Saturn's moon Titan could harbor life, but only a tiny amount, study finds
Despite its uniquely rich inventory of organic molecules, the moon may be able to support only a minuscule amount of biomass, a bioenergetic modeling study suggests.
image:
This artist's concept of a lake at the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan illustrates raised rims and rampartlike features as seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
view moreCredit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a strange, alien world. Covered in rivers and lakes of liquid methane, icy boulders and dunes of soot-like "sand," its topography has long fascinated scientists and invited speculation on whether lifeforms might lurk beneath the moon's thick, hazy atmosphere.
An international team of researchers co-led by Antonin Affholder at the U of A Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Peter Higgins at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary sciences set out to develop a realistic scenario of what life on Titan might look like if it does exist, where it is most likely to occur and how much of it might be present.
"In our study, we focus on what makes Titan unique when compared to other icy moons: its plentiful organic content," said Affholder, who is a postdoctoral research associate.
Using bioenergetic modeling, the team found that Titan's subsurface ocean, estimated to be as deep as about 300 miles, may support lifeforms that consume organic material. Published in The Planetary Science Journal, their study concludes that while Titan could possibly harbor simple, microscopic life, it likely could support only a few pounds of biomass overall.
Often described as "Earthlike on the surface, ocean world on the inside," Titan is the target for future exploration via NASA's Dragonfly mission. While much has been speculated about possible scenarios that could give rise to living organisms on Titan based on the moon's abundant organic chemistry, previous estimates have suffered from what Affholder considers an overly simplistic approach.
"There has been this sense that because Titan has such abundant organics, there is no shortage of food sources that could sustain life," Affholder said. "We point out that not all of these organic molecules may constitute food sources, the ocean is really big, and there's limited exchange between the ocean and the surface, where all those organics are, so we argue for a more nuanced approach."
At the core of the research lies a "back-to-basics" approach that attempted to come up with a plausible scenario for life on Titan that assumed one of the simplest and most remarkable of all biological metabolic processes: fermentation. Familiar to Earthlings for its use in sourdough breadmaking, beer brewing and – less desirably – its role in spoiling forgotten leftovers, fermentation only requires organic molecules, but no "oxidant" such as oxygen, a crucial requirement for other metabolic processes, such as respiration.
"Fermentation probably evolved early in the history of Earth's life, and does not require us to open any door into unknown or speculative mechanisms that may or may not have happened on Titan," Affholder said, adding that life on Earth could have first emerged as feeding on organic molecules left over from Earth's formation.
"We asked, could similar microbes exist on Titan?" Affholder said. "If so, what potential does Titan's subsurface ocean have for a biosphere feeding off of the seemingly vast inventory of abiotic organic molecules synthesized in Titan's atmosphere, accumulating at its surface and present in the core?"
The researchers specifically focused on one organic molecule, glycine, the simplest of all known amino acids.
"We know that glycine was relatively abundant in any sort of primordial matter in the solar system," Affholder said. "When you look at asteroids, comets, the clouds of particles and gas from which stars and planets like our solar system form, we find glycine or its precursors in pretty much all those places."
However, computer simulations revealed that only a small fraction of Titan's organic material may be suitable for microbial consumption. Glycine-consuming microbes in Titan's ocean would depend on a steady supply of the amino acid from the surface, through the thick icy shell. Previous work by the same team had shown that meteorites impacting the ice could leave behind "melt pools" of liquid water, which then sink through the ice and deliver surface materials to the ocean.
"Our new study shows that this supply may only be sufficient to sustain a very small population of microbes weighing a total of only a few kilograms at most – equivalent to the mass of a small dog," Affholder said. "Such a tiny biosphere would average less than one cell per liter of water over Titan's entire vast ocean."
For a future mission to Titan, the odds of finding life – if it is indeed there – could be like looking for a needle in a haystack, unless Titan's potential for life is to be found elsewhere than in its surface organic content, the team suggests.
"We conclude that Titan's uniquely rich organic inventory may not in fact be available to play the role in the moon's habitability to the extent one might intuitively think," Affholder said.
The International Space Science Institute, or ISSI in Bern, Switzerland, funded the research.
This composite image shows an infrared view of Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, acquired during a high-altitude fly-by, 6,200 miles above the moon, on Nov. 13, 2015. The view features the parallel, dark, dune-filled regions named Fensal (to the north) and Aztlan (to the south).
Credit
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
Part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, the Dragonfly mission is now scheduled to launch in 2028 and arrive on Saturn's moon Titan in 2034.
Credit
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
Journal
The Planetary Science Journal
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The Viability of Glycine Fermentation in Titan's Subsurface Ocean
Article Publication Date
7-Apr-2025
Catching a runaway star ejected from a globular cluster by an intermediate-mass black hole
Science China Press
image:
Comparison of traditional velocity dispersion and pulsar timing methods (left) versus the HiVel ejection from globular clusters method (right) in the search for IMBHs.
view moreCredit: ©Science China Press
Recently, Associate Professor Yang Huang from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with multiple research institutions, proposed that searching for high-velocity stars ejected from globular clusters due to the gravitational slingshot effect (Hills mechanism) could provide compelling evidence for the long-sought intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). By conducting detailed orbital backtracking of nearly a thousand high-velocity stars identified in Gaia and LAMOST data, along with over a hundred globular clusters in the Milky Way, the research team discovered that the high-velocity star J0731+3717 was ejected from the globular cluster M15 approximately 20 million years ago at an extreme velocity of nearly 550 km/s, with a confidence level of 5.4σ. This exceptionally high ejection speed is most likely caused by the Hills mechanism, suggesting the possible presence of an intermediate-mass black hole at the center of M15. This study has been published as the cover article in the February 2025 issue of National Science Review (NSR), titled "A high-velocity star recently ejected by an intermediate-mass black hole in M15."
Stellar-mass black holes—formed from the collapse of massive stars, such as Cygnus X-1 (which famously led Hawking to concede a bet)— and supermassive black holes—residing at the centers of large galaxies, like Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way—are well-established.
However, black holes with masses in between, known as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), are often considered to be a gap and a crucial missing link in the evolution from seed black holes into supermassive ones. To date, only a few controversial candidates have been found, leaving their existence an open question in astrophysics.
Globular clusters are considered ideal hiding places for IMBHs due to their extremely high stellar densities. Within these dense environments, IMBHs could form through two primary mechanisms: (1) Rapid formation, in which repeated stellar mergers produce a (super)massive star that eventually collapses into a black hole, and (2) Slow formation, where successive mergers of stellar-mass black holes over time gradually build up to an IMBH.
As early as the early 2000s, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to observe M15 with its ultra-high spatial resolution Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and derived its line-of-sight velocity dispersion curve. Using N-body numerical simulations, researchers suggested that M15 might host an IMBH with a mass between 1,700 and 3,200 solar masses. However, this conclusion faced skepticism. The HST velocity dispersion curve was measured at a projected radius of 0.5 arcseconds from the cluster center (about 5,000 AU at the distance of M15), a region where thousands of compact stars might exist in addition to a black hole. Follow-up studies using pulsar timing also hinted at the presence of IMBHs in globular clusters, but since these pulsars were located even farther from the cluster centers, they could not rule out the possibility of a dense cluster of stellar remnants.
Thus, finding an effective method to detect IMBHs as close as possible to the centers of globular clusters has become the final missing piece of evidence (see Figure 1, which illustrates the measurement principles).
“To overcome this challenge, we propose a systematic search for hypervelocity/high-velocity stars accelerated by the gravitational slingshot effect (Hills mechanism), where a cluster hosting an IMBH can disrupt a tight binary system orbiting nearby, concentrating the black hole's mass into a much smaller region,” says Jifeng Liu, Director of National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of the study.
"By tracing nearly a thousand high-velocity stars (with total velocities exceeding 400 km/s) and over a hundred globular clusters using data from Gaia, LAMOST, SDSS, and other spectroscopic surveys, we have discovered that J0731+3717 was ejected from M15—marking the first time a high-velocity star originating from a globular cluster has been identified—at nearly 550 km/s approximately 20 million years ago," says Yang Huang, researcher at School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and first-author of the study.
Remarkably, J0731+3717 shares striking similarities with M15 in both chemical composition and age.
To eject a star at such an extreme velocity from a globular cluster, a tight binary system must have passed within one astronomical unit (AU) of an IMBH with a mass of several thousand solar masses.
“The strong tidal forces of the IMBH would have torn the binary apart—capturing one star while flinging the other away at high speed,” explains Xiaobo Dong, researcher at Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of the study.
This unique discovery confines a few thousand solar masses within just a few AU, effectively ruling out the possibility that the mass is composed of thousands of neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes. The only plausible explanation is a single black hole, thereby confirming the existence of an IMBH in M15. By identifying the first-ever high-velocity star ejected by an IMBH in a globular cluster, this study completes the final missing link in the evidence chain for IMBHs.
“With the continuous accumulation of data from Gaia and large-scale spectroscopic surveys such as LAMOST, we expect to discover several more stars like J0731+3717 in the near future, which will greatly advance our understanding of the elusive IMBHs,” says Huawei Zhang, Director of Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University and lead author of the study.
Associate Professor Yang Huang from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences is the co-first author and corresponding author of the paper. Dr. Qingzheng Li (a graduate of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences) is also a co-first author. Researcher Jifeng Liu from the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Researcher Xiaobo Dong from Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Huawei Zhang from Peking University are co-corresponding authors.
Artist's illustration of an IMBH ejecting a high-velocity star from a globular cluster.
Credit
Jingchuan Yu, Yang Huang and Xiaoling Yu.
In the search for life on exoplanets, finding nothing is something too
Exoplanets and habitability
image:
The first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
view moreWhat if humanity's search for life on other planets returns no hits? A team of researchers led by Dr. Daniel Angerhausen, a Physicist in Professor Sascha Quanz's Exoplanets and Habitability Group at ETH Zurich and a SETI Institute affiliate, tackled this question by considering what could be learned about life in the universe if future surveys detect no signs of life on other planets. The study, which has just been published in The Astronomical Journal and was carried out within the framework of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research, PlanetS, relies on a Bayesian statistical analysis to establish the minimum number of exoplanets that should be observed to obtain meaningful answers about the frequency of potentially inhabited worlds.
Accounting for uncertainty
The study concludes that if scientists were to examine 40 to 80 exoplanets and find a "perfect" no-detection outcome, they could confidently conclude that fewer than 10 to 20 percent of similar planets harbour life. In the Milky Way, this 10 percent would correspond to about 10 billion potentially inhabited planets. This type of finding would enable researchers to put a meaningful upper limit on the prevalence of life in the universe, an estimate that has, so far, remained out of reach.
There is, however, a relevant catch in that ‘perfect’ null result: Every observation comes with a certain level of uncertainty, so it's important to understand how this affects the robustness of the conclusions that may be drawn from the data. Uncertainties in individual exoplanet observations take different forms: Interpretation uncertainty is linked to false negatives, which may correspond to missing a biosignature and mislabeling a world as uninhabited, whereas so-called sample uncertainty introduces biases in the observed samples. For example, if unrepresentative planets are included even though they fail to have certain agreed-upon requirements for the presence of life.
Asking the right questions
"It's not just about how many planets we observe – it's about asking the right questions and how confident we can be in seeing or not seeing what we're searching for," says Angerhausen. "If we're not careful and are overconfident in our abilities to identify life, even a large survey could lead to misleading results."
Such considerations are highly relevant to upcoming missions such as the international Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) mission led by ETH Zurich. The goal of LIFE is to probe dozens of exoplanets similar in mass, radius, and temperature to Earth by studying their atmospheres for signs of water, oxygen, and even more complex biosignatures. According to Angerhausen and collaborators, the good news is that the planned number of observations will be large enough to draw significant conclusions about the prevalence of life in Earth's galactic neighbourhood.
Still, the study stresses that even advanced instruments require careful accounting and quantification of uncertainties and biases to ensure that outcomes are statistically meaningful. To address sample uncertainty, for instance, the authors point out that specific and measurable questions such as, "Which fraction of rocky planets in a solar system's habitable zone show clear signs of water vapor, oxygen, and methane?" are preferable to the far more ambiguous, "How many planets have life?"
The influence of previous knowledge
Angerhausen and colleagues also studied how assumed previous knowledge – called a prior in Bayesian statistics – about given observation variables will affect the results of future surveys. For this purpose, they compared the outcomes of the Bayesian framework with those given by a different method, known as the Frequentist approach, which does not feature priors. For the kind of sample size targeted by missions like LIFE, the influence of chosen priors on the results of the Bayesian analysis is found to be limited and, in this scenario, the two frameworks yield comparable results.
"In applied science, Bayesian and Frequentist statistics are sometimes interpreted as two competing schools of thought. As a statistician, I like to treat them as alternative and complementary ways to understand the world and interpret probabilities," says co-author Emily Garvin, who's currently a PhD student in Quanz' group. Garvin focussed on the Frequentist analysis that helped to corroborate the team's results and to verify their approach and assumptions. "Slight variations in a survey's scientific goals may require different statistical methods to provide a reliable and precise answer," notes Garvin. "We wanted to show how distinct approaches provide a complementary understanding of the same dataset, and in this way present a roadmap for adopting different frameworks."
Finding signs of life could change everything
This work shows why it's so important to formulate the right research questions, to choose the appropriate methodology and to implement careful sampling designs for a reliable statistical interpretation of a study's outcome. "A single positive detection would change everything," says Angerhausen, "but even if we don't find life, we'll be able to quantify how rare – or common – planets with detectable biosignatures really might be."
Journal
The Astronomical Journal
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
What if We Find Nothing? Bayesian Analysis of the Statistical Information of Null Results in Future Exoplanet Habitability and Biosignature Surveys
Article Publication Date
7-Apr-2025
What if we find nothing in our search for life beyond Earth?
“Even if we don’t find life, we’ll finally be able to say how rare— or how common—it really might be”
image:
Illustration of a hypothetical planet covered in water.
view moreCredit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
April 7, 2025, Mountain View, CA --
What if we spend decades building advanced telescopes to search for life on other planets and come up emptyhanded? A recent study led by ETH Zurich researchers including corresponding author and SETI Institute affiliate, Dr. Daniel Angerhausen, tackled this question, exploring what we can learn about life in the universe—even if we don’t detect signs of life or habitability. Using advanced statistical modeling, the research team sought to explore how many exoplanets scientists should observe and understand before declaring that life beyond Earth is either common or rare.
“Even a single positive detection would change everything—but until then, we need to make sure we’re learning as much as possible from what we don’t find,” said Angerhausen.
The Challenge of Null Results
In science, sometimes, even not finding something can yield important insights. When scientists search for life on exoplanets, they often focus on specific features, such as signs of water or gases like oxygen and methane, that might indicate biological activity. But what happens if scientists don’t find any of these features? Can we still learn something meaningful about how common life might be in the universe?
This study shows that if scientists examine 40–80 planets and find no signs of life, they can confidently conclude that fewer than 10–20% of similar planets harbor life. However, this depends heavily on how certain we are about each observation. Such a finding would enable scientists to put a meaningful upper limit on the prevalence of life in the universe, which hasn’t been possible to date. Further, if even only 10% of planets in the Milky Way alone have some form of life, that could still be 10 billion planets or more.
“This kind of result would be a turning point,” said lead author Angerhausen. “Even if we don’t find life, we’ll finally be able to quantify how rare - or common - planets with detectable biosignatures really might be.”
Implications for Future Missions
The findings have direct implications for upcoming missions like NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) and the European-led Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE). These missions will study dozens of Earth-like planets by studying the planets’ atmospheres for signs of water, oxygen, and even more complex biosignatures. According to this study, the number of planets observed will be large enough to draw significant conclusions about the prevalence of habitability and life in our galactic neighborhood. However, the study also points out that even with advanced instruments, these surveys will need to carefully account for uncertainties and biases and derive frameworks to quantify them to ensure their results are statistically meaningful.
Accounting for Uncertainty
One key insight from the study is that uncertainties in individual observations—such as false negatives (when we miss a biosignature and mislabel it a dead planet)—can significantly affect the conclusions. For example, if there’s a chance that a detection instrument might miss a biosignature, this uncertainty limits how much we can trust any conclusion based on null results. Similarly, if many planets in a survey turn out to be unsuitable for life but were mistakenly included, this skews the findings.
“It’s not just about how many planets we observe—it’s about how confident we can be in seeing or not seeing what we are searching for,” said Angerhausen. “If we’re not careful and are overconfident in our abilities to identify life, even a large survey could lead to misleading results.”
Asking Better Questions
The study emphasizes that framing the right questions is crucial for meaningful results. Instead of broadly asking “How many planets have life?”—a question fraught with ambiguity—it might be better to ask more specific and measurable questions like “Which fraction of rocky planets in the conservative habitable zone show clear signs of water vapor, methane and oxygen?” This approach helps researchers design surveys that confidently detect or rule out specific features.
Why It Matters
Even if future surveys don’t find evidence of extraterrestrial life, they will still provide valuable insights into how rare or common habitable conditions are in the universe. By carefully considering uncertainties and asking precise questions, scientists can turn null results into powerful tools for understanding our place in the cosmos.
This work serves as a reminder that science isn’t just about finding answers—it’s also about asking the right questions and embracing uncertainty as part of the journey.
“What if We Find Nothing? Bayesian Analysis of the Statistical Information of Null Results in Future Exoplanet Habitability and Biosignature Surveys “ by Angerhausen et al is published in The Astronomical Journal: DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/adb96d.
Please click here for the ETH Zurich press release: https://www.phys.ethz.ch/news-and-events/d-phys-news/2025/04/in-the-search-for-life-on-exoplanets-finding-nothing-issomething-too.html
About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world. Our research encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages data analytics, machine learning, and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia, and government agencies, including NASA and the National Science Foundation.
About ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland)
Freedom, responsibility, and entrepreneurial spirit: ETH Zurich stands on a bedrock of true Swiss values. This university for science and technology dates back to the year 1855, when the founders of modern-day Switzerland created it as a center of innovation and knowledge. Consistently ranked as the top-ranked university in continental Europe, ETH Zurich currently ranks 7th in the world. * Members of the Exoplanets and Habitability Group at ETH Zurich participate in several Swiss and international collaborations focused on large observational surveys, building new instrumentation, and interdisciplinary research projects and discussions surrounding particle physics and astrophysics.
*According to the most recent QS World University Rankings
Comparison of the derived fraction of Earth-like planets with detectable biosignatures as a function of the number of observed planets for two mission concepts: the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO, left panel) and the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE, right panel). The solid black curve indicates the best-fit observed fraction assuming all detections are negative, while the black arrows represent the 99.9% confidence/belief upper limit we would be able to derive. Vertical lines and shaded regions highlight predictions of the yields for these future concepts from recent studies: Morgan et al. 2022 for H2O and O2 searches with HWO (blue and green, left), and Kammerer et al. 2023 for LIFE biosignature searches (orange and yellow, right). If for example HWO cannot find water on any of 20 planets we could be 99.9% sure that the fraction of planets with water is less than 0.25, similarly if LIFE cannot detect life on any of the 18 planets in its average sample, we can be 99.9% sure that the fraction of planets with life is smaller than 0.3.
Credit
Angerhausen et al.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) on Friday invited scientists, researchers, and students to contribute to the country’s first-ever human spaceflight mission.
As Pakistan’s first astronaut prepared to undertake a historic journey to the Chinese Space Station (CSS), the national space agency called for proposals for innovative experiments to be conducted in the extreme thermal, complete vacuum, and microgravity environment of the CSS to maximise the scientific impact of this mission.
Suparco said that the CSS orbited the Earth in an elliptical orbit inclined at 41.5 degrees with respect to the equator, at an altitude of approximately 380 km. It completed an orbit around the Earth every 92 minutes, traveling at an orbital velocity of around 7.7 km/sec.
This was an exciting opportunity for the Pakistani public to play an active role in advancing space science and technology, the space agency said.
Selected experiments will leverage the CSS’s state-of-the-art research facilities, including specialised experiment racks for space life sciences, biotechnology, fundamental physics, fluid dynamics, material science, and astrophysics. Suparco particularly encouraged proposals in the domains of agriculture and medical sciences, where microgravity could enable groundbreaking insights.
Proposed experiments should be novel, cost-effective, lightweight, and feasible within a week in microgravity. Submissions must align with CSS research priorities, be unique, and support sustainable development goals.
Pakistan’s astronaut was expected to undertake the CSS spaceflight mission tentatively by the end of 2026, or as per upcoming CSS mission schedules, following the successful completion of astronaut training.
In a statement, the space agency said this initiative represented a great opportunity for the scientific and industrial community, as experimental findings may lead to publications in high-impact scientific journals, filing of patents for new discoveries, and the development of commercial products for space applications, ultimately contributing to socio-economic development.
The last date to submit experiments is April 30, 2025. More details on available facilities, research categories, and the submission process can be found at:https://sead.pk/Announcement/Detail/5094
Suparco said that this was a significant chance for Pakistan’s scientific community and emerging scientists and engineers to contribute to the nation’s space journey and make a lasting impact on the future of space exploration.
Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2025
China unveils new radio telescope in Antarctica
WUHAN -- China has unveiled the "Three Gorges Antarctic Eye," a 3.2-meter aperture\ radio/millimeter-wave telescope, at a scientific research station in Antarctica.
Officially launched at the country's Zhongshan Station in Antarctica on April 3, the telescope, co-developed by China Three Gorges University (CTGU) and Shanghai Normal University (SHNU), further cemented China's advancements in Antarctic astronomy.
The "Three Gorges Antarctic Eye" has officially begun scientific observations of the Milky Way's neutral hydrogen and ammonia molecular spectral lines, providing vital data to help unravel the dynamics of interstellar gas and the processes of star formation, CTGU told Xinhua on Monday.
"This telescope has broken through key technical bottlenecks in Antarctic observatory construction, laying the foundation for future submillimeter-wave telescopes in Antarctica," said Zhang Yi, an associate professor at SHNU and a member of China's Antarctic expedition team currently working in the continent.
He added that the device will expand observations across radio to low-frequency millimeter-wave bands, driving technological advancements for next-generation Antarctic astronomy tools.
Zeng Xiangyun, an associate professor at CTGU, noted that Antarctica is the coldest continent on Earth, and the extreme cold and strong winds pose significant challenges for the development and installation of radio telescopes.
Since 2023, CTGU has actively collaborated with SHNU to tackle the challenges of conducting astronomy in extreme environments. Over the past two years, researchers have overcome key technical hurdles, such as adapting equipment to withstand Antarctica's harsh sub-zero temperatures and hurricane-force winds, Zeng said.
He Weijun, Party chief of CTGU, emphasized the significance of the project.
"The successful operation of the 'Three Gorges Antarctic Eye' showcases our university's achievements in polar research equipment," He said.
"It reflects the spirit of Chinese scientists scaling new heights in science and technology, as well as the vital role of universities in national innovation," he added.
Once the telescope enters stable operation, CTGU plans to send researchers to Zhongshan Station for on-site scientific expeditions.
China has been steadily expanding its astronomical capabilities in Antarctica, leveraging the continent's pristine atmospheric conditions for infrared and millimeter-wave observations.
The deployment of the "Three Gorges Antarctic Eye" builds on China's earlier initiatives, including the Antarctic Survey Telescopes AST3 and other astronomical instruments, further strengthening global efforts to study cosmic phenomena from one of Earth's most remote locations.
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