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Economic Times
14 hours ago
- Science
- Economic Times
Rare interstellar comet spotted zooming through our solar system, only the 3rd ever seen
A mysterious visitor from another star system is currently flying through our cosmic neighborhood, and scientists are keeping a close eye on it. The recently discovered comet is unlike anything we have seen before. The first detection of 3I/ATLAS was made on July 1 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. According to a statement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) NOIRLab, which runs the International Gemini Observatory, it is only the third known interstellar object, indicating it didn't originate in our solar system, as per a report by Space. While traveling toward the inner solar system, the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS was spotted by astronomers in a stunning new image. Only three interstellar objects have been found to reach our solar system, after 1I'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. The newly discovered comet was photographed by the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i as it passed through our cosmic neighborhood, some 290 million miles (465 million kilometers) away from Earth. The Gemini North telescope captured this massive 12-mile-wide comet, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study material from beyond our star. ALSO READ: Wicked 2 just made a massive change to this character, and fans might actually love it On October 30, 3I/ATLAS will cross within 130 million miles (210 million km), or barely inside the orbit of Mars, of the sun. No threat to Earth will come from 3I/ATLAS, which will pass within 170 million miles (270 million km) of Earth in December."This interstellar wanderer has been critically characterized early thanks to the International Gemini Observatory's sensitivity and scheduling agility," said Martin Still, NSF program director for the International Gemini Observatory."We look forward to a bounty of new data and insights as this object warms itself on sunlight before continuing its cold, dark journey between the stars."The relics of distant star systems that have been blasted into space are known as interstellar objects, such as 3I/ATLAS. According to the statement, they provide important information about the components that were present when and where other planetary systems in the universe formed, including their chemical composition, as per a report by it is thought that other objects of this kind frequently go through our solar system, they are very challenging to photograph. ALSO READ: 12,000 years of art? Ancient Mongolian elk carvings morph into mysterious wolf symbols However, 3I/ATLAS is a better target for research because it is significantly larger than earlier interstellar objects, with an estimated diameter of 12 miles (20 km). The comet has a compact coma, which is the cloud of gas and dust around its icy core, according to the latest photos taken by the Gemini North observatory. According to other observations, it might be the oldest comet ever found, possibly older than our solar system and it originates from the Milky Way's outer thick will be 3I/ATLAS's only visit to our solar system because of its extremely eccentric orbit, which prevents it from making a full orbit around the sun. Therefore, during the comet's brief visit before it departs for interstellar space, astronomers from all over the world are observing it with a variety of telescopes. Why is 3I/ATLAS such a big deal?It's only the third interstellar object ever discovered, and it's the largest by far. Will it return or hit Earth? No. It will pass by safely and not return; it is a one-time visitor.
Forbes
19 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Higher Ed Can Secure Funding To Align With An AI-Powered Workforce
UCLA Corridor A wave of recent funding announcements has made one thing unmistakably clear: Higher education is a driving force in building the AI-powered workforce. In the past few weeks alone, the University of Vermont received $5.5 million from the National Science Foundation for AI research and infrastructure, while Mississippi institutions—including Belhaven University and Alcorn State—secured over $2 million to launch applied AI programs and community-focused training. These investments signal a nationwide shift: Funders and employers now look to higher education to build the talent pipelines, innovation labs, and equity-centered ecosystems the AI era demands. What Employers Want Now At the heart of most AI-related funding is a workforce mandate. Employers are no longer hiring based solely on credentials. They're looking for capabilities: critical thinking, communication, adaptability, and applied problem-solving. AI fluency ranks as the top skill employers expect to need within the next five years, according to the 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council, which included data from more than 1,100 global recruiters and hiring managers, including from Fortune 500 firms. AI fluency is now the most important skill they expect to need within five years. It's not just for computer science majors. Employers want graduates who can ask better questions, challenge AI-generated outputs, and synthesize insights across disciplines. "The things people learn that are routine—that AI does for them—forces people to do higher-level thinking," said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. 'Employers want people who can take a complex or undefined problem, break it down, and figure out what to do about it.' Universities that align curricula with these evolving demands—and measure student outcomes accordingly—will be best positioned to attract long-term partners. Make Your College Easy To Fund Public and private sector partners want more than great ideas—they want institutions that are easy to work with. To stand out, universities need to demonstrate that they have the infrastructure, flexibility, and relationships to deliver on shared goals. This begins with building authentic employer engagement. Setting up an employer advisory council that meets regularly to shape course design, co-develop capstones, and validate job skills sends a clear message of labor market alignment. For example, the National Applied Artificial Intelligence Consortium includes leaders from Intel, Amazon, and Honeywell, and has helped guide the creation of new microcredentials tied directly to regional hiring needs at colleges such as Miami Dade College, Houston Community College and Maricopa County Community College District. Where The Money Is Flowing The U.S. National Science Foundation's new Regional Innovation Engines channel up to $160 million over ten years into university–industry coalitions tackling AI grand challenges. Corporate capital is right behind: Amazon Web Services' Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance now links 650 employers with more than 970 colleges worldwide, jointly modernizing cloud- and AI-rich programs. Philanthropy is surging, too—Schmidt Futures' AI 2050 is directing $125 million toward university research that keeps AI beneficial for society. Additional backers—from to IBM SkillsBuild—are lining up behind similar workforce-first projects. Three Moves Higher Ed Can Make Now AI is not a trend; it's a tectonic shift. Universities that step forward as partners in building the future workforce—grounded in ethics, powered by innovation—will lead. The funding is here. The opportunity is real. Now is the time to lead.
Scientific American
2 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Math Is Quietly in Crisis over NSF Funding Cuts
Mathematics research typically requires few materials. To explore the secrets of prime numbers, investigate unimaginable shapes or elucidate other fundamental mysteries of our universe, mathematicians don't usually need special labs and equipment or to pay participants in clinical trials. Instead funding for mathematicians goes toward meetings of the mind—conferences, workshops and institutes where they gather for intensive sessions to work out math's knottiest problems. Funding also supports the stipends of research fellows, postdoctoral scholars and promising early-career mathematicians. But under the Trump administration's National Science Foundation, much of this funding is being revoked or cut—which, according to experts, could be catastrophic for the present and future of the field. In one recent example, the NSF canceled funding for the Association for Women in Mathematics' research symposium in Wisconsin just four business days before the event was set to begin in May. The threat to this event catalyzed the American Mathematical Society to offer $1 million in backstop grants to support programs whose federal funding has been cut or remains in limbo. These grants are meant to provide a financial safety net that will temporarily allow math programs, researchers and departments to continue operating—but it's not a permanent solution. (Disclosure: The author of this article currently has a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship at Scientific American that is sponsored by the American Mathematical Society.) 'The funding cut is severe, and all of mathematics will be impacted,' says Raegan Higgins, president of the Association for Women in Mathematics and a mathematician at Texas Tech University. On supporting science journalism If 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. Movies and television shows often portray mathematicians scribbling on chalkboards in seclusion, but that picture is often far from accurate. 'None of us work in isolation,' Higgins says. In fact, mathematicians rely heavily on their ability to gather and discuss ideas with their peers—perhaps even more than researchers in other fields do. For mathematicians, conferences, workshops and research talks are not just opportunities to share research and network but also crucial moments to work out tough problems together with colleagues, pose field-propelling questions and generate new ideas. 'It's a thinking science, [and] it's a communication science, so we rely on being together to share ideas and to move the needle forward,' says Darla Kremer, executive director of the Association for Women in Mathematics. According to John Meier, CEO of the American Mathematical Society, 'the ability of mathematicians to gather and talk with each other is absolutely central to the vitality of the field.' Federal dollars, largely through the NSF, are responsible for a significant portion of math funding. But a lot of that funding is disappearing under the Trump administration. In April NSF staff members were instructed to 'stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.' Over the past 10 years, on average, the NSF has awarded $113 million in grants to mathematics by May 21 of each year. This year the NSF has awarded only $32 million, representing a 72 percent reduction. By this metric, mathematics is one of the most deeply affected subjects, second only to physics, which has seen an 85 percent reduction. The administration is also canceling and freezing funding that it had previously promised to researchers. More than $14 million of funding already promised to mathematics programs was revoked earlier this year, according to an analysis by Scientific American. In response to a request for comment, the National Science Foundation told Scientific American that 'the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.' This withdrawal of grants is eroding trust and seeding uncertainty, experts say, and it comes with long-term consequences. Even if funding gets renewed again later, it can be very difficult for halted programs to recover. 'If you have to shut down a lab and mothball it, that actually takes time and effort,' Meier says. 'You can't just walk in two weeks later, flip a switch and have everything running again. You've got to rebuild it.' Even in mathematics, that process of rebuilding is time-intensive and not always possible if the space has been reallocated or the people have moved on. American Mathematical Society leadership fears these cuts will hurt young mathematicians the most. Like in the sciences, the funding cuts are eliminating research experiences and supportive programming for undergraduates, fellowships for graduate students and positions for postdoctoral researchers. Travel funding for conferences is also disappearing, which leaves young researchers to choose between shelling out for airfare and lodging they can't really afford and forgoing major career and research building opportunities. As these opportunities disappear, young mathematicians are beginning to look elsewhere—either to more lucrative jobs in the private sector or to more supportive countries. 'We worry about diminishing opportunities in the United States and people early in their career deciding that maybe there's a more profitable venue for them to pursue mathematics in another country,' Meier says. 'We love good mathematics wherever it arises, but we'd really like to see a lot of it arising in the United States. We think that's very, very important.' The $1 million in backstop grants can't fill the hole left by the more than $14 million in promised funding that has been denied or the more than $80 million in reduced funding so far this year. But it might be enough to keep many projects afloat simply by offering guaranteed access to funds in a turbulent time. 'I think one of the great difficulties that we're dealing with right now is the high level of uncertainty,' Meier says. Some mathematicians, for example, simply don't know whether their projects are still being funded or not. In some applications for the backstop grants, researchers 'basically talk about being ghosted,' Meier explains. 'They say, 'I can't actually verify that we no longer have funding. I can only tell you my program officer [at the NSF] isn't replying to my request for information.'' Meier hopes the grants can provide some backup for programs that aren't sure where they stand with the NSF. Without it, researchers, universities and independent organizations may find themselves facing impossible situations. Do they pay their research assistants, run their conferences and continue to fund travel out of pocket, assuming all the financial risk themselves and hoping the grants come through? Or do they halt their projects, losing valuable momentum and perhaps leaving important stakeholders unpaid for their work? Still, the backstop grants are a one-time offering—not a sustainable source of funding for an imperiled field. 'I really view them as trying to take a little bit of the sharp edges off of the sudden loss of funding, as opposed to anything that could sustain the field long-term,' Meier explains. The effects of the Trump administration's cuts to mathematics research—unlike research on, say, Alzheimer's disease, vaccines or climate change —may not be the most immediately concerning to human health and safety. But experts like Meier say that ignoring the role mathematics plays in that development is shortsighted. As a spokesperson of the NSF itself put it in response to an inquiry about the organization's changing priorities (and as the agency has said on its website), 'Mathematical sciences are crucial to everyday society and play an essential role in the innovation engine that drives the U.S. economy, strengthens national security and enhances quality of life.' And the search for the answers to math's biggest mysteries also seeds development in physics, earth science, biology, technology, and more. Any progress we make on these questions in the future, Meier says, is 'based entirely [on what] we are doing in research mathematics right now.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
UVM is on a roll as National Science Foundation grants $5.5M: What it will be used for
The University of Vermont landed more than $5.5 million from the National Science Foundation to research next-generation artificial intelligence computing, human tissue mechanics, atmospheric science, underground robots and renewable energy systems. The largest grant of $2.1 million is for a new supercomputer for artificial intelligence research at UVM's Vermont Advanced Computing Center. The new computing cluster, named IceCore, is 100 times faster than existing UVM systems. Chris Danforth of UVM's College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences is leading the effort of about 1,000 UVM researchers and collaborators from across Vermont and New England to study infectious diseases, computational social science and the behavior of large language models like ChatGPT using the new supercomputer. "We are grateful for the National Science Foundation's recognition of our talented early career researchers," UVM President Marlene Tromp said in a news release. "These funds will offer a vital investment in UVM's research enterprise." Underground robots, a new supercomputer, climate research and more The $5.5 million total includes: $2.1 million to a team led by Chris Danforth of the Vermont Advanced Computing Center and Vermont Complex Systems Institute for the creation of IceCore, a new AI supercomputer cluster. $695,000 to Guiseppe Petrucci of the Department of Chemistry to study humidity and particle formation in Earth's atmosphere, with implications for improved understanding of climate. $624,000 CAREER award to Niccolo Fiorentino of the Department of Mechanical Engineering to study the structure and function of cartilage for application to osteoarthritis research. $571,000 CAREER award to Haicen Yue of the Department of Physics to study tissue mechanics, with implications for regenerative medicine. $500,000 CAREER award to Samuel Chevalier, as part of an interdisciplinary team, to study machine learning to improve power grids. $396,000 CAREER award to David Punihaole of the Department of Chemistry, to study the behaviors of proteins within cells. $200,000 Engineering Research Initiation grant to Laura Treers of the Department of Mechanical Engineering to study robots that can operate underground to benefit disaster aid and agriculture. $200,000 Engineering Research Initiation grant to Kathryn Hinkelman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, to study aspects of renewable energy systems. What to know about UVM grants for research National Science Foundation CAREER and Engineering Research Initiation grants are awarded to researchers who are early in their careers and are undertaking new projects. The four CAREER awards and two Engineering Research Initiation grants in 2025 are a record for UVM. Earlier this year, UVM was recognized as being among the top tier of universities categorized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as R1 − a recognition of an extremely robust research enterprise, a designation earned by less than 3% of U.S. higher education institutions. UVM attracted a record $266 million in research funding in the 2024 fiscal year, supporting an array of research that improves the lives of people and the planet. Contact Dan D'Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@ Follow him on X @DanDambrosioVT. This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: University of Vermont gets $5.5 million for science and AI research Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
5 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
A look at the collision that created the biggest black hole merger yet
It's nearly 10 billion light-years away, and you won't see it in the night sky, but the explosive collision of two massive black holes detected in 2023 has created a third one, with 225 times the mass of our sun, the largest black hole merger ever charted. The stellar event has astrophysicists rewriting record books and rethinking theories on how objects form in space. The collision is noteworthy because the two black holes were larger than those in previous collisions. One was about 140 times the mass of our sun, the other about 100 times the mass. (Some mass was converted to energy in the collision.) How was the collision of two black holes detected? The two black holes were spinning at about 400,000 times faster than the Earth's rotation when they collided, billions of years ago. The collision created gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime. They were detected on Nov. 23, 2023, by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory devices on Earth. LIGO designated the gravitational wave signal as GW231123. And while this is the largest black hole merger we've seen, larger black holes exist. The M87 black hole has an estimated mass of 6.5 billion suns. The TON 618 black hole has 40 billion solar masses. What are black holes and why are they important? Black holes 'aren't really holes,' NASA says. 'They're huge concentrations of matter packed into very tiny spaces.' 'A black hole is so dense that gravity just beneath its surface, the event horizon, is strong enough that nothing – not even light – can escape. The event horizon isn't a surface like Earth's or even the Sun's. It's a boundary that contains all the matter that makes up the black hole.' It's likely there are "millions of black holes in the Milky Way alone," according to the National Science Foundation. They orbit "like the stars, but we cannot see them." For the most part, "black holes are created when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives," says the University of Chicago. Studying them has "yielded enormous insights about the nature of the universe." The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration has identified 69 gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole mergers from 2015 to 2020. The collaboration announced the GW231123 discovery at the GR-Amaldi gravitational-waves conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom, on July 14. The LIGO program is funded by the National Science Foundation, which faces a proposed $5.2 billion budget cut from the Trump administration. One of the two LIGO observatories could be closed if the cuts are made. SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; NASA; California Institute of Technology; LIGO CalTech; Nature;
