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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “Cosmic Owl,” a startling owl-faced pair of colliding ring galaxies. This double-ring structure is exceptionally rare: ring galaxies account for just 0.01% of known galaxies, and two colliding rings is almost unheard of. The JWST image provides an exceptional natural laboratory for studying galaxy evolution. Models suggest the galactic clash began roughly 38 million years ago, meaning the owl-like shape could persist for a long time. A team led by Ph.D. student Mingyu Li of Tsinghua University in China announced the finding.

Spotting the ‘Cosmic Owl’

According to Mingyu Li, the first author of the new study , he and his team found the Owl by combing through public JWST data from the COSMOS field. The twin ring galaxies jumped out thanks to JWST’s infrared imaging. Each ring is about 26,000 light-years across (a quarter of the Milky Way), and each harbors a supermassive black hole at its core – one of the Owl’s eyes.

JWST images show the collision interface – the Owl’s beak – ablaze with activity. ALMA observations find a huge clump of molecular gas there – the raw fuel for new stars – being squeezed by the impact. Radio observations show a jet from one galaxy’s black hole slamming into the gas. Li notes the shockwave-plus-jet have ignited an intense starburst, turning the beak into a stellar nursery.

Rarity and Significance

Ring galaxies are extremely rare (≈0.01% of all galaxies), so finding two in collision is unheard of. Another team independently identified the same system and called it the “Infinity Galaxy”. Li says this event is an exceptional natural laboratory for studying galaxy evolution. In one view, researchers can see black holes feeding, gas compressing and starbursts happening together.

Li points out the collision’s shockwave and jet have triggered an intense starburst in the beak. He says this may be a crucial way to turn gas into stars rapidly, which could help explain how young galaxies built up their mass so quickly. Simulations will clarify the precise collision conditions needed to produce such a rare twin-ring “owl” shape.

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Earth’s Spin to Speed Up Briefly, Causing Shorter Days This Summer

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July 14, 2025

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Earth’s Spin to Speed Up Briefly, Causing Shorter Days This Summer

Reports indicate that for three days this summer – July 9, July 22 and August 5 – Earth’s rotation will speed up slightly, trimming 1.3 to 1.5 milliseconds off each day. Imperceptible in everyday life, this shift underscores how the Moon’s position influences our planet’s spin. For reference, the shortest day on record was July 5, 2024, lasting 1.66 milliseconds less than 24 hours. Over billions of years Earth’s rotation has slowly lengthened, but recent data show speedups. Scientists say monitoring these tiny changes is important for understanding Earth’s dynamics and timekeeping.

Causes of Faster Spin

According to timeanddate.com, the shortest-ever recorded day was on July 5, 2024, which was 1.66 milliseconds shy of 24 hours. The acceleration is largely driven by the Moon’s gravity. On those dates (July 9, July 22 and August 5), the Moon will lie far north or south of Earth’s equator, weakening its tidal braking on our planet’s spin. As a result, Earth rotates a bit faster – like spinning a top held at its ends. Seasonal shifts in mass distribution also affect rotation. Richard Holme of the University of Liverpool notes that summer growth and melting snow in the Northern Hemisphere move mass outward from Earth’s axis, slowing the spin in the same way an ice skater slows by extending her arms.

Timekeeping and Technology

Shifts in day length are handled by precise timekeeping. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) monitors Earth’s spin and adds leap seconds to keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in sync with solar time. Normally a second is added when Earth’s rotation slows, but if the spin-up trend continues, scientists have floated a “negative leap second” – removing a second – to realign clocks.

Dr. Michael Wouters of Australia’s National Measurement Institute says this fix would be unprecedented, and notes that even if a few seconds accumulated over decades, it would likely go unnoticed. Dr. David Gozzard of the University of Western Australia points out that GPS satellites, communications networks and power grids rely on atomic clocks synced to nanoseconds, and that millisecond-scale changes in Earth’s rotation are easily absorbed by these systems.

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MIT Develops Low-Resource AI System to Control Soft Robots with Just One Image

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July 14, 2025

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MIT Develops Low-Resource AI System to Control Soft Robots with Just One Image

The use of conventional robots for industry and hazardous environments is easy for the purpose of control and modelling. However, these are too rigid to operate in confined places and uneven terrain. The soft bio-related roots are better adapted to the environment and manoeuvring in inaccessible places. Such flexible capabilities would need an array of on-board sensors and spacious models which are tailored to each robot design. Having a new and less resource-demanding approach, the researchers at MIT have developed a far less complex, deep learning control system that teaches the soft, bio-inspired robots to follow the command from a single image only.

Soft Robots Learn from a Single Image

As per Phys.org, this research has been published in the journal Nature, by training a deep neural network on two to three hours of multi-view images of various robots executing random commands, the scientists trained the network to reconstruct the range and shape of mobility from only one image. The previous machine learning control designs need customised and costly motion systems. Lack of a general-purpose control system limited the applications and made prototyping less practical.

The methods unshackle the robotics hardware design from the ability to model it manually. This has dictated precision manufacturing, extensive sensing capabilities, costly materials and reliance on conventional and rigid building blocks.

AI Cuts Costly Sensors and Complex Models

The single camera machine learning approach allows the high-precision control in tests on a variety of robotic systems, adding the 3D-printed pneumatic hand, 16-DOF Allegro hand, a soft auxetic wrist and a low-cost Poppy robot arm.

As this system depends on the vision alone, it might not be suitable for more nimble tasks which need contact sensing and tactile dynamics. The performance may also degrade in cases where visual cues are not enough.

Researchers suggest the addition of sensors and tactile materials that can enable the robots to perform different and complex tasks. There is also potential to automate the control of a wider range of robots, together with minimal or no embedded sensors.

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Ax-4 Astronauts to Return from ISS with 580 Pounds of Science Cargo

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July 14, 2025

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Ax-4 Astronauts to Return from ISS with 580 Pounds of Science Cargo

NASA’s SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is pictured approaching the International Space Station in June 2025, carrying the Ax-4 crew. Mission managers have given the “go” to undock this private astronaut mission (Axiom Mission 4) on Monday, July 14 at 7:05 a.m. EDT. The four-person crew, led by veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, has spent about two and a half weeks aboard the orbiting lab conducting science. Whitson’s crewmates are Shubhanshu Shukla (India), Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (Poland) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary), the first astronauts from their countries to visit the ISS. Together they performed dozens of experiments in microgravity before packing up for the ride home.

Completing the Research Mission

According to NASA, the Ax-4 team kept a busy schedule of science activities in their last days on station. On Friday they collected blood samples for later medical analysis and grew microalgae as a potential food source and life-support organism in space. They also studied special nanomaterials that could become wearable health monitors.

On Saturday the crew worked on human health investigations: testing electrical muscle stimulation, trying new exercise suit fabrics for thermal comfort, and filming their daily routines for a behavioural health study. By Sunday they began stowing research gear and packing science samples and personal cargo inside Dragon for return to Earth.

Preparing for the Return Journey

Expedition 73 station crew members pitched in to help finalize the departure. NASA astronaut Anne McClain helped gather hardware and supplies for packing Dragon and assisted with Ax-4’s ongoing experiments. Colleagues Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim spun the astronauts’ blood samples in a centrifuge and stowed them in the science freezer, then transferred water into the spacesuits during pre‐return checks. Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi processed saliva samples and carried out routine maintenance, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy ran a final fitness test on the station’s exercise bike.

The SpaceX Dragon will carry the crew and roughly 580 pounds of cargo – including hardware and data from over 60 experiments – back to Earth. Upon undocking on Monday, Dragon will eventually splash down off the California coast, returning the Ax-4 crew and their research samples after this historic international mission.

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