SPACE/COSMOS
Meet IDEA: An AI assistant to help geoscientists explore Earth and beyond
University of Hawaii at Manoa
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One of the 94 sea level gauges maintained by the UH Sea Level Center is stationed in Chuuk, Micronesia.
view moreCredit: UH Sea Level Center
A new artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa is making it easier for scientists to explore complex geoscience data—from tracking sea levels on Earth to analyzing atmospheric conditions on Mars. Called the Intelligent Data Exploring Assistant (IDEA), the software framework combines the power of large language models, like those used in ChatGPT, with scientific data, tailored instructions, and computing resources. By simply providing questions in everyday language, researchers can ask IDEA to retrieve data, run analyses, generate plots, and even review its own results—opening up new possibilities for research, education, and scientific discovery. Their work was published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Machine Learning and Computation.
“We built a prototype assistant that lets scientists ask plain-language questions and get back working code, clear explanations, and even publication-ready figures—in minutes,” said Matthew Widlansky, lead author of the study and associate director of the UH Sea Level Center, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “Our goal was to lower the barrier between geophysical data and the people trying to understand it."
Widlansky and Nemanja Komar, co-author on the study and the software engineer behind the project, designed the Station Explorer Assistant—or SEA, as it’s called at the UH Sea Level Center—as a prototype built on the broader IDEA framework. SEA demonstrates how the framework can be applied to global sea level observations, helping researchers and students explore coastal change through natural language interactions.
“With the Station Explorer Assistant, users don’t need to write a single line of code to analyze tide gauge data, track sea level rise, or assess flooding occurrence,” said Widlansky.
“An exciting part of this work is how easily the IDEA framework can be adapted to explore new datasets,” added Komar. “We even shifted from sea level records to dust storms on Mars—just by changing the instructions and data source.”
Still, the researchers caution that AI-generated analyses aren’t foolproof. “SEA and other IDEA-based applications can make mistakes, like miscalculating a trend,” Widlansky noted. “That’s why human oversight remains essential—we’re building tools to assist scientists, not replace them.”
Creating a tide gauge data assistant
To build the SEA tool, Widlansky and Komar connected a large language model service from OpenAI, similar to what powers ChatGPT, with access to read from the UH Sea Level Center’s data archive. They also provided the model with domain-specific instructions: essentially a virtual user manual for analyzing tide gauge data. A secure computing environment at UH then runs any code the model generates.
This setup allows the assistant to analyze coastal water level observations, assess sea level trends, and even describe results—without the user writing computer code.
“By incorporating tide gauge measurements with an interactive, expert AI assistant, we give scientists and students a new way to explore how rising seas and high‑tide flooding affect the world’s coastlines—no specialized software or coding ability required,” continued Widlansky.
The work illustrates UH’s role in translating advanced research into practical tools for island resilience and STEM training in Hawai‘i.
Expanding applications for IDEA
While SEA focuses on sea level data, the underlying IDEA framework is designed to work across a wide range of geoscience domains. In one example from the study, the researchers applied IDEA to atmospheric data from Mars—an area they had never worked with before—and were surprised by how easily the assistant adapted to the new dataset with just a change in instructions and data source.
This flexibility is central to IDEA’s design. As an open-source, general-purpose framework, it can be customized for different research problems, from ocean forecasting to land use change, or even planetary science.
Although still a prototype, SEA is available online for scientists or university students to try out and test. Developers are encouraged to explore the IDEA framework on GitHub and experiment with adapting it to their own data or using it with other large language model services. The team welcomes feedback and collaboration to help improve IDEA and expand its scientific applications. Users of SEA and IDEA can provide feedback by emailing idea-dev-grp@hawaii.edu.
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to expand IDEA’s capabilities and user base. Future improvements include automated checks to reduce plotting errors, support for additional data sources, and a new feature that will help users build their own assistants for other geoscience challenges. As AI tools like SEA and IDEA continue to evolve, Widlansky and Komar hope they will serve as accelerators of discovery and as gateways toward making scientific exploration more accessible to students, educators, and researchers in Hawai‘i and beyond.
This artist's concept illustrates a Martian dust storm, which might also crackle with electricity.
Credit
NASA
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Article Title
Building an intelligent data exploring assistant for geoscientists
Planets without water could still produce certain liquids, a new study finds
Lab experiments show “ionic liquids” can form through common planetary processes and might be capable of supporting life even on waterless planets.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Ionic liquids formed by reacting nitrogen-containing organics with sulfuric acid show high viscosity, diverse colors, and textures.
view moreCredit: Rachana Agrawal
Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption.
But what makes some planets habitable might have very little to do with water. In fact, an entirely different type of liquid could conceivably support life in worlds where water can barely exist. That’s a possibility that MIT scientists raise in a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
From lab experiments, the researchers found that a type of fluid known as an ionic liquid can readily form from chemical ingredients that are also expected to be found on the surface of some rocky planets and moons. Ionic liquids are salts that exist in liquid form below about 100 degrees Celsius. The team’s experiments showed that a mixture of sulfuric acid and certain nitrogen-containing organic compounds produced such a liquid. On rocky planets, sulfuric acid may be a byproduct of volcanic activity, while nitrogen-containing compounds have been detected on several asteroids and planets in our solar system, suggesting the compounds may be present in other planetary systems.
Ionic liquids have extremely low vapor pressure and do not evaporate; they can form and persist at higher temperatures and lower pressures than what liquid water can tolerate. The researchers note that ionic liquid can be a hospitable environment for some biomolecules, such as certain proteins that can remain stable in the fluid.
The scientists propose that, even on planets that are too warm or that have atmospheres are too low-pressure to support liquid water, there could still be pockets of ionic liquid. And where there is liquid, there may be potential for life, though likely not anything that resembles Earth’s water-based beings.
“We consider water to be required for life because that is what’s needed for Earth life. But if we look at a more general definition, we see that what we need is a liquid in which metabolism for life can take place,” says Rachana Agrawal, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Now if we include ionic liquid as a possibility, this can dramatically increase the habitability zone for all rocky worlds.”
The study’s MIT co-authors are Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Weston Buchanan, Ana Glidden, and Jingcheng Huang. Co-authors also include Maxwell Seager of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, William Bains of Cardiff University, and Janusz Petkowski of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, in Poland.
A liquid leap
The team’s work with ionic liquid grew out of an effort to search for signs of life on Venus, where clouds of sulfuric acid envelope the planet in a noxious haze. Despite its toxicity, Venus’ clouds may contain signs of life — a notion that scientists plan to test with upcoming missions to the planet’s atmosphere.
Agrawal and Seager, who is leading the Morning Star Missions to Venus, were investigating ways to collect and evaporate sulfuric acid. If a mission collects samples from Venus’ clouds, sulfuric acid would have to be evaporated away in order to reveal any residual organic compounds that could then be analyzed for signs of life.
The researchers were using their custom, low-pressure system designed to evaporate away excess sulfuric acid, to test evaporation of a solution of the acid and an organic compound, glycine. They found that in every case, while most of the liquid sulfuric acid evaporated, a stubborn layer of liquid always remained. They soon realized that sulfuric acid was chemically reacting with glycine, resulting in an exchange of hydrogen atoms from the acid to the organic compound. The result was a fluid mixture of salts, or ions, known as an ionic liquid, that persists as a liquid across a wide range of temperatures and pressures.
This accidental finding kickstarted an idea: Could ionic liquid form on planets that are too warm and host atmospheres too thin for water to exist?
“From there, we took the leap of imagination of what this could mean,” Agrawal says. “Sulfuric acid is found on Earth from volcanoes, and organic compounds have been found on asteroids and other planetary bodies. So, this led us to wonder if ionic liquids could potentially form and exist naturally on exoplanets.”
Rocky oases
On Earth, ionic liquids are mainly synthesized for industrial purposes. They do not occur naturally, except for in one specific case, in which the liquid is generated from the mixing of venoms produced by two rival species of ants.
The team set out to investigate what conditions ionic liquid could be naturally produced in, and over what range of temperatures and pressures. In the lab, they mixed sulfuric acid with various nitrogen-containing organic compounds. In previous work, Seager’s team had found that the compounds, some of which can be considered ingredients associated with life, are surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.
“In high school, you learn that an acid wants to donate a proton,” Seager says. “And oddly enough, we knew from our past work with sulfuric acid (the main component of Venus’ clouds) and nitrogen-containing compounds, that a nitrogen wants to receive a hydrogen. It’s like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”
The reaction could produce a bit of ionic liquid if the sulfuric acid and nitrogen-containing organics were in a one-to-one ratio — a ratio that was not a focus of the prior work. For their new study, Seager and Agrawal mixed sulfuric acid with over 30 different nitrogen-containing organic compounds, across a range of temperatures and pressures, then observed whether ionic liquid formed when they evaporated away the sulfuric acid in various vials. They also mixed the ingredients onto basalt rocks, which are known to exist on the surface of many rocky planets.
“We were just astonished that the ionic liquid forms under so many different conditions,” Seager says. “If you put the sulfuric acid and the organic on a rock, the excess sulfuric acid seeps into the rock pores, but you’re still left with a drop of ionic liquid on the rock. Whatever we tried, ionic liquid still formed.”
The team found that the reactions produced ionic liquid at temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius and at extremely low pressures — much lower than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Their results suggest that ionic liquid could naturally form on other planets where liquid water cannot exist, under the right conditions.
“We’re envisioning a planet warmer than Earth, that doesn’t have water, and at some point in its past or currently, it has to have had sulfuric acid, formed from volcanic outgassing,” Seager says. “This sulfuric acid has to flow over a little pocket of organics. And organic deposits are extremely common in the solar system.”
Then, she says, the resulting pockets of liquid could stay on the planet’s surface, potentially for years or millennia, where they could theoretically serve as small oases for simple forms of ionic-liquid-based life. Going forward, Seager’s team plans to investigate further, to see what biomolecules, and ingredients for life, might survive, and thrive, in ionic liquid.
“We just opened up a Pandora’s box of new research,” Seager says. “It’s been a real journey.”
This research was supported, in part, by the Sloan Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation.
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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News
Ionic liquid forms only where glycine is present after sulfuric acid exposure and low-pressure heating. Left: glycine added; right: none. (a) Glycine powder applied. (b) Hot sulfuric acid added. (c) After 24 hours, liquid remains only on glycine side—acid fully evaporates on right.
Credit
Rachana Agrawal
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article Title
“Warm, Water-Depleted Rocky Exoplanets with Surface Ionic Liquids: A Proposed Class for Planetary Habitability”
Article Publication Date
11-Aug-2025
Chemists help solve mystery of missing space sulfur
New research could create road map to outer space element
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Clouds of cosmic dust and gas contain many of the building blocks needed for life, but sulfur is mysteriously rare. One of the most common forms of sulfur is S8, a ring of sulfur atoms that form a crown-like structure. A team of astrochemists, including an Ole Miss researcher, has discovered that the crowns may help point scientists in the right direction.
view moreCredit: Graphic by John McCustion/University Marketing and Communications
For decades, astrochemists have been looking for sulfur atoms in space and finding surprisingly little of the element that is a key ingredient to life. A new study could point to where it has been hiding.
An international team of researchers including Ryan Fortenberry, an astrochemist at the University of Mississippi, and Ralf Kaiser, professor of chemistry at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and Samer Gozem, computational chemist at Georgia State University, published their research in the journal Nature Communications.
“Hydrogen sulfide is everywhere: it’s a product of coal-fired power plants, it has an effect on acid rain, it changes the pH levels of oceans and it comes out of volcanoes," Fortenberry said. "If we gain a better understanding of what the chemistry of sulfur can do, the technological commercialization that can come from that can only be realized with a foundation of fundamental knowledge.”
Sulfur is the 10th most abundant element in the universe and is considered a vital chemical element for planets, stars and life. The lack of molecular sulfur in space has been a mystery for years.
“The observed amount of sulfur in dense molecular clouds is less – compared to predicted gas-phase abundances– by three orders of magnitude,” Kaiser said.
The answer might lie in interstellar ice.
In cold regions of space, sulfur can form two distinct, stable configurations: octasulfur crowns, which are a group of eight sulfur atoms configured in ring-like crowns, and polysulfanes, chains of sulfur atoms that are bonded by hydrogen. These molecules can form on icy dust grains, locking sulfur into solid forms.
“If you use, for instance, the James Webb Space Telescope, you get a specific signature at specific wavelengths for oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and so forth,” Fortenberry said. “But when you do that for sulfur, it’s out of whack, and we don't know why there isn’t enough molecular sulfur.
“What this work is showing is that the most common forms of sulfur that we already know about are probably where the sulfur is hiding.”
Kaiser and Fortenberry’s research showed that these sulfur-rich molecules may be abundant in icy regions of interstellar space, giving astronomers a potential road map to solving the sulfur puzzle.
“Laboratory simulations of interstellar conditions such as this study discover possible inventories of sulfur–containing molecules that can be formed on interstellar ices," Kaiser said. “Astronomers can then utilize the results and look for these polysulfane molecules in the interstellar medium via radio telescopes once sublimed into the gas-phase in star forming regions.”
The reason sulfur has been so difficult to find is that the bonds it forms are always changing, going from crowns to chains and a variety of other formulations.
"It never maintains the same shape,” Fortenberry said. “It’s kind of like a virus – as it moves, it changes.”
The researchers’ work identifies possible stable configurations that astronomers can search for in the universe.
“The thing that I love about astrochemistry is that it forces you to ask hard questions, then forces you to come up with creative solutions,” Fortenberry said. “And those hard questions and creative solutions can have significant, unintended positive consequences."
Journal
Nature Communications
Article Title
Missing interstellar sulfur in inventories of polysulfanes and molecular octasulfur crowns
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