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Ten days after its soft landing on the Moon‚ Japan’s history-making Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is back in action. The lander had a slight mishap while carrying out its precision landing‚ ending up on its side‚ which prevented its solar panels from powering up and left the lander running on batteries. Crucially‚ the solar panels were pointing West – facing away from the Sun at that time – leaving the team with the hope that as the Moon slowly rotated‚ sunlight would eventually reach the panels. And so it did‚ yesterday. SLIM has woken up and even sent back a photo. Without wasting any time‚ the team started working on the scientific mission‚ which has already exceeded expectations for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The goal was a precision pinpoint soft landing within 100 meters (330 feet) of a specific target area. In comparison‚ the expected landing site for Apollo 11 was an ellipse 20 kilometers by 5 kilometers (12 by 3.1 miles). SLIM appears to have landed just 55 meters (180 feet) from its target‚ a precision never achieved before on another world. Despite the slightly askew landing‚ SLIM deployed its two small rovers – one of which snapped the image of SLIM slanted on the surface – which are exploring their surroundings. Now that power is back on and it doesn’t have to rely on batteries‚ SLIM is using its cameras to study the interesting rocks near the lander.Six have been identified and they have been named after dog breeds: Toy Poodle‚ Shiba Inu‚ Bulldog‚ Akita Inu‚ Kai Ken‚ and St Bernard. SLIM has begun analyzing the Toy Poodle rock using spectroscopy – a technique that allows us to work out the composition of an object based on its light. Once‚ Toy Poodle is fully analyzed‚ SLIM will move on to the next rocks.         IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.While the work on the surface continued‚ SLIM was also snapped from orbit. On January 22‚ NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft passed over the landing site and photographed SLIM from orbit. LRO was about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the Lunar surface at the time. A before-and-after photo shows not only the 2.4 meter-long (8 feet) lander but also the effects of its rocket on the Moon. The retrorockets lifted the top layer of lunar soil‚ the regolith‚ which is darker than what lies below it. It is made of thin‚ weathered‚ tiny‚ and sharp rocks. It is dangerous to instruments and even to humans; Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt was discovered to be allergic to Moon dust.The landing site before and after SLIM landed.Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University The regolith lifting was seen around India's Vikram lander last summer and even during the Apollo missions; so much so during Apollo 11 that Buzz Aldrin noted that they were “picking up some dust” as they were about to touch down on the Moon's surface.SLIM will now try its best to catch up on lost time and conduct its science mission before the Sun sets on it‚ and the lander goes back into sleep mode‚ bracing for the freezing 14-day lunar night.  

With 200 billion trillion stars (ish) stars in the universe and the 13.7 billion years which have elapsed since it all began‚ you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are at. This is the basic question of the Fermi paradox‚ the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe (given planets found in habitable zones‚ etc) and the fact that we have only found one planet with an intelligent (ish) species inhabiting it. One solution‚ or at least a way of thinking about the problem‚ is known as the Great Filter. Proposed by Robin Hanson of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University‚ the argument goes that given the lack of observed technologically advanced alien civilizations‚ there must be a great barrier to the development of life or civilization that prevents them from getting to a stage where they are making big‚ detectable impacts on their environment‚ that we can witness from Earth."You start with billions and billions of potential germination points for life‚ and you end up with a sum total of zero extraterrestrial civilizations that we can observe‚" Nick Bostrom‚ also of the Future of Humanity Institute‚ explains. "The Great Filter must therefore be powerful enough – which is to say‚ the critical steps must be improbable enough – that even with many billions of rolls of the dice‚ one ends up with nothing: no aliens‚ no spacecraft‚ no signals‚ at least none that we can detect in our neck of the woods."Hanson proposed stages that life may have to get through (or conditions that need to be satisfied for life to occur and continue) in order to get to where we are now and beyond. These were:The right star system (including organics)Reproductive something (e.g. RNA)Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell lifeComplex (archaeatic &; eukaryotic) single-cell lifeSexual reproductionMulti-cell lifeTool-using animals with big brainsWhere we are nowColonization explosion"The Great Silence implies that one or more of these steps are very improbable; there is a 'Great Filter' along the path between simple dead stuff and explosive life‚" Hanson wrote in the original paper. "The vast vast majority of stuff that starts along this path never makes it. In fact‚ so far nothing among the billion trillion stars in our whole past universe has made it all the way along this path."Searching the galaxy for star systems amenable to life‚ stars for planets‚ and planets for biospheres and technosignatures could tell us more about where the Great Filter lies. Could it be that the conditions for even simple life are rare (which doesn't seem likely given organic compounds found in asteroids‚ for example) or that civilizations hit different barriers later on‚ such as an oxygen bottleneck preventing intelligent species from ever leaving the Stone Age? Or is the Great Filter somewhere between where we are now‚ and colonizing civilizations? If that is the case‚ it means the filter (most likely our own extinction‚ unless there is another reason why colonizing civilizations remain quiet to us) lies in our future.The good news is that finding life on other planets could tell us about where we are in relation to the Great Filter‚ or our own extinction."Searching for technosignatures alongside biosignatures would provide important knowledge about the future of our civilization. If planets with technosignatures are abundant‚ then we can increase our confidence that the hardest step in planetary evolution – the Great Filter – is probably in our past‚" as one paper explains. "But if we find that life is commonplace while technosignatures are absent‚ then this would increase the likelihood that the Great Filter awaits to challenge us in the future."It could be that common threats‚ such as asteroids‚ wipe out civilizations before they have a chance to begin colonizing their galaxies‚ or that at some point in a technological species' development‚ they inevitably learn about some technology (such as nuclear weapons‚ or another concept we have not discovered yet)‚ or that some other threat lurks out there for species that are technologically advanced and unwise enough to broadcast that fact. One way or the other‚ we guess we'll find out.The original paper on the Great Filter "The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?" is available on the George Mason University website.

It might not be as cute as most baby animals‚ but the suspected first-ever images capturing a newborn great white shark could be highly scientifically significant.Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are the largest surviving fish that prey on anything larger than krill‚ and the inspiration for films such as Jaws and Sharknado. Scientists refer to them merely as white sharks‚ animal hierarchies being out of fashion‚ but they’ll always be great to us. Technically even the white part is debatable‚ since their top half is gray‚ following a similar camouflage plan to penguins’ approach of looking dark when seen from above‚ and white against the sky.Despite their major role in the ecosystem (and our psyche) little is known about great whites’ reproduction and the lives of their young. While using a drone to film sharks (the safest‚ as well as the fastest‚ way to find them) off Carpinteria‚ California‚ filmmaker Carlos Guana and of California Riverside PhD candidate Phillip Sternes spotted a young great white. At an estimated 1.5 meters (5 feet) long‚ the shark was about the expected length for a newborn. This one lived up to its name‚ being truly white.Subsequently‚ however‚ they saw that this was no albino. “We enlarged the images‚ put them in slow motion‚ and realized the white layer was being shed from the body as it was swimming‚” Sternes said in a statement. The pair provide two interpretations of what they have seen: This is a newly born white shark with intrauterine substances sticking to its body or a slightly older shark has an unknown skin disorder “resulting in shedding‚ discharge‚ or possibly a microbial growth over the dermal layer.”The first suggestion in particular would support a long-standing claim that large sharks use the area off Santa Barbara‚ California to north Baja California in Mexico to give birth. This idea was proposed based on multiple reports of young white sharks in these waters. Nevertheless‚ most of these were too big to be newborns‚ leaving open the possibility births occur elsewhere before the young congregate in this region.Further evidence for the first interpretation is that the drones captured images of large sharks in the area‚ which may have been about to give birth‚ both that day and the day before.A closer version of the baby shark in question‚ looking cute but deadly.Image Credit: Carlos Gauna/The Malibu Artist“Where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science‚" said Gauna‚ who is responsible for the videos you may have seen of sharks swimming uncomfortably close to heedless swimmers."No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born‚ nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive. There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this.”“This may well be the first evidence we have of a pup in the wild‚ making this a definitive birthing location‚” Sternes added. If so‚ it could settle a long-standing debate as to whether great whites give birth far out to sea‚ or in more protected waters close to shore. This one was sighted only about 300 meters (1000 feet) from a beach.The impossibility of studying captive great whites‚ particularly pregnant ones‚ means we don’t know much about their gestation. However‚ lamniform sharks‚ the order to which great whites belong‚ have been observed practicing the unique behavior known as oophagy‚ where embryos feed on eggs while inside their mother’s uterus. It may not be quite the ruthless predatory behavior for which the adults are known‚ but it’s probably good practice‚ as well as maximizing the size of the embryo prior to birth. Some‚ such as grey and tawny nurse sharks‚ take it further‚ with the first embryo to develop eating other embryos as well as eggs.Pregnant great whites produce a yellowish fluid called “uterine milk”‚ possibly to prevent the pups from consuming each other entirely. Guana and Sternes think the material coming off this one might be the milk‚ or something related‚ that got stuck on its skin rather than being consumed.Great whites may rank one step above mosquitoes on a list of many people’s priorities to save‚ but unlike most insect vampires they’re recognized as endangered and essential for healthy oceans. “Further research is needed to confirm these waters are indeed a great white breeding ground‚” Sternes said. “But if it does‚ we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks keep thriving.”The study is published in Environmental Biology of Fishes. 

Despite weighing around 25 tons each‚ the enormous sarsen stones of Stonehenge were somehow transported over incredible distances when the monument was constructed almost 5‚000 years ago. The majority of these colossal monoliths came from a spot known as the West Woods‚ around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the site itself‚ yet new research has identified fragments of sarsen stone that originate an incredible 123 kilometers (76.4 miles) away in East Sussex.Sarsens are silicified sandstone boulders that are found in the open chalk hills of southern England. They are the building blocks of several of the most iconic structures at Stonehenge‚ including the Trilithon Horseshoe‚ the Sarsen Circle‚ and the Station Stone Rectangle. While the smaller (yet still massive) ‘bluestones’ that make up the inner circle are well known to have come from the Preseli Hills in Wales‚ the sarsens’ origins weren’t confirmed until 2020‚ when the chemical composition of all but two of the gigantic rocks was matched to source material in the West Woods. Interestingly‚ the two anomalous sarsens - known simply as Stones 26 and 160 - are yet to be traced.To gain more insight into the provenance of these huge stones‚ the authors of a new study analyzed the chemical composition of 54 samples of sarsen debris retrieved from excavation trenches at Stonehenge in 2008. Using techniques such as X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) and inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)‚ the researchers discovered that none of these fragments matched entirely with the West Wood sarsens.Comparing their findings with data from sarsen outcrop areas across southern England‚ the study authors were able to link 15 of their samples with specific locations. “Eleven of these were likely sourced from Monkton Down‚ Totterdown Wood and West Woods on the Marlborough Downs (25–33 km north of Stonehenge)‚” write the researchers. “Three fragments likely came from Bramdean‚ Hampshire (51 km southeast of Stonehenge)‚ and one from Stoney Wish‚ East Sussex (123 km to the southeast).”These results indicate that the fragments were not produced during the processing of the main West Wood sarsens‚ although it’s unclear if they represent material removed from the outer surfaces of Stones 26 or 160. The debris may also have belonged to other sarsen stones that once stood at Stonehenge but have since been removed or dismantled.“At this stage‚ we can only speculate on the reasons why sarsen stone from such diverse sources is present at Stonehenge‚” write the study authors. Among the many possible explanations is that these fragments were once pieces of hammerstones that were used in the construction of the famous landmark.Alternatively‚ these foreign stones may have been part of small rocks that were brought to the site for ceremonial purposes. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.