Scientists Earn Nobel Prize For Clean-Water-From-Air Invention

When Omar Yaghi picked up the phone at Frankfurt Airport to learn he had just won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he called the feeling "indescribable."

The recognition honors Yaghi — a Palestinian-American scientist at UC Berkeley — along with Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University and Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne for developing a breakthrough material that can pull clean water from the air.

The invention, known as metal-organic frameworks, represents a major leap forward in sustainable technology.

According to TRTWorld, porous, sponge-like structures are designed at the molecular level to capture and store gases, remove pollutants, and, most strikingly, extract water vapor from dry desert air.

The Nobel committee described MOFs as "molecular sponges" capable of holding immense volumes of material in tiny spaces.

For Yaghi, the discovery is deeply personal. Born to Palestinian refugee parents outside Amman, Jordan, he grew up in a home that often went days without running water. Those early experiences with scarcity inspired a lifelong mission to make clean water accessible to all — no matter where they live.

The potential of Yaghi's work is enormous. More than 4 billion people worldwide face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year, according to UNICEF.

By drawing moisture directly from the atmosphere, MOF-based water harvesters could provide a decentralized source of clean drinking water in regions where traditional wells and pipelines can't reach.

Beyond humanitarian relief, the environmental implications are transformative. Extracting water from air using solar energy could reduce dependence on groundwater and desalination, which are energy-intensive and often harmful to ecosystems. It could also stabilize weather patterns in drought-prone areas and support biodiversity by rejuvenating dry landscapes.

At a time when excessive water use and pollution threaten both people and the planet, Yaghi's invention represents a hopeful turn — one that aligns with broader efforts to conserve and responsibly manage Earth's most vital resource.

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Is The Universe In A Worse Condition Than Before?

Everyone seems to be in agreement that that as everything seems to be falling apart on Earth. However, it also appears that the rest of the universe is on a downward trajectory, too.

In new research that gauged several vital signs of the cosmos, a team of 175 astronomers found that our universe is already well past its prime, creaking its way into a dismal future in which fewer and fewer stars will be born, until the process eventually stops entirely. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel — just the inevitable revenge of darkness.

"The universe will just get colder and deader from now on," lamented Douglas Scott, a cosmologist at the University of British Columbia and a coauthor of the resulting yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, in a statement.

Scott and an army of astronomers analyzed a trove of optical data collected by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope and its Herschel satellite, which probed far-infrared wavelengths. Combined, the observatories’ measurements formed the largest sample of galaxies so far: 2.6 million, the researchers said.

"In the past, researchers wouldn’t have a large enough sample, or might be missing key populations of cold or hot galaxies," lead author and UBC researcher Ryley Hill explained in the statement. "Since Euclid is so comprehensive, you can really measure dust temperatures in a way you can’t argue with."

Dust temperatures are a key barometer of a galaxy’s health. Astronomers have observed that galaxies with higher star formation also tend to have hotter dust on average, as those higher temperatures indicate the presence of more massive stars. And stars are good, we like to think: they bring light into the cosmos and facilitate the formation of planets, on which puny lifeforms like us can form.

Even stellar deaths are fruitful; the epic supernovas that completely obliterate a star at the end of their life also seed the universe with heavy metals, not to mention the dust grains measured in the study.

"Dust grains are connected with star formation, and when stars burn up, they make a whole bunch of dust grains in the process," Scott said.

What the researchers found, grimly, is that the universe has gotten gradually colder. Ten billion years ago, the average dust grain temperature in the sampled galaxies was warmer by about 10 degrees Celsius, for a resulting temperature of -238 degrees Celsius.

That sounds cold — and it is — but a more useful metric here is Kelvin, in which zero Kelvin represents the absolute lowest temperature in the cosmos. In those days of yore when the universe was a little over three billion years old, the average dust temperature was 35 Kelvin, which is a fairly significant departure from zero.

Now that the gap has closed, it doesn’t bode well for stars. If things aren’t hot, then stars aren’t forming.

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Discovery Of Ancient Tools May Changes The Timeline of Civilization

In the history of studying the proliferation of humanity across the globe, there has long been one question that has stumped researchers: How did the islands of Southeast Asia (ISEA) become so well-inhabited so long ago?

It probably required technological seafaring advancements beyond what was considered likely during the Paleolithic era. But those experts may have a surprising new answer thanks to research that shows the ancient people of the Philippines and ISEA may have mastered seafaring well before anyone else.

The pivotal archaeological evidence comes in the form of stone tools excavated at sites in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste, showing strong evidence that as far back as 40,000 years ago, there was a technological sophistication from these ancient seafarers that rivals much later civilizations.

In a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from Ateneo de Manila University challenge the accepted belief that Paleolithic technical progress was centered in Africa and Europe.

Proving seafaring history represents a tricky endeavor, since organic wood and fiber that would have likely been used in constructing Paleolithic seacraft rarely survive in the archaeological record. These stone tools offer a new way in. The most recent discovery, according to the study, shows traces of plant processing that features the "extraction of fibers necessary for making ropes, nets, and bindings essential for boatbuilding and open-sea fishing."

Add in the discovery of fishing hooks, gorges, net weights, and the remains of deep-ocean fish such as tuna and sharks, and these archeological sites are a rich exploration of what is obviously a robust seafaring culture.

"The remains of large predatory pelagic fish at these sites indicate the capacity for advanced seafaring and knowledge of the seasonality and migration routes of those fish species," the study authors wrote. The collection of fish and tool remains "indicates the need for strong and well-crafted cordage for ropes and fishing lines to catch the marine fauna."

As the archaeological finds point toward a sophisticated method of deep-ocean fishing, the study authors believe the ancient seafarers constructed boats from organic materials and held them together with plant-based ropes. That same rope technology was then adapted for the actual fishing.

While widely accepted that the presence of fossils and artifacts across a range of islands provides evidence that early modern humans moved across the open sea, the study’s authors fight against the prevailing theory that the prehistoric migrations were passive sea drifters on bamboo rafts. Rather, they posit that the movement came from highly skilled navigators equipped with the knowledge and technology to travel to remote locations over deep waters.

"The identification of boat-building materials through direct or indirect evidence is vital in understanding movements across and within island environments," the authors wrote in the study.

"The presence of such advanced maritime technology in prehistoric ISEA highlights the ingenuity of early Philippine peoples and their neighbors," the authors said in a statement from the university, "whose boat-building knowledge likely made the region a center for technological innovations tens of thousands of years ago and laid the foundations for the maritime traditions that still thrive in the region today."

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Scientists Explained The Merger Of Two Black Holes

Scientists may have solve the mystery of an "impossible" merger between black holes that was detected via ripples in space-time called gravitational waves back in 2023.

The collision occurred around 7 billion light-years away and involved a smashup of two black holes that seemed to be forbidden, because of their enormous masses and the incredible rate at which they were spinning.

These black holes — with masses of 100 and 140 times that of the sun, and spinning at near the speed of light — shouldn't exist according to current theories of how "stellar mass black holes" form when massive stars collapse and explode as supernovae.

Researchers from the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York tackled this puzzle by performing simulations that recreated this system's evolution through the lives of the progenitor stars, all the way to their supernova deaths. This revealed a simple factor that hadn't been properly considered in the process before: magnetic fields.

"No one has considered these systems the way we did; previously, astronomers just took a shortcut and neglected the magnetic fields," team leader Ore Gottlieb, an astrophysicist at the CCA, said in a statement. "But once you consider magnetic fields, you can actually explain the origins of this unique event."

The gravitational waves from this collision of "forbidden" black holes were "heard" by the Earth-based detectors LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA on Nov. 23, 2023, as Space.com reported in July this year. Analysing this signal, designated GW231123, astronomers were immediately puzzled by the existence of such massive and rapidly spinning black holes.

That's because the stars that could die to leave behind stellar mass black holes as massive as these should end their lives with a specific type of supernova called a "pair-instability supernova" that's so violent that nothing remains, not even a black hole."As a result of these supernovae, we don't expect black holes to form between roughly 70 to 140 times the mass of the sun," Gottlieb explained. "So, it was puzzling to see black holes with masses inside this gap."

Black holes can exist within that mass gap as the result of a previous merger between black holes, but researchers ruled this out for the black holes involved in the collision that sent the signal GW231123 rippling through space. That's because mergers are disruptive to the spin of the created "daughter" black hole, but the two black holes involved in this merger were still spinning at near the speed of light, at the maximum speed at which black holes can rotate. Thus, researchers concluded that something other than prior mergers must account for the tremendous masses of the progenitor black holes.

Gottlieb and colleagues began investigating what this mechanism could be by first simulating a giant star with a mass of around 250 times that of the sun, which they tracked through its evolution right up until its supernova death. They found that, by this end stage, the star had burned through so much of its fuel that it had "slimmed down" to 150 solar masses. That left it small enough to leave behind a black hole after it went supernova.

The team then ran another, more complex simulation, factoring in magnetic fields that play a role in the aftermath of the supernova. This second model began with supernova remnants in the shape of a cloud of leftover stellar material intertwined with magnetic fields. At the heart of this wreckage sat a black hole.

Prior to this research, scientists had assumed that the entire mass of this remnant material would be consumed by the newborn black hole. As a consequence, the mass of that black hole would grow to match the mass of the massive progenitor star. However, the team's simulations showed something different happening.

What Gottlieb and colleagues observed instead was that, after the collapse of a nonrotating star to form a black hole, leftover material does indeed quickly fall into the black hole. But if the progenitor star is spinning rapidly, this stellar wreckage forms a rotating, flattened cloud around the newborn black hole that causes it to spin faster and faster as more and more material is fed to it.

In the presence of magnetic fields, the disk of debris experiences pressure strong enough to blast some of the leftover matter away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light.

This outflow of material reduces the mass of the disk feeding the black hole, and the stronger the magnetic fields involved, the more rapidly this platter of stellar material is carried away from the black hole. If the magnetic fields are powerful enough, half of the star's initial mass can be blasted away. The net result: a weak magnetic field results in less deprivation of matter and a final black hole that sits within the mass gap.

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Why Are There 5,200 Holes In Peru?

Hundreds of years ago, someone took great pains to carve thousands of holes into a long ridge-top strip in the Andean foothills.

Just who built the structure known as Monte Sierpe, and why, has baffled the world since 1933, when the National Geographic Society published Robert Shippee's aerial photographs of the strange site. Now, archaeologists think they know the answer.

An analysis of plant material found inside the holes suggests that it may have initially functioned as a market and later as an accounting system, says a team led by archaeologist Jacob Bongers of the University of Sydney in Australia.

"Why would ancient peoples make over 5,000 holes in the foothills of southern Peru? Were they gardens? Did they capture water? Did they have an agricultural function?" Bongers says.

"We don't know why they are here, but we have produced some promising new data that yield important clues and support novel theories about the site's use."

Humans don't tend to undertake major construction works unless there's a purpose, and Monte Sierpe is a monumental work of landscape engineering. The long strip of holes measures 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles) long and around seven or eight holes wide. It consists of some 5,200 holes excavated from the sediment, some deliberately reinforced at the sides using stones.

It would have required significant planning and time, which leads to the obvious questions: Who, and why? Proposed explanations have ranged from gardening to fog collection.

Bongers and his colleagues built on previous work that proposed the site was used as a system of taxation by the Inca. The archaeologists conducted extensive fieldwork, mapping the site with drones and testing sediment samples from inside the holes to determine which materials, if any, may have been placed there, and how long ago.

The Inca empire moved into the region around 1400 CE, so scientists have been operating under the assumption that Monte Sierpe is an Inca site. However, the Inca culture wasn't the first to live there; before their expansion into the region, the Chincha culture had lived there for hundreds of years.

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from one of the pits revealed it was deposited around 1320 to 1405 CE – a timing that suggests the material predates the Inca. If so, it suggests the Chincha likely built and used the site well before the Inca arrived. Pottery fragments found on the surface support the same timeframe.

The most significant revelation, the researchers say, is the contents of the holes. Their microbotanical analysis of sediments from 19 holes yielded starch and pollen grains of maize (corn), Amaranthaceae (the plant group that includes quinoa, spinach, beets, and chard), Pooidae (the grass subfamily that includes cereals such as oats, wheat, and barley), and Cucurbita (squash).

"This is very intriguing," Bongers says.

"Perhaps this was a pre-Inca marketplace, like a flea market. We know the pre-Hispanic population here was around 100,000 people. Perhaps mobile traders (seafaring merchants and llama caravans), specialists (farmers and fisherfolk), and others were coming together at the site to exchange local goods such as corn and cotton."

Yet aerial imagery of the site revealed a pattern that is not as apparent from the ground. The holes are arranged in blocks that, the researchers say, are remarkably similar to an Inca khipu, a knotted-string counting device recovered from the same Andean valley.

This suggests that the later Inca repurposed the holes for tax collection, using them as a tribute register to ensure the appropriate levies were collected.

"There are still many more questions – why is this monument only seen here and not all over the Andes? Was Monte Sierpe a sort of 'landscape khipu'? – but we are getting closer to understanding this mysterious site. It is very exciting," Bongers added.

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