martian soil... A 2028 launch date should see Martian samples returned to Earth around July 2031, according to a previous presentation made by Tianwen-1 mission lead Sun Zezhou at Nanjing University in 2022.
The mission will actually consist of two launches from Earth, reports Space News: Two Long March 5 rocket launches will carry a lander and ascent vehicle and an orbiter and return module respectively. Entry, descent and landing will build on technology used for the Tianwen-1 rover landing. The mission may also include a helicopter and a six-legged crawling robot for collecting samples away from the landing site...

NASA is working on its own, more complex Mars sample return mission. However the program is being reassessed, following projected cost overruns. Studies are being conducted to identify concepts that can deliver samples faster and cheaper than current plans.

Liu stated that the search for evidence of life is the Tianwen-3's top scientific goal, according to state media China Central Television (CCTV). Earlier reporting notes that potential landing areas will be selected based partly on astrobiological relevance. This includes environments potentially suitable for the emergence of life and its preservation, such as sedimentary or hydrothermal systems, evidence of past aqueous activity and geological diversity.
"China states that it plans to work with scientists worldwide to cooperatively study and share Martian samples and data," according to the article: The China National Space Administration has made samples from its Chang'e-5 lunar nearside sample return mission available to research applications for international researchers. The same is expected for the recently-completed Chang'e-6 lunar farside mission."

Further ahead, Tianwen-3 will include partnering with countries and research institutions to define the objectives and tasks of a future Mars research station. This will include analyzing requirements, conducting conceptual studies, design implementation plans, and tackling key technological challenges.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Iamthecheese for sharing the news.

NASA's 2022 DART mission "successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it," remembers Gizmodo, "potentially providing a way to defend Earth — though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat."

But a followup study suggests debris from that 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid "could actually strike back," they add, "though we're not in any danger." The [DART] team posits that the collision produced a field of rocky ejecta that could reach Earth within 10 years... [Various aerospace scientists] studied data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, which observed DART's impact of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid — basically dust and rock — may have disseminated into space. The simulations tracked about 3 million particles kicked up by the impact, some of which are large enough to produce meteors that could be spotted on Earth. Particles from the impact could get to Mars in seven to 13 years, and the fastest particles could make it to our own world in just seven years.

"This detailed data will aid in the identification of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyze and interpret impact-related phenomena," the team wrote in the paper.
"However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations," said Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio, who lead the research team, in an interview with Universe Today. (He's a Research Fellow with the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology group at Milan's Polytechnic Institute.) The team's simulations indicated it could take up to 30 years before any of the ejecta is observed on Earth, in a new (and human-created) meteor shower called the Dimorphids.

So while they won't pose any risk, "If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth... their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."

Slashdot reader Dave Knott writes: After once again being plagued by controversy, this time due to a thwarted ballot-stuffing campaign, the 2024 Hugo Awards have been awarded at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

This year's winners are:

* Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
* Best Novella: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
* Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Series: Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
* Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
* Best Related Work: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar
* Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
* Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
* Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
* Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
* Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
* Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
* Best Fancast: Octothorpe, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
* Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
* Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
* Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
* Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Xiran Jay Zhao

NASA chief Bill Nelson didn't mince words about the agency's budget crunch. "You can't put 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack," he told ArsTechnica in an interview, addressing $4.7 billion in cuts over two years.

To scientists fretting over axed missions, Nelson offered a frank "I feel your pain." The Mars Sample Return's ballooning $11 billion price tag and 2040 timeline forced a reset. "We pulled the plug," Nelson admitted, but he's banking on cheaper, creative alternatives emerging by year's end.

The moon rover Viper got the chop too, blowing its budget by 40%. "There comes a limit," Nelson said, defending the tough call. Viper lunar rover project was "running 40 percent over budget." He defended these decisions as necessary given the $2 billion cut to science funding alone. The cuts stem from the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Nelson expressed hope for a "reprieve" in fiscal year 2026, but noted uncertainty due to another looming debt ceiling issue.

Slashdot contributors Tablizer, radaos, fjo3, and dbialac highlighted a major discovery by scientists: a reservoir of liquid water hidden deep beneath Mars' rocky outer crust. The BBC reports: The findings come from a new analysis of data from Nasa's Mars Insight Lander, which touched down on the planet back in 2018. The lander carried a seismometer, which recorded four years' of vibrations -- Mars quakes -- from deep inside the Red Planet. Analyzing those quakes -- and exactly how the planet moves -- revealed "seismic signals" of liquid water... The Insight probe was only able to record directly from the crust beneath its feet, but the researchers expect that there will be similar reservoirs across the planet. If that is the case, they estimate that there is enough liquid water on Mars to form a layer across the surface that would be more than half a mile deep.

However, they point out, the location of this Martian groundwater is not good news for billionaires with Mars colonization plans who might want to tap into it. "It's sequestered 10-20km deep in the crust," explained Prof Manga. "Drilling a hole 10km deep on Mars -- even for [Elon] Musk -- would be difficult," he told BBC News.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: One of the classic tropes of science fiction is terraforming Mars: warming up our cold neighbor so it could support human civilization. The idea might not be so far-fetched, research published today in Science Advances suggests...

Samaneh Ansari [a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University and lead author on the new study] and her colleagues wanted to test the heat-trapping abilities of a substance Mars holds in abundance: dust. Martian dust is rich in iron and aluminum, which give it its characteristic red hue. But its microscopic size and roughly spherical shape are not conducive to absorbing radiation or reflecting it back to the surface. So the researchers brainstormed a different particle: using the iron and aluminum in the dust to manufacture 9-micrometer-long rods, about twice as big as a speck of martian dust and smaller than commercially available glitter. Ansari designed a simulation to test how these theoretical particles would interact with light. She found "unexpectedly huge effects" in how they absorbed infrared radiation from the surface and how they scattered that radiation back down to Mars — key factors that determine whether an aerosol particle creates a greenhouse effect.

Collaborators at the University of Chicago and the University of Central Florida then fed the particles into computer models of Mars's climate. They examined the effect of annually injecting 2 million tons of the rods 10 to 100 meters above the surface, where they would be lofted to higher altitudes by turbulent winds and settle out of the atmosphere 10 times more slowly than natural Mars dust. Mars could warm by about 10 degreesC within a matter of months, the team found, despite requiring 5000 times less material than other proposed greenhouse gas schemes...

Still, "Increasing the temperature of the planet is just one of the things that we would need to do in order to live on Mars without any assistance," says Juan Alday, a postdoctoral planetary science researcher at the Open University not involved with the work. For one, the amount of oxygen in Mars's atmosphere is only 0.1%, compared with 21% on Earth. The pressure on Mars is also 150 times lower than on Earth, which would cause human blood to boil. And Mars has no ozone layer, which means there is no protection from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. What's more, even once warmed, martian soils may still be too salty or toxic to grow crops. In other words, McInnes says, upping the temperature "isn't some kind of magic switch" that would make Mars habitable.

That isn't stopping Ansari and her colleagues from investigating the possibilities.

"Scientists working with NASA's Perseverance rover state emphatically that they are not claiming to have discovered life on Mars," writes the New York Times.

"But many would regard a rock that the rover just finished studying as 'Most Likely to Contain Fossilized Microbial Martians'..." The rover has drilled and stashed a piece of the rock, which scientists hope can be brought back to Earth in the coming years for closer analysis and more definitive answers. "What we are saying is that we have a potential biosignature on Mars," said Kathryn Stack Morgan, the mission's deputy project scientist. She describes a biosignature as a structure, composition or texture in a rock that could have a biological origin.

The rock, which scientists named Cheyava Falls, possesses features that are reminiscent of what microbes might have left behind when this area was warm and wet several billion years ago, part of an ancient river delta. The scientists clarified that they did not spot anything that they thought might be actual fossilized organisms... Within the rock, Perseverance's instruments detected organic compounds, which would provide the building blocks for life as we know it. The rover also found veins of calcium sulfate — mineral deposits that appear to have been deposited by flowing water. Liquid water is another key ingredient for life. Perseverance also spotted small off-white splotches, about 1 millimeter in size, that have black rings around them, like miniature leopard spots. The black rings contain iron phosphate.

The chemical reactions that created the leopard spots could also have provided energy for microbes to live on.
"One of the key parts of Perseverance's mission is to drill samples of interesting rocks for a future mission to bring samples back to Earth for scientists to study with state-of-the-art instruments in their laboratories," the article points out. And while exactly how those rocks would be return has yet to be determined, deputy project scientist Morgan tells the Times, "I think this sample comes to the top of the list."

joshuark shares a report from The Verge: NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications in space by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane in the sky to the International Space Station and back. The feat demonstrates that the space agency could provide live coverage of a Moon landing during the Artemis missions and bodes well for the development of optical communications that could connect humans to Mars and beyond. NASA normally uses radio waves to send data and talk between the surface to space but says that laser communications using infrared light can transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radios. "ISS astronauts, cosmonauts, and unwelcomed commercial space-flight visitors can now watch their favorite porn in real-time, adding some life to a boring zero-G existence," adds joshuark. "Ralph Kramden, when contacted by Ouiji board, simply spelled out 'Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!'"

12 years on Mars — and NASA's Curiosity rover "has made its most unusual find to date," reports CNN — rocks made of pure sulfur.

"And it all began when the 1-ton rover happened to drive over a rock and crack it open, revealing yellowish-green crystals never spotted before on the red planet." "I think it's the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I have to say, there's a lot of luck involved here. Not every rock has something interesting inside...." White stones had been visible in the distance, and the mission scientists wanted a closer look. The rover drivers at JPL, who send instructions to Curiosity, did a 90-degree turn to put the robotic explorer in the right position for its cameras to capture a mosaic of the surrounding landscape. On the morning of May 30, Vasavada and his team looked at Curiosity's mosaic and saw a crushed rock lying amid the rover's wheel tracks. A closer picture of the rock made clear the "mind-blowing" find, he said...

"No one had pure sulfur on their bingo card," Vasavada said...

Members of the team were stunned twice — once when they saw the "gorgeous texture and color inside" the rock and then when they used Curiosity's instruments to analyze the rock and received data indicating it was pure sulfur, Vasavada said.
Vasavada also was grateful for the original landing site where Curiosity began methodically exploring back in 2012.

"I'm glad we chose something that was 12 years' worth of science."

NASA reports in an article for Phys.Org: Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals. Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals -- in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials -- the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental (pure) sulfur. It isn't clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.

While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven't associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it -- an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed. "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Just before the weekend, dozens of record labels including UMG, Warner, and Sony, filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon at a New York federal court. In common with previous lawsuits that accused rivals of similar inaction, Verizon Communications Inc., Verizon Services Corp., and Cellco Partnership (dba Verizon Wireless), stand accused of assisting subscribers to download and share pirated music, by not doing enough to stop them. The labels' complaint introduces Verizon as one of the largest ISPs in the country, one that "knowingly provides its high-speed service to a massive community of online pirates."

Knowledge of infringement, the labels say, was established at Verizon over a period of several years during which it received "hundreds of thousands" of copyright notices, referencing instances of infringement allegedly carried out by its subscribers. The complaint cites Verizon subscribers' persistent use of BitTorrent networks to download and share pirated music, with Verizon allegedly failing to curtail their activity. "While Verizon is famous for its 'Can you hear me now?' advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners. Instead of taking action in response to those infringement notices as the law requires, Verizon ignored Plaintiffs' notices and buried its head in the sand," the labels write.

"Undeterred, infringing subscribers identified in Plaintiffs' notices continued to use Verizon's services to infringe Plaintiffs' copyrights with impunity. Meanwhile, Verizon continued to provide its high-speed service to thousands of known repeat infringers so it could continue to collect millions of dollars from them." Through this lawsuit, which references piracy of songs recorded by artists including The Rolling Stones, Ariana Grande, Bob Dylan, Bruno Mars, Elvis Presley, Dua Lipa, Drake, and others, the labels suggest that Verizon will have no choice but to hear them now. [...]

Attached to the complaint, Exhibit A contains a non-exhaustive list of the plaintiffs' copyright works allegedly infringed by Verizon's subscribers. The document is over 400 pages long, with each track listed representing potential liability for Verizon as a willful, intentional, and purposeful contributory infringer, the complaint notes. This inevitably leads to claims based on maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per copyrighted work infringed on Count I (contributory infringement). The statutory maximum of $150,000 per infringed work is also applied to Count II (vicarious infringement), based on the labels' claim that Verizon derived a direct financial benefit from the direct infringements of its subscribers. The labels' complaint can be found here (PDF).