Unexpected discovery on Saturn's moon challenges our view on chemistry before life emerged
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Researchers have long been interested in Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and its icy environment, which harbours lakes, seas, sand dunes and a thick atmosphere full of nitrogen, methane, and complex carbon-based chemistry. Titan share some commonality with the early evolution of our planet and may therefore give researchers clues to the origin of life.
view moreCredit: NASA-JPL-Space Science Institute
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the US space agency NASA have made an unexpected discovery that challenges one of the basic rules of chemistry and provides new knowledge about Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan. In its extremely cold environment, normally incompatible substances can still be mixed. This discovery broadens our understanding of chemistry before the emergence of life.
Scientists have long been interested in Saturn’s largest, orange-coloured moon as its evolution can teach us more about our own planet and the earliest chemical steps towards life. Titan’s cold environment, and its thick nitrogen and methane-filled atmosphere, has many similarities to the conditions thought to have existed on the young Earth billions of years ago. By studying Titan, researchers therefore hope to find clues about the origin of life.
Martin Rahm, Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers, has been working for a long time to understand more about what is happening on Titan. He now hopes that the research group’s surprising discovery, that certain polar and nonpolar substances* can combine, will inform future studies of Titan.
“These are very exciting findings that can help us understand something on a very large scale, a moon as big as the planet Mercury,” he says.
New insights into the building blocks of life in extreme environments
The researchers’ paper, which has been published in the scientific journal PNAS, shows that methane, ethane and hydrogen cyanide – which exist in large quantities in the atmosphere and on the surface of Titan – can interact in a manner that was not previously considered possible. That hydrogen cyanide, an exceptionally polar molecule, can form crystals with completely nonpolar substances such as methane and ethane is surprising because such substances normally remain strictly separate, much like oil and water.
“The discovery of the unexpected interaction between these substances could affect how we understand the Titan’s geology and its strange landscapes of lakes, seas and sand dunes. In addition, hydrogen cyanide is likely to play an important role in the abiotic creation of several of life’s building blocks, for example amino acids, which are used for the construction of proteins, and nucleobases, which are needed for the genetic code. So our work also contributes insights into chemistry before the emergence of life, and how it might proceed in extreme, inhospitable environments,” says Martin Rahm, who led the study.
An unanswered question led to NASA collaboration
The background to the Chalmers study is an unanswered question about Titan: What happens to hydrogen cyanide after it is created in Titan’s atmosphere? Are there metres of it deposited on the surface or has it interacted or reacted with its surroundings in some way? To seek the answer, a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California began conducting experiments in which they mixed hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane at temperatures as low as 90 Kelvin (about -180 degrees Celsius). At these temperatures, hydrogen cyanide is a crystal, and methane and ethane are liquids.
When they studied such mixtures using laser spectroscopy, a method for examining materials and molecules at the atomic level, they found that the molecules were intact, but that something had still happened. To understand what, they contacted Martin Rahm’s research group at Chalmers, which had conducted extensive research into hydrogen cyanide.
“This led to an exciting theoretical and experimental collaboration between Chalmers and NASA. The question we asked ourselves was a bit crazy: Can the measurements be explained by a crystal structure in which methane or ethane is mixed with hydrogen cyanide? This contradicts a rule in chemistry, ‘like dissolves like’, which basically means that it should not be possible to combine these polar and nonpolar substances,” says Martin Rahm.
Expanding the boundaries of chemistry
The Chalmers researchers used large scale computer simulations to test thousands of different ways of organising the molecules in the solid state, in search of answers. In their analysis, they found that hydrocarbons had penetrated the crystal lattice of hydrogen cyanide and formed stable new structures known as co-crystals.
“This can happen at very low temperatures, like those on Titan. Our calculations predicted not only that the unexpected mixtures are stable under Titan’s conditions, but also spectra of light that coincide well with NASA’s measurements,” he says.
The discovery challenges one of the best-known rules of chemistry, but Martin Rahm does not think it is time to rewrite the chemistry books.
“I see it as a nice example of when boundaries are moved in chemistry and a universally accepted rule does not always apply,” he says.
In 2034, NASA’s space probe Dragonfly is expected to reach Titan, with the aim of investigating what is on its surface. Until then, Martin Rahm and his colleagues plan to continue exploring hydrogen cyanide chemistry, partly in collaboration with NASA.
“Hydrogen cyanide is found in many places in the Universe, for example in large dust clouds, in planetary atmospheres and in comets. The findings of our study may help us understand what happens in other cold environments in space. And we may be able to find out if other nonpolar molecules can also enter the hydrogen cyanide crystals and, if so, what this might mean for the chemistry preceding the emergence of life,” he says.
More about the research
The scientific article Hydrogen cyanide and hydrocarbons mix on Titan has been published in the journal PNAS. It was written by Fernando Izquierdo Ruiz, Morgan L. Cable, Robert Hodyss, Tuan H. Vu, Hilda Sandström, Alvaro Lobato Fernandez and Martin Rahm. The researchers are based at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA, and Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
The research at Chalmers was funded by the Swedish Research Council.
More on Titan and Dragonfly
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is among the Solar System’s most unusual worlds – and it may share features with Earth’s early evolution. Titan is surrounded by a thick atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and methane, a composition that could resemble the atmosphere on Earth billions of years ago, before life emerged. Sunlight and other radiation from space cause these molecules to react with each other, which is why the moon is shrouded in a chemically complex, orange-coloured haze of organic (i.e. carbon-rich) compounds. One of the main substances created in this way is hydrogen cyanide.
Titan’s extremely cold surface is home to lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane. It is the only other known place in our solar system, apart from Earth, where liquids form lakes on the surface. Titan has weather and seasons. There is wind, clouds form and it rains, albeit in the form of methane instead of water. Measurements also show that there is likely a large sea of liquid water many kilometres below the cold surface which, in principle, might harbour life.
In 2028, the US space agency NASA plans to launch the Dragonfly space probe, which is expected to reach Titan in 2034. The aim is to study prebiotic chemistry, the chemistry that precedes life, and to look for signs of life.
* About polar and nonpolar substances
Polar substances consist of molecules with an asymmetrical charge distribution (a positive side and a negative side), while nonpolar materials have a symmetrical charge distribution. Polar and nonpolar molecules rarely mix, because polar molecules preferentially attract one another via electrostatic interactions.
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Hydrogen cyanide and hydrocarbons mix on Titan
GAN-based solar radiation forecast optimization for satellite communication networks
KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
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The architecture of the GAN-Solar model. The generator creates a forecast, and the discriminator assesses its authenticity, continuously optimizing the forecast quality through an adversarial process.
view moreCredit: Chen C, Liu X, Zhao S, et al.
As a clean, renewable resource, solar energy plays a central role in the global energy transition. However, the intermittent nature of solar radiation, affected by dynamic atmospheric conditions like cloud cover, poses a barrier to the stable operation and dispatch of photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems. Accurate short-term solar forecasting is key to solving this, but existing technologies often produce blurry and distorted results as the forecast horizon extends.
To address this technical bottleneck, a research team from several institutions including the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology has developed a novel AI optimization model called GAN-Solar.
“The model applies the principle of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). You can think of it as a competition between two experts: a "master painter" (the generator) and a "keen art critic" (the discriminator),” explains Chao Chen, lead author of the study published in the International Journal of Intelligent Networks.
The "painter's" job is to generate the most realistic future solar radiation map based on historical data. The "critic," meanwhile, works to distinguish between real satellite images and the "paintings" created by the generator.
“Through this continuous adversarial training, the "painter's" skills are constantly honed, ultimately enabling it to produce high-definition, accurate forecasts that are nearly indistinguishable from reality,” adds Chen. “Traditional models 'see' less clearly over longer prediction times. GAN-Solar is like equipping the forecast system with a pair of high-precision glasses. It not only sees the overall radiation distribution but also captures the crucial details, thereby enhancing the operational efficiency and stability of solar power systems, allowing predictions to significantly reduce 'blurriness'."
Experimental results show that GAN-Solar achieved significant improvements on key metrics compared to existing advanced models, with the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) of predicted images increasing from 0.84 to 0.87. “This provides more reliable technical support for solar power systems, enhancing their operational efficiency and stability, ensuring the forecasts can meet the demands of high-precision applications,” says Chen.
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Contact the author:Chao Chen (chaoc@nuist.edu.cn), Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. Xin Liu (xinliu@cma.gov.cn), the Public Meteorological Service Center, Wind and Solar Energy Center, and the Energy Meteorology Key Laboratory of the China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China, as well as the CMA Key Open Laboratory of Transforming Climate Resources to Economy, Chongqing, China.
The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
Journal
International Journal of Intelligent Networks
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
GAN-based solar radiation forecast optimization for satellite communication networks
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Artist’s interpretation of two massive black holes (MBHs) within a galaxy. A tidal disruption event unfolds around the MBH that resides away from the galactic center and matter from a disrupted star swirls into a bright accretion disk, launching an energetic outflow and resulting in two bright radio flares.
view moreCredit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/P.Vosteen
New study reveals, for the first time, a tidal disruption event (TDE), where a black hole tears apart a star, occurring outside the center of a galaxy that produced exceptionally strong and rapidly evolving radio signals. This rare discovery shows that supermassive black holes can exist and remain active far from galactic cores, challenging current understanding of where such black holes reside and how they behave. The event’s delayed and powerful radio outbursts also suggest previously unknown processes in how black holes eject material over time.
An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Itai Sfaradi and Prof. Raffaella Margutti of the University of California, Berkeley, with the participation of researchers from around the world, including Prof. Assaf Horesh from the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has discovered the first tidal disruption event (TDE) producing bright radio emission outside the center of a galaxy.
The event, designated AT 2024tvd , revealed the fastest-evolving radio emission ever observed from a black-hole-driven stellar disruption.
“This is truly extraordinary,” said Dr. Itai Sfaradi, lead author of the study. “Never before have we seen such bright radio emission from a black hole tearing apart a star, away from a galaxy’s center, and evolving this fast. It changes how we think about black holes and their behavior.”
Dr. Sfaradi, who led the research, is a former graduate student of Prof. Assaf Horesh. “This is one of the fascinating discoveries I’ve been part of,” said Prof. Horesh. “The fact that it was led by my former student, Itai, makes it even more meaningful. It’s another scientific achievement that places Israel at the forefront of international astrophysics.”
A black hole far from home
Tidal disruption events occur when a star ventures too close to a massive black hole and is torn apart by its immense gravity.
In this exceptional case, however, the black hole was located about 2,600 light-years (0.8 kiloparsecs) from its host galaxy’s core, evidence that supermassive black holes can lurk in unexpected places.
The key role of radio observations
The discovery was made possible through high-quality observations from several of the world’s premier radio telescopes, including the Very Large Array (VLA), ALMA, ATA, SMA, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array (AMI-LA) in the UK.
The AMI observations, led by the Hebrew University team, were crucial in revealing the unusually rapid evolution of the radio emission — a hallmark of this event and a major clue to understanding its physical nature.
The data showed two distinct radio flares evolving faster than any TDE observed before. These results indicate that powerful outflows of material were launched from the vicinity of the black hole not immediately after the stellar destruction, but months later, suggesting delayed and complex processes in the aftermath of the disruption.
Detailed modeling points to at least two separate ejection events, months apart — clear evidence that black holes can episodically “reawaken” after periods of apparent inactivity.
The research was conducted in collaboration with scientists from institutions across the United States, Europe, and Israel, including Prof. Paz Beniamini of the Open University of Israel, and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The First Radio-Bright Off-Nuclear TDE 2024tvd Reveals the Fastest-Evolving Double-Peaked Radio Emission
Article Publication Date
15-Oct-2025
By Paul Wallis
October 15, 2025
This image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars which is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula - Copyright AFP MIGUEL MEDINA
The big Southern magnetic field anomaly was discovered a while back, and it’s pretty strange. This very large weakening magnetic field extends throughout South America, and almost to Africa. A sort of “tail” of the effect extends into the Pacific.
According to Phys.org, the magnetic field isn’t issuing from the core as it should, but returning into the core. One of the areas involved is moving westward over Africa. If that sounds a bit vague, these images will show you how complex the mantle and core really are.
These are gigantic masses of material, directly affecting the magnetic field. They’re called Large Low-Velocity Provinces (LLVPs). They are believed to be chunks of an ancient planetary collision with a hypothetical planet called Theia. They supposedly directly affect the magnetic field.
The anomaly has also changed from a largely academic exercise into an in theory possibly highly disruptive incident. The projected effects of the anomaly include satellite disruption, effects on power grids, radiation exposure, and possible effects on animal migration.
Earth’s magnetic field delivers protection from radiation in combination with the ozone layer and atmosphere. It’s unclear how much of a problem the weakening field is in these regards.
Solar storms can be similar in their effects on electronic systems. The question inevitably arises as to whether a significantly weakened magnetic field can make these effects worse.
If so, the magnetic field issue is far more likely to be a long-term problem. In geological terms, the magnetic field is already moving pretty rapidly and visibly extending.
So far, the effects seem to be marginal. The anomaly isn’t “swallowing satellites” yet. The AI predicted effects are generic, rather than applied, and well within predicted bandwidths. Surprised? This is why you need people looking at these issues.
Pole movement is also related to the magnetic core. It’s unclear whether there is any direct relationship at all between the anomaly and Earths flipping magnetic poles. It’s a natural correlation, but not supported by science so far. Conjecture is the available option.
This could get tricky. If there’s a need to adapt to a seriously weakened magnetic field, it’s also likely to be expensive. Guess who’s paying.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
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