Here are today’s most important updates from the realm of Science and Space.
NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has captured a stunning picture of a 20-kilometer-high volcano, peeping through the clouds on the Red Planet. The image captured from the upper atmosphere at dawn, shows a green haze with Arsia Mons standing roughly twice as tall as Earth's largest volcano, Mauna Loa, located in Hawaii, which rises nine kilometers above the seafloor. At 120 kilometres wide, the Arsia Mons summit caldera is also larger than many volcanoes on Earth. Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes and cloudiest of the three.
Plastic pollution is only set to get worse, tripling by 2040 but these Japanese researchers offer a glimmer of hope.
— DW News (@dwnews) June 7, 2025
They’ve developed a plastic that dissolves in seawater — within hours. pic.twitter.com/4XaVSMlHfX
(Credit: X/@dwnews)
Scientists have developed a new type of plastic that dissolves quickly in seawater, leaving no harmful residue, potentially offering a breakthrough in dealing with ocean pollution. The new plastic material has the strength of conventional petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt. The researchers used a combination of sodium hexametaphosphate (a common food additive) and guanidinium ion-based monomers (used for fertilisers and soil conditioners) to manufacture this plastic material which leaves behind nitrogen and phosphorus, that microbes can metabolise and plants can also absorb. It is non-toxic for humans, has fire-resistant capabilities and does not release carbon dioxide.
Astronomers have spotted a cosmic mismatch that has left them perplexed - a really big planet orbiting a really small star. The discovery defies current understanding of how planets form. The star is only about a fifth the mass of the sun. Stars this size should host small planets akin to Earth and Mars under the leading theories on planetary formation. But the one detected in orbit around this star is much larger - in fact, as big as Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. The star, named TOI-6894, is located roughly 240 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. No known planet is larger than its host star, and that is the case here as well, though the two are much closer in size than usual. The star is about 21% the mass of the sun and much dimmer. In fact, the sun is about 250 times more luminous than TOI-6894.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe has directly recorded a powerful plasma explosion heading toward our star’s surface in unprecedented detail. Parker's new measurements found protons with about 1000 times greater energy than expected and a plasma jet shooting toward the sun, not away from it. Parker was uniquely positioned between the sun and the particles’ source, allowing scientists to easily figure out where they came from. These findings indicate that the complexity and strength of tangles in the sun’s magnetic field can accelerate charged particles to much greater speeds than expected from the field’s strength alone. The powerful phenomenon transforms energy stored in the sun's magnetic field into energy that accelerates the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles that the sun blasts across the solar system. Understanding the workings of magnetic reconnection events could help scientists better predict harmful space weather.
