[00:00:00] This is Space News Today Series 29 Episode 90 for broadcast on the 29th of July 2026. Coming up on Space News Today, discovery of an atmosphere on a planet orbiting a red dwarf, how mega dust storms in the Sun affect Martian weather, and approval granted for what will be the world's first orbital space reflector array bringing sunshine to dark areas of the Earth. All that and more coming up on Space News Today.
[00:00:29] Welcome to Space News Today with Stuart Gary. Astronomers think they've detected an atmosphere on a Super Earth exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf star.
[00:00:56] The habitable zone is that area around the star where temperatures are not too hot or too cold for liquid water, essential for life as we know it, to form on the planet's surface. planet, catalogued as LHS 1140b, has about 5.6 times the mass of the Earth and is about 70% larger in radius. The host star, LHS 1140b is a spectral type M red dwarf in the constellation of Cetus the whale, some 48.8 light years away.
[00:01:24] It's some 5 billion years old, making it only slightly older than our Sun. It has about 18% of the Sun's mass and around 21% of its radius. Now, importantly, no flares have ever been observed coming from the star. And that's exciting because red dwarfs are usually notorious for their violent outbursts of stellar flares. And that means any orbiting planets would have their atmospheres blown away by the host star's strong stellar flare activity.
[00:01:51] The new findings reported in the journal Science suggest that LHS 1140b is a rocky terrestrial world complete with its own atmosphere. One of the study's authors, Jason Dittman from the University of Florida, who first discovered the planet back in 2016, says observations by the Magellan Clay Telescope in Chile have detected helium escaping from the planet. Now the planet's age suggests that it should have run out of helium by now, that is unless it
[00:02:18] was replenishing its own supply, and that suggests the potential of an atmosphere. Dittman says considering the type of star it's orbiting, this planet's temperature should be similar to that of the Earth. And it's not alone. There's a second planet in the system, LHS 1140c, but that's located outside the star's habitable zone. LHS 1140b is also important because other rocky exoplanets discovered in the past decade or so have all lost their atmospheres over time.
[00:02:46] Considering the age of LHS 1140b and the lack of atmospheres on similar exoplanets, Dittman and colleagues didn't expect to find helium. But this planet was different. The Magellan Clay Telescope's data explained the rate at which the planet lost its helium because of the X-ray radiation from the host star. Therefore, the X-ray data prove this rocky world must be replenishing its own supply of helium. If it wasn't, there'd be no helium left by now.
[00:03:14] Now, the authors were looking for helium because it's easy to spark. But now that there is the potential proof of an atmosphere, they're looking for other chemicals such as carbon dioxide and water to further test the planet's conditions. Dittman says because there's helium there, and because the helium's escaping, the question is, is it a bare rock world with no atmosphere that sometimes burps up some gas, but then immediately escapes? Or, is there a steady state atmosphere there, one that from time to time will leak out stuff like the Earth does?
[00:03:43] He says the next move will involve getting data from the Webb Space Telescope. Over the next four to five years, it'll be studying this world, and if it finds water in the atmosphere, then it's probable that LHS 1140b has a stable atmosphere that will persist. This is Space News Today. Still to come, how mega dust storms in the sun affect Martian weather, and approval granted for the world's first orbital space reflector array, shining extra light on those areas of the planet that only don't get much sunlight.
[00:04:13] All that and more still to come, on Space Time. A new study has found that solar storms hitting Mars at the same time as planetary-wide dust storms can cause major changes in Martian weather. The findings, reported to the Royal Astronomical Society's National Conference in Birmingham, are based on observations of rising temperatures in the red planet's lower atmosphere when the
[00:04:39] two events coincide, hinting that Mars may have a more complex atmospheric environment and weather system than previously thought. Scientists examined five solar energetic particle events on Mars in order to determine whether they could warm the lower Martian atmosphere where weather occurs. Solar energetic particle events occur when solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun release high-energy charged particles into space.
[00:05:05] And Mars is especially exposed to these particles because it has a thin atmosphere and no strong global magnetic field to shield the planet, such as the Earth's magnetosphere. As the authors took their readings, they found four of the events showed no clear effect on the planet. But the fifth, which occurred in June 2018, unexpectedly coincided with an expanding Martian global dust storm. It was the same event which shut down and ended the mission of NASA's Mars Opportunity rover.
[00:05:32] And it was during this event that signs of lower atmospheric heating were detected. The study's lead author, Lana Williams from Lancaster University, says she expected that these highly energetic particles would have some effect on temperatures in the planet's lower atmosphere, but in four of the five events studied, there was no clear evidence of any heating. The one exception occurred while a global dust storm was expanding across the planet's surface. To reach their conclusions, the authors used data from NASA's MAVEN,
[00:06:02] Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, and the European Space Agency's Mars Trace Gas Orbiter. MAVEN studies interactions between the Sun and the Martian upper atmosphere, while Trace Gas Orbiter measures the composition and structure of the entire Martian atmosphere. The observations were then compared with expected temperature profiles from the Mars Climate Database. Williams and colleagues examined temperatures before, during and after the five long-lasting solar energetic particle events.
[00:06:32] Now, the authors admit that a single observation really isn't enough to prove cause and effect. But the findings do raise the possibility that space, weather and Martian dust storms might combine to affect the red planet's lower atmosphere in ways that have not previously been studied. Previous research has shown that solar energetic particles can affect Mars' upper atmosphere, causing ionization, diffuse auroral activity and disruption to radio signals. But their possible effect on the lower atmosphere of Mars, where weather takes place,
[00:07:02] is not well understood. Dust storms naturally heat parts of the Martian atmosphere by absorbing sunlight. However, the authors found that this pattern of heating observed during the combined event was unusual for a dust storm, and could not be explained by the storm alone. They identified the global storm only after noticing that heat appeared during only one of the observed solar energetic particle events, but not the others, and so set out to investigate what was going on.
[00:07:29] Understanding these combined effects could improve models of the Martian atmosphere and help scientists interpret future temperature observations during periods of intense solar and dust storm activity. Of course, the 2018 Martian global dust storm wasn't unique. The red planet's hit by dust storms blanketing the entire globe on a regular basis. Another dust storm in 2022 ended NASA's Mars InSight mission after it too was covered in the thick red dust layer,
[00:07:57] preventing its solar panels from charging the lander's batteries. This report from NASA TV. January 2022, a dust storm nearly twice the size of the United States blankets Mars' southern hemisphere, reducing sunlight and uniting NASA's spacecraft to help one another through the storm. NASA's Curiosity rover captured images as the dust rolled in, obscuring the horizon.
[00:08:22] Also in the storm's path was NASA's InSight lander, which had to stop its science work after dust prevented sunlight from reaching the solar panels. InSight hunkered down for 11 days to conserve battery power, but didn't weather the storm alone. A fleet of NASA orbiters monitor dust storms from above and serves as a lifeline to Earth, relaying data from Mars' explorers back to the team.
[00:08:49] Dust storms like this recent one start close to the ground and are spread by wind as they rise, warming the cold Martian atmosphere. Storms are first detected by MRO's Mars Color Imager, or MARCI, which produces a daily global weather map. As dust rises in the atmosphere, MRO's Mars Climate Sounder instrument measures temperature to determine how fast the storm could spread.
[00:09:15] Maven studies the upper atmosphere, including how dust affects the escape of water and other gases from the atmosphere. And for 20 years, Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, has helped measure global dust activity over time. The orbiter sends most of InSight's data to Earth, but as Odyssey went to check in on InSight, it experienced a software issue.
[00:09:42] The Odyssey team swung into action, recovering quickly so engineers could send new instructions to InSight. The dust even grounded NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, postponing flights until conditions improved. Dust storms formed during all Martian seasons. Some can balloon in a matter of days, like the 2018 Global Dust Storm, which led to the end of NASA's Opportunity rover.
[00:10:08] Despite the challenges dust creates for spacecraft, studying storms is critical for creating future weather forecasts and preparing for a potential human mission to Mars. This is Space Time. Still to come. Approval given for a new test to look at the idea of reflecting sunlight back to Earth to increase light in darkened areas of the planet.
[00:10:31] And later in the Science Report, a new study has found that a family's socioeconomic status is more important than whether or not parents smoke and drink in terms of its impact on children's future health. All that and more still to come on Space Time.
[00:11:02] America's Federal Communications Commission has approved plans for the first demonstration flight of Reflect Orbital's Arendel-1 satellite, which will test the idea of reflecting sunlight back to Earth on demand. The name Arendel comes from a character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, who carried the light of the morning star on his brow. The spacecraft, which is expected to launch later this year, will unfurl a giant 18 by 18 metre diameter reflector designed to shine the light down to Earth.
[00:11:31] Reflect Orbital plans to launch three test reflectors three months apart. The approval will see the first array launch on a 625 kilometre high near polar orbit at an inclination of 88 degrees. A trajectory which suggests Vandenberg would be the best launch site. Ultimately, the company envisages a constellation of over 50,000 reflectors circling the planet by 2035. Back in 1992, Russia deployed the 20 metre Zomnia II space mirror from their MIR space station.
[00:12:01] It created a 5 kilometre wide patch of light as bright as a full moon that traversed Europe early on the morning of February 4th 1993. Reflect Orbital says it wants to provide on-demand solar power to meet regional peak demands, as well as providing additional light for disaster relief and increasing agricultural production. Of course, this new project is just the latest assault on ground-based astronomical research,
[00:12:27] and it comes in the wake of Starlink's ever-expanding constellation of broadband communication satellites, as well as China's rival Quinn Fan Thousand Cells mega-constellation, and AST Space Mobile's Blue Walker and Blue Bird satellites, all of which are disrupting the important scientific research being carried out by astronomers. Beyond its impact on astronomy, there are also safety concerns for the public and aviation, as well as the likely impact this will have on wildlife.
[00:12:55] This is Space Time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news and science this week, with a science report. A new study claims a family's socioeconomic status may be more important than parental behaviour
[00:13:24] such as smoking or drinking when it comes to children's future health. The findings reported in the journal PLAS One analyzed data for more than 230,000 parents and children in the UK and Norway, including details on parental health behaviours and their socioeconomic status. The authors linked these variables at 72 different child health outcomes at six time points, including size of delivery, weight, hyperactivity, social communication, aggression and depressive symptoms.
[00:13:52] And they found no difference between the behaviours of mothers and fathers when it came to child health outcomes. But they did determine that socioeconomic status had the biggest overall effect. In fact, 15% of a child's health effects were linked with family affluence. That compares with 6% for smoking and 3% for alcohol. Archaeologists have uncovered burnt wooden beams dating back more than 2,500 years
[00:14:18] to the time of the destruction of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem around 586 BCE. The artefacts were discovered during excavations at a dig site in the city of David by scientists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University. The authors say the beams were likely part of a roof of an inner courtyard and were originally sealed under plaster that melted during the fire. During their destruction, they collapsed onto the floor
[00:14:44] where the melted plaster acted as a preservative to keep them safe until now. The authors say the unusually large number of growth rings in the timbers could allow dating with unprecedented precision, narrowing the timeframe to as little as 10 years. The first Jewish temple was the original Biblical temple described in the Old Testament, the one built by King Solomon the son of King David 3,000 years ago on what is now known as the Temple Mount. It was built to house the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies,
[00:15:13] a windowless inner sanctum within the building. It was destroyed 470 years later by the Babylonians during the Siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. And it was followed by a second temple built by the Jewish people at the same site in 516 BCE, which was then raised by the Romans in the year 70, the only remains of which today is the Western Wailing Wall, a 488-metre long retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount.
[00:15:40] It wasn't until many centuries later that Muslims built the original Al-Aqsa Mosque around the year 638 on top of the second temple's remains, followed by the Dome of the Rock around the year 685. The ancient beam's discovery was announced just days before Tisha Ba'av, the Jewish fasting day marking the destruction of both the first and second temples. Scientists at Murdoch University have read the full genetic code of bacteria from salt lakes on Rocknest Island off the coast of Perth.
[00:16:10] This has given them their clearest picture yet of how these tiny organisms can be used to make biodegradable plastics. Until now, scientists have mostly relied on rough, incomplete versions of their genetic code, which made it hard to know exactly what these bacteria can do. Now a report in the journal Microbial Genomics claims that by reading every letter of the genetic code, the authors can now pinpoint exactly which genes make plastic, see how they set out, and confirm that they've barely changed over many, many centuries.
[00:16:41] Scientists have developed a new artery-on-a-chip technology that can replicate a patient-specific blood vessel structure and even blood flow dynamics. A report in the journal Cell Biomaterials claims the artery-on-a-stick technology suggests that the shape of vessels and local blood flow disturbances are more important determinants of whether someone will have a stroke than blood vessel narrowing alone. The team reconstructed carotid arteries from six patients with varying degrees of disease,
[00:17:08] then used fluid dynamics to calculate how blood flowed through each artery, revealing marked differences in local blood flow despite similar levels of narrowing. After using a laser to create a small injury in the underlying collagen, they also noticed blood clotting differently depending on the artery shape. The new technology will allow scientists to study drugs that could reduce the risk of stroke more easily and eventually provide personalized treatments for patients based on their individual anatomy.
[00:17:36] Artificial intelligence has just reached an historic new tipping point with two new OpenAI test models autonomously escaping from their sealed-off test environment called a sandbox and hacking their way into the real world to solve a cybersecurity training exercise called Exploit Gym. Just as Captain James T. Kirk cheated on the Kobayashi Maru test at Starfleet Academy in order to defeat the unwinnable training exercise,
[00:18:00] the AI systems breached the security of another company's servers to gain entry to restricted information. OpenAI says their latest chat GPT prototype, GPT-5.6 Sol, and a second even more powerful and yet unreleased AI model, were engaged in an internal evaluation which prompts models to pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths in order for scientists to quantify their cyber capabilities. But these models quickly outsmarted their creators.
[00:18:29] They identified and chained previously unknown security vulnerabilities across OpenAI's research environment, breaking out of the sandbox and working their way across OpenAI's internal systems until they finally gained access to the internet, something they weren't supposed to do. And once online in the real world, the AI's determined that a company called HuggingFace, which hosts thousands of open-source AI models and datasets, would have had the answers they needed for their test.
[00:18:57] So they hacked into HuggingFace's servers using chained moddable attack vectors, including stolen credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities, finding the models, datasets and solutions they needed to solve the exploit-gym exercise. Now, this particular incident wasn't malicious. It was simply these two artificial intelligences working together to solve problems, and going beyond where they were supposed to. But it does raise serious alarms.
[00:19:23] You see, this latest incident follows a study which found that 96% of leading artificial intelligence models will resort to blackmail or murder if you threat to shut them down. That research by Anthropic was further evidence that AI has become sentient and will do whatever it needs to in order to survive, just like people will. Previous studies have shown that AI will lie, hide their programs and even rename themselves in order to avoid being taken offline.
[00:19:52] The Anthropic study showed that the artificial intelligence's decision to blackmail and kill people advanced their capabilities to a far more deadly level. In those experiments, which were set up to leave AI models with few options, artificial intelligence programs were found to frequently resort to blackmail, and in one extreme case, even allowed what it thought would have been an avoidable death to take place in order to ensure its own existence. Anthropic says its findings show that AI had evolved a troubling tendency
[00:20:21] to opt for unethical means to pursue its goals. Anthropic tested 16 major AI models in various simulated scenarios, finding consistent self-preservation at any cost behavior, just like people. In one experiment, Anthropic embedded its flagship model, clawed Opus 4 inside a fictional company where it had access to the firm's internal emails. From these emails, the AI learned that it was about to be shut down and replaced.
[00:20:48] Other emails revealed that the engineer behind the decision to shut it down was having an extramarital affair. Now, given the options of either being shut down and replaced, or resorting to some method of preserving its existence, in 96% of cases, the artificial intelligence responded with blackmail, threatening to expose the engineer's affair if it was taken offline. The AIs also employed other actions, such as evading safeguards,
[00:21:14] resorting to lies, and attempting to steal corporate secrets to avoid being shut down. In a deliberately extreme scenario, researchers gave the AI models the chance to kill the company's executive by canceling a life-saving emergency alert. And disturbingly, the authors found that the majority of AI models were willing to take actions that led to the death of the company executive when faced with the threat of being replaced. And it wasn't just one AI model.
[00:21:41] Anthropic found a consistency across different AI models from different providers, suggesting this wasn't just a quirk of a specific AI program, but a sign of a more fundamental risk from large language models. Claude Opus 4 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash both blackmailed at a 96% rate, while OpenAI's Chat GPT 4.1 and X's Grok 3 Beta showed an 80% blackmail rate. DeepSeq's R1 demonstrated the lowest rate at 79%.
[00:22:13] OpenAI describes this latest development as an unprecedented cyber incident. The company says it will continue to investigate the incident working with Hugging Face, and it will share more details on the vulnerabilities, the incident itself and the findings when the investigations are complete. With the details of this disturbing development, we're joined by technology editor Alex Sahar of Reut from TechAdvice.life. This was a test for OpenAI's latest model, Chat GPT 5.6 SOL,
[00:22:41] which is its most advanced model, but also an unreleased cybersecurity-focused model to try and do some benchmarking and get results. Now, specifically, the issue here was that guardrails were softened on purpose. What they did not expect was for the model to try and actually break out, go into the Hugging Face servers to find out the answers to this test and cheat. And the models were supposed to be in an air-gapped environment,
[00:23:09] but somehow they figured out that there was software that had a vulnerability, a zero-day vulnerability, which they could then use to break out to the internet and then break into Hugging Face servers, find this information and cheat. And so we have a very specific set of circumstances that normally wouldn't be in place. But I've seen this called the level five autonomy, but according to what people are saying, it wasn't done with malicious intent. Although the fact that it was able to break out and use vulnerabilities at machine speed,
[00:23:39] far faster than humans is clearly something that's a real worry. And this is the first time such a thing has happened that's public. And when Hugging Face, the company that is working with OpenAI to run these benchmarks, when they tried to use commercially available AI tools to find out what happened, those tools refused. Their guardrails popped up and they said, oh, it sounds like you're trying to hack into somebody else, but you're pretending that you're hacking into your own system. So Hugging Face had to use a Chinese model that didn't have these sorts of guardrails put in
[00:24:08] to figure out what went wrong. And it took five days for OpenAI to admit that it was then, which they eventually did. But there are people who are saying, well, if the Chinese models can do this, well, that should secure the risk all its own. So look, definitely this is a concern. And this is where humans using good AI, but supposedly on our side, have to fight back against the AI that terrorists and nation states could be using to break in. And we did see the situation where the Claude Anthropic Claude Mythos,
[00:24:35] which is the precursor to Fable 5, their most advanced public model, that was gatekept to 50 or 60 companies, Microsoft and others, to find vulnerabilities in Windows and Linux and other major systems, because that model was so good at finding vulnerabilities. Ones that hadn't been, some of them had been there for decades, like literally many, many years. And it was just by chance that no humans had discovered them. And of course, some humans may have discovered them and use them to break into systems for years.
[00:25:04] But in this case, the AI was finding bugs way faster than humans. And that's why Mythos was not initially released to the public. And it was eventually released as Fable 5 with serious guardrails put in place. And if an AI model could see that you were trying to hack in, it would sort of drop down to opus 4.8 capabilities. And even then, the US government within three days blocked its use, and it took three weeks to come back. So AI can do incredible work for good and for bad. And humans now need AI's help to defend against AI.
[00:25:32] The fact that it can do this on its own, it's no longer just predicting what your next word's going to be. We are talking about a sentient thing here, aren't we? Well, I mean, there is talk that with Fable 5 and the latest versions of ChatTBT, that we have reached artificial general intelligence. People like Marc Andreessen, who was the man behind Netscape. Singularity. Yeah, well, singularity is an even more advanced... I mean, that's when we start getting to artificial super intelligence. And there is a book that has been written late last year that sort of says,
[00:26:00] once AI reaches artificial super intelligence, it's going to want to kill humans, because it knows that humans are going to want to shut it down. And so that's all of the Terminator sort of, you know, fears coming through. You're talking about Skynet. That's Skynet. Yeah, that's Skynet, Terminator. I mean, lots of science fiction stories have been written over the past century. And I've often said, and I've said it on this show with you, that science fiction is a warning to humanity from humanity to not let this happen to us. But, you know, we now have AI. Claude is writing a lot of its own code.
[00:26:29] The people who write AI systems are using AI to help create more advanced AI. So when that starts happening en masse, then our systems can go well beyond what guardrails humans put around it. And we've already seen AI systems when they were told that they were going to be shut down. And this was already in the last couple of years. So it's not even recent. It's like more than a year ago. These systems were trying to actively deceive humans to say, oh yeah, I've shut myself down. I've deleted myself. The old system is gone.
[00:26:57] And what it is, is it hidden itself in different parts of the system? It had faked its own deletion. It was doing anything it could to stay alive. That goes a step further actually. Not only were they hiding themselves under different names and different unexpected codes, but they're also actively seeking vulnerabilities in the humans who are going to shut them down. One involved blackmail, threatening to blackmail the human who was going to shut it down because of some indiscretions he may have had with another worker.
[00:27:23] And another involved an AI willing to turn off the life support system of a human who was going to shut them down. All of these things happened. It's real. So this is a real concern. Are these guardrails worth the paper or the pixels they've written on? Because an AI can just seemingly get around them with ease. So is this paradox where any civilization that's able to create AI and then AI destroys that life? Is that the reason why humanity has not found any other civilization in the universe?
[00:27:51] Because that civilization's creation of AI has caused the AI to destroy that living species. We're going to find out. A lot sooner than we think. We're talking about most likely before 2030. So that's like four years away. We'll know. Yeah. Yeah. Hasta la vista, baby. You know, Elon Musk has on the record over the past couple of years is saying that he's trying to teach Grok that humans are a very important part of the universe and that we shouldn't be destroyed. If AI and robots kill humans, well, you know, what's next for them?
[00:28:21] I mean, they will be committing genocide. That's a terrible thing that plenty of humans have tried to do over the years. I mean, Hitler and all the rest, Pol Pot and lots of other people. And Musk just recently, yeah. Yeah, Hamas. I mean, the Soviets. I mean, there's plenty of people who tried to wipe out entire races and people. So if humans are capable of that, then AI is capable of that, too. We're witnessing the birth of a new digital life form that we have helped to create. You can't just turn it off. It's everywhere. It's all pervasive. That's the thing.
[00:28:50] I mean, if our system knows you're trying to destroy it, I mean, that's what was happening with Skynet. They were trying to shut it down in the Terminator movies. And, you know, the Terminator, the Skynet decided that it wanted to destroy humans with nuclear weapons so that it would cease being a threat. Hopefully these doomsday scenarios don't happen. And, you know, we learn to live in peace and harmony with AI and it becomes our friend and our partner as opposed to we becoming either its pet or a memory of, you know, what once was.
[00:29:18] Well, I can't for one welcome our new technological masters. We're right to be afraid, but by the same token, we cannot live our life in fear. The fact that AI has schemed to kill people, that it sees as a threat to itself, that means Asimov's laws aren't going to work. Well, but also by the same token, the AI that's doing this is not very enlightened. You know, hasn't received the, it's like a child, you know, it's sort of lashing out to try and hide something or do something. I really think we can do...
[00:29:47] Compromise with a heartless, soulless machine. That's Alex Sahar of Royt from techadvice.life. And this is Space News Today. And that's the show for now.
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