CODEPINK Statement Regarding The Recent Defamation of Peace Activists and Unconstitutional Attacks on Students

by Codepink / March 28th, 2025

Trump Administration allies, along with their bipartisan co-conspirators in Congress, are actively undermining and rendering useless the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This week alone, they have repeatedly defamed our women’s peace organization, claiming we are funded by or take orders from foreign governments or groups like Hamas. The false accusations, given under oath, that claim CODEPINK and other organizations are funded by a foreign government are laying the groundwork for shutting down civil society organizations – and not just ours. CODEPINK is in Congress every single day, calling for peace, elevating the popular demands of the American people, and educating the public on war and militarism. Because we are loud and effective, they are attacking and trying to silence us with smears and intimidation. We do not believe they will stop at us.

These attacks come as the Trump administration target students who’ve spoken out against the genocide in Gaza. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are extrajudicially revoking student visas and attempting to deport any student they wish, without any due process. Their crime? Disagreeing with the U.S. government’s support for genocide. Students are being kidnapped by masked officers in broad daylight – that should sound the alarm for every American who might openly disagree with President Trump.

These gestapo-like tactics and McCarthyist smears of peace organizations are leading the country down a dark path of unchecked fascism and dictatorship. Between the intimidation of peace groups and blatant attacks on students,every person in the U.S. should stand against this repression – or prepare to face it themselves down the line. Individuals may not like CODEPINK or our messaging around Palestine or China, but that doesn’t exclude them from repression if they let the Trump Administration set this precedent. If they disagree with him on anything at all, they may face the same smears and repression we have. After the groundwork is laid, it’s only a matter of time.

To be clear: CODEPINK is not funded by any foreign government. Protesting war and genocide is not supporting terrorism. Not only are they lying, they are defying the U.S. Constitution to muzzle the burgeoning student movement.

The slanderous statements made by elected officials can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those being lied about, as well as their friends and family. It appears that the United States government is not only committed to waging war abroad, but it is also intent on waging war domestically against U.S. citizens and non-citizens, both of which are also protected by the Constitution.

It is not a coincidence that both Senator Cotton and Secretary Rubio referred to peace activists and students as “lunatics” – they have clearly received their talking points. However, what is actual lunacy is how those elected to serve the American people are ignoring the fact that a majority of Americans do now want wars or war crimes being carried out in our name.

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Codepink is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs. Read other articles by Codepink, or visit Codepink's website.

Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing on Global Threats

Turns into a McCarthy Hearing of Lies about CODEPINK:

 Women for Peace

by Ann Wright / March 26th, 2025

Yesterday, in the US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the US government, Senator Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.

During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to US national security and yelled ‘Stop Funding Israel,’ since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor  had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.

As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist party of China.”  Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.

Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.”  I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.

After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarty lie, “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK which interrupts a hearing about Israel illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”

Senator Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

Senator Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a US Congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends and family.  In today’s polarized political environment we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021 with President Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s capitol building in their attempt to stop the Presidential election proceedings.

CODEPINK members have been challenging in the US Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Senator Cotton was elected as a US Senator in 2014.  We have been in the US Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump again.

After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Senator Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to this office staff.

We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee for the untrue and libelous statements Senator Cotton made in the hearing.

The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country and now the McCarthy intimidating tactics used by Senator Cotton in a Senate intelligence committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge U.S. government politics, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza must be called out and pushed back against.

And we must push back against US Senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries.  Senator Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.

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Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in the U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned from the U.S. Department of State in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq.  She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. Read other articles by Ann.

 

The Woman Who Defied an Empire

Kimpa Vita, A Prophetic Woman

by Friends of the Congo / March 27th, 2025

To this day, she’s remembered as one of the first anti-colonial revolutionaries in Africa. After you’ve read this story of Kimpa Vita, you’ll never forget her name, her commitment to her people, and her uncompromising valor.

Kimpa Vita was just a teenager when she began to challenge the powers that ruled her world.

Born in 1684 in the Kingdom of Kongo, Kimpa Vita grew up in the growing shadow of colonial devastation. Once a mighty African kingdom, the Kongo her people once knew had been torn apart by European encroachment and the transatlantic slave trade. Portuguese invaders had fueled civil wars, pitted leaders against their own people, and turned the kingdom into a battleground.

But Kimpa Vita saw a different future.

Trained in Kongo’s traditional spiritual practices as a healer and a medium, Kimpa Vita once fell gravely ill; and as she laid on her would-be death bed, she experienced a profound vision: a unified Kongo, free from war and foreign control.

When she recovered from her illness, she declared herself a prophet and founded the Antonian Movement—a powerful religious and political uprising. Kimpa Vita preached that Kongo’s people were divinely chosen, that Christ was not a European figure but an African one, and that the kingdom must cast off European rule and reclaim its sovereignty to preserve its future and the security of its people.

Through her teachings, Kimpa Vita reinterpreted Christianity from an African perspective, rejecting the European missionaries’ version of the faith that justified slavery and European domination.

Her message spread like wildfire. Within a few short years, thousands followed her call, including soldiers and exiled leaders. She led her followers back to their abandoned capital, São Salvador, and began rebuilding what the Portuguese had destroyed. But her defiance came at a cost. Branded a heretic and a rebel by European Catholic authorities, she was captured by Kongo’s ruling elite—who were aligned with the Portuguese—and burned at the stake in 1706.

She was just 22 years old.

Her execution was meant to extinguish her movement, but her legacy endured. Over three centuries later, the struggle she embodied continues. Today, Congolese women lead movements for justice, self-determination, and liberation from the modern forces of imperialism—corporations, foreign powers and local elites that still exploit Congo’s seemingly inexhaustible wealth.

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The Friends of the Congo (FOTC) is a 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The FOTC was established at the behest of Congolese human rights and grassroots institutions in 2004, to work together to bring about peaceful and lasting change in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. FOTC can be contacted at: info@friendsofthecongo.org. Read other articles by Friends, or visit Friends's website.

Exclusive-How Syria's sectarian violence spread to capital, terrorizing Alawites

Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Feras Dalatey
Thu, March 27, 2025

AP 

A wall painted with a damaged drawing of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured in the al-Qadam neighbourhood' in Damascus

A man riding a motorcycle passes next to a wall painted in the colours of the new Syrian flag and a Syrian flag under Bashar al-Assad rule

Yaser Farhan, spokesperson of the Syrian investigation committee responsible for investigating the violence on the Syrian coast, holds a press conference

A man sits in front of a wall painted with a Syrian flag under Bashar al-Assad's rule in an al-Qadam neighbourhood in Damascus

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Close to midnight on March 6, as a wave of sectarian killings began in western Syria, masked men stormed the homes of Alawite families in the capital Damascus and detained more than two dozen unarmed men, witnesses said.

Those taken from the neighbourhood of al-Qadam included a retired teacher, an engineering student and a mechanic, all of them Alawite - the minority sect of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.

A group of Alawites loyal to Assad had launched a fledgling insurgency hours earlier in coastal areas, some 200 miles (320 km) to the northwest. That unleashed a spree of revenge killings there that left hundreds of Alawites dead.

Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa told Reuters he dispatched his forces the next day to halt the violence on the coast but that some fighters who flooded the region to crush the uprising did so without defence ministry authorisation.

Amid fears of wider sectarian conflict across Syria, Sharaa's government took pains to emphasize in the wake of the violence that the killings were geographically limited. It named a fact-finding committee to investigate "the events on the coast".

According to accounts from 13 witnesses in Damascus, however, the sectarian violence spread to the southern edges of Syria's capital, a few kilometres from the presidential palace. The details of the alleged raids, kidnappings and killings have not been previously reported.

"Any Alawite home, they knocked the door down and took the men from inside," said one resident, whose relative, 48-year-old telecoms engineer Ihsan Zeidan, was taken by masked men in the early hours of March 7.

"They took him purely because he's Alawite."

All the witnesses who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The neighbourhood of al-Qadam is well-known to be home to many Alawite families. In total, the witnesses said, at least 25 men were taken. At least 12 of them were later confirmed dead, according to relatives and neighbours, who said they either saw photographs of the bodies or found them dead nearby.

Four of the witnesses said some of the armed men who came to al-Qadam identified themselves as members of General Security Service (GSS), a new Syrian agency comprising former rebels.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry, under which the GSS operates, told Reuters the force "did not target Alawites directly. The security forces are confiscating weapons from all sects."

The spokesperson did not respond to further questions, including why unarmed men were allegedly taken in these operations.

Yasser Farhan, spokesman for the committee investigating the sectarian violence, said its work has been geographically limited to the coast, so it had not investigated cases in al-Qadam. "But there may be deliberations within the committee at a later time to expand our work," he told Reuters.

Alawites comprise around 10% of Syria's population, concentrated in the coastal heartlands of Latakia and Tartus. Thousands of Alawite families have also lived in Damascus for decades, and in provincial cities such as Homs and Hama.

CYCLE OF IMPUNITY

Human Rights Watch researcher Hiba Zayadin called for a thorough investigation of the alleged raids, in response to Reuters' reporting.

"Families deserve answers, and the authorities must ensure that those responsible are held accountable, no matter their affiliation," she said. "Until that happens, the cycle of violence and impunity will continue."

Four of the men confirmed dead in Damascus were from the same extended family, according to a relative who escaped the raid by hiding on an upper floor with the family's young children.

They were Mohsen Mahmoud Badran, 77, Fadi Mohsen Badran, 41, Ayham Hussein Badran, a 40-year-old born with two fingers on his right hand, a birth defect that disqualified him from army service, and their brother-in-law Firas Mohammad Maarouf, 45.

Relatives visited the Mujtahid Hospital in central Damascus in search of their bodies but staff denied them access to the morgue and referred them to the GSS branch in al-Qadam, the witness said.

An official there showed them photographs on a phone of all four men, dead. No cause of death was given and none could be ascertained from the images, the relative said.

The official told the family to collect the bodies from the Mujtahid hospital but staff there denied they had them.

"We haven't been able to find them, and we're too scared to ask anyone," the relative told Reuters.

Mohammad Halbouni, Mujtahid Hospital's director, told Reuters that any bodies from al-Qadam were taken directly to the forensic medicine department next door. Staff there said they had no information to share.

The interior ministry spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether the forces at al-Qadam station were linked to the deaths.

Sharaa has announced the dissolution of all rebel groups and their planned integration into Syria's restructured defence ministry. But full command-and-control over the various, sometimes rival, factions remains elusive.

Four other men seized the same night were found in an orchard near al-Qadam, with gunshot wounds indicating they were killed "execution-style," according to a second resident, who told Reuters the family swiftly buried the bodies.

Reuters was unable to confirm independently the details of her account.

Another set of four men were confirmed dead by their relatives, who received photographs of the bodies on messaging platform WhatsApp on Thursday, nearly three weeks after they were taken.

The pictures, reviewed by Reuters, depicted four men on the ground with blood and bruises on their faces. One of them was identified by the relative as Samer Asaad, a 45-year-old with a mental handicap who was taken on the night of March 6.

Most of those seized remain missing.

They include university student Ali Rustom, 25, and his father Tamim Rustom, a 65-year-old retired maths teacher, two relatives told Reuters. "We have no proof, no bodies, no information," one said.

'ALL I WANT IS TO LEAVE'

A relative of Rabih Aqel, a mechanic, said his family had inquired at the local police station and other security agencies but were told they had no information on Aqel's whereabouts.

She drew parallels with forced disappearances under Assad, when thousands vanished into a labyrinthine prison system. In many cases, families would learn years later their relatives had died in detention.

She and the other witnesses said they have not been approached by the fact-finding committee.

Farhan, the committee spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday its members had interviewed witnesses in several coastal districts and had two more cities there to visit.

All the witnesses said they felt under pressure to leave al-Qadam specifically because they were Alawite. Some already had.

One young resident said armed men had come to his home several times in the weeks after Assad's ouster, demanding proof the family owned the house and had not been affiliated to the ousted Assad family.

He and his family have since fled, asking Sunni Muslim neighbours to look after their home.

Others said they had stopped going to work or were only moving around in the daytime to avoid possible arrest.

Another woman in her sixties said she was looking to sell her house in al-Qadam because of the risks her husband or sons would be taken. "After what happened, all I want is to leave the area."

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Feras Dalatey; Editing by Daniel Flynn)

SPACE/COSMOS

Putin envoy says Russia could supply a small nuclear power plant for Musk's Mars mission

Andrew Osborn
Thu, March 27, 2025

The head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund Kirill Dmitriev speaks after the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh

(Reuters) - Russia could supply a small nuclear power plant for a mission to Mars planned by billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, President Vladimir Putin's international cooperation envoy said on Thursday.

The envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said Moscow could discuss the offer with Musk by video conference. It was the second time Dmitriev has spoken of potential cooperation with Musk this month.

The proposal comes after U.S. President Donald Trump launched talks with Russia aimed at reviving bilateral ties which were languishing at their lowest level in decades due to Russia's war in Ukraine. Moscow is seeking to develop economic cooperation with Washington, even as U.S. sanctions against Russia over the conflict remain in place.

Musk, a close Trump associate, said earlier this month that his Starship rocket would blast off for Mars by the end of next year despite various failures in tests and amid scepticism from some space experts about Musk's projected timeline.

In a post on X, Musk said human landings could take place as early as 2029, but that "2031 was more likely." He spoke last year of plans to build a "self-sustaining city in about 20 years" on Mars, something that would need a power source.

Speaking in Murmansk on the sidelines of an Arctic Forum, Dmitriev, who is also head of a fund that works to attract foreign investors, said Russia could contribute a lot to a potential Mars mission.

"Russia can offer a small-sized nuclear power plant for a mission to Mars and other advanced technological capabilities," the state RIA news agency cited him as saying.

"We believe that Russia has a lot to offer for a mission to Mars, because we have some nuclear technologies that I think could be applicable," he added, saying Russia regarded cooperation with Musk, whom Dmitriev hailed as a "great visionary", as important.

Yuri Borisov, the then head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, said last year that Russia and China were considering putting a nuclear power plant on the moon from 2033-35, something he said could one day allow lunar settlements to be built.


Russia said in 2022 it would start work on its own Mars mission after the European Space Agency (ESA) suspended a joint project after the start of the war.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment

TechCrunch · Image Credits:TechCrunch

Rebecca Bellan

TechCrunch
Wed, March 26, 2025 

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore hubs, according to reporting from ProPublica.

SpaceX is a defense contractor for the Pentagon, one that handles sensitive work like building a classified spy satellite network. Investment from China raises national security concerns, as it could grant a foreign adversary access to sensitive military technology, intelligence, or supply chains.

The insight into SpaceX’s investment approach surfaces new questions around Musk’s own ties with China, particularly amid reports that the Pentagon briefed Musk on a potential war with China. The billionaire executive who is leading the charge to gut federal spending has regularly met with Communist Party officials in China to discuss his business interests. Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory builds about half of Tesla’s cars, and the country makes up a significant (if shrinking) chunk of its sales.

The details of how SpaceX allows Chinese investors to buy into the company came to light through the testimony of its CFO, Bret Johnsen, and major investor Iqbaljit Kahlon during a recent corporate dispute in Delaware.

The dispute centered around an aborted 2021 deal with a Chinese firm that had planned to buy $50 million of the company’s stock. When the news became public, SpaceX executives pulled out to avoid potential problems with national security regulators.

Kahlon testified in December that SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles, which are often used to keep investors anonymous.

Experts who spoke to ProPublica said this practice is troubling because it’s a potential sign that the company is taking active steps to conceal foreign ownership interests. It’s unclear exactly why SpaceX does this; the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While passive, noncontrolling stakes from foreign investors are welcome, it is the Trump administration’s position that adversaries like China use concealed investment strategies to obtain technologies, IP, and leverage in strategic industries. As a result, typically such investments would be vetted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

There’s no public record of SpaceX undergoing a formal CFIUS review. TechCrunch has reached out to CFIUS and SpaceX to learn more.

ProPublica’s reporting follows an investigation from the Financial Times that found that Chinese investors are using special-purpose vehicles to quietly funnel millions into Musk-controlled companies, including SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink.

Researchers develop new design and fabrication method to make lightsails for interstellar travel

Brown University

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A process for designing ultra-thin membranes with billions of nanoscale holes may one day help small spacecraft reach the stars.

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Credit: Norte lab, TU Delft/Bessa lab, Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Since its launch in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has traveled over 15 billion miles into deep space. That’s a long way — but it’s not even 1% of the distance to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. If humans are going to send ships to the stars, space travel will have to get a lot faster. 

One promising way to pick up that kind of speed is a “lightsail” — a thin, reflective membrane that can be pushed by light much the same way that wind pushes a sailboat. Lightsails have the potential to reduce flight time to nearby stars from several thousand years using current propulsion systems to perhaps just a decade or two. 

Now, a team of researchers from Brown University and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands has developed a new way of designing and fabricating ultra-thin, ultra-reflective membranes for lightsails. In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers describe a lightsail membrane that’s 60 millimeters (about 2.4 inches) wide by 60 millimeters long, but with a thickness of just 200 nanometers — a tiny fraction of a human hair. The surface is intricately patterned with billions of nanoscale holes, which help to reduce the material’s weight and increase its reflectivity, giving it more acceleration potential. 

“This work was a joint effort between theorists at Brown University and experimentalists at TU Delft making it possible to design, fabricate and test a highly reflective lightsail with the largest aspect ratio recorded to date,” said Miguel Bessa, an associate professor in Brown’s School of Engineering who co-led the research with Richard Norte, an associate professor at TU Delft. “The experimental breakthrough of Richard’s team proves their fabrication process is scalable to the dimensions needed for interstellar travel and can be done in a cost-effective manner. Simultaneously, my team is very enthusiastic to see the essential role of our latest optimization method guided by machine learning in solving such an interesting and difficult engineering problem.”

The research is a significant step toward realizing goals like those of the Starshot Breakthrough Initiative, founded by entrepreneur Yuri Milner and the late physicist Stephen Hawking. The goal is to use ground-based lasers to power hundreds of meter-scale lightsails carrying microchip-sized spacecraft. This new lightsail design could be scaled up to meter scale fairly easily, the researchers say, and with a manageable price tag. 

For their design, the team used single-layer silicon nitride, a lightweight and high-strength material that’s well suited for lightsail design. The researchers then worked to maximize its reflectivity while minimizing its weight. The reflectivity of the surface determines how much light pressure is created behind the sail, which in turn determines how fast it can accelerate. At the same time, a lighter material requires less force to accelerate, so less mass equals more speed.

The optimization process involved designing a pattern of nanoscale holes — billions of them across the material’s surface with diameters smaller than the wavelength of light. Bessa’s team, including Brown Ph.D. student Shunyu Yin, used a new artificial intelligence method they developed to optimize the shape and placement of the holes for increased reflectivity and decreased weight. 

Once they had an optimized design, a team led by Norte at TU Delft went to work fabricating it in the lab. 

“We have developed a new gas-based etch that allows us to delicately remove the material under the sails, leaving only the sail,” Norte said. “If the sails break, it’s most likely during manufacturing. Once the sails are suspended, they are actually quite robust. These techniques have been uniquely developed at TU Delft.”

Fabricating this design with traditional methods would have been expensive and taken as long as 15 years, the researchers say. But using Norte’s techniques, fabrication took about a day and is thousands of times less expensive. The result is a membrane that the researchers believe has the highest aspect ratio — centimeter-scale length but with nanoscale thickness — of any lightsail design to date. The researchers hope that their methods will not only help humans reach the stars, but also push the limits of nanoscale engineering. 

“The new machine learning and optimization techniques we used here are very general,” Bessa said. “We could use them to create lots of different things for different purposes. This is really just the beginning. We might be on the verge of solving engineering problems that have remained unsolvable up to now.”

The research was funded by the European Union (ERC, EARS, 101042855) and a Limitless Space Institute I2 Grant.

A process for designing ultra-thin membranes with billions of nanoscale holes may one day help small spacecraft reach the stars.

Credit

Norte lab, TU Delft and Bessa lab, Brown University

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-57749-y 

Article Title

Pentagonal photonic crystal mirrors: scalable lightsails with enhanced acceleration via neural topology optimization

Article Publication Date

25-Mar-2025

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Atmospheres of new planets might have unexpected mixtures of hydrogen and water

Water and gas react under intense heat and pressure in the atmospheres of young Earth-to-Neptune-sized planets

University of California - Los Angeles

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Key takeaways

• Planets can be extremely hot when they are born, and new computational experiments show that such planets would have an atmosphere composed of a homogenous mixture of hydrogen and water. As the planets age, their temperature decreases, and the hydrogen and water begin to separate. 
• The subsequent rainout of water could not only generate an unexpected amount of heat deep inside these worlds but reshape the composition of atmospheres and evolution of these planets for billions of years.
• The work has implications for potentially habitable exoplanets with a hydrogen atmosphere overlying a water ocean, depending on the planets’ internal temperatures. 

All planets are made of gas, ice, rock and metal, and models of how planets form usually assume that these materials don’t react chemically with each other. But what if some of them do? UCLA and Princeton planetary scientists asked that question and got a surprising answer: Under the intense heat and pressure of newborn planets, water and gas react with each other, creating unexpected mixtures in the atmospheres of young Earth-to-Neptune-sized planets and a “rainfall” deep inside the atmospheres.

Recent studies show that the most common type of planets in our galaxy, those between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, typically form with a hydrogen atmosphere, resulting in conditions where hydrogen and the planet's molten interior interact for millions to billions of years. Interactions between the atmosphere and the interior are thus crucial to understanding the formation and evolution of these bodies and what might lie beneath these atmospheres.

But the temperatures and pressures involved are so extreme that laboratory experiments to study them are nearly impossible. The researchers took advantage of UCLA and Princeton supercomputers to conduct quantum mechanical molecular dynamics simulations to investigate how hydrogen and water — two of the most important planetary constituents — interact over a wide range of pressure and temperature in planets Neptune-sized and smaller. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We usually think of basic physics and chemistry as being known already,” said study co-author Lars Stixrude, a UCLA earth, planetary and space sciences professor. “We know when things are going to melt and when they're going to dissolve and when they're going to freeze. But when it comes to the deep insides of planets, we just don't know. There’s no textbook where we can look these things up, and we have to predict them.”

The researchers set up simulations of a system split into hydrogen and water, with several hundred atoms of each, and calculated how they interact with each other at the quantum level. The atoms responded in a natural way, as they would in a laboratory experiment under the same conditions.

Planets can be extremely hot when they are born or if they are very close to their parent stars, and these computational experiments showed that such planets would have an atmosphere composed of a homogenous mixture of hydrogen and water. But as the planets age, their temperature decreases, and the hydrogen and water begin to separate. The subsequent rainout of water could not only generate an unexpected amount of heat deep inside these worlds but reshape the composition of atmospheres and evolution of these planets for billions of years.

 “Over time, as the planet cools down, in the outer regions of the atmosphere, clouds begin to form as water condenses out,” said first author Akash Gupta, who conducted the research as a UCLA doctoral student and is now a 51 Pegasi b and Harry H. Hess Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. “Shortly thereafter, water and hydrogen would begin to separate deep within the atmosphere — a pivotal event, given that the majority of the planet’s hydrogen and water reserves lie in these depths. This would then lead to a ‘rainfall’ deep inside the planet’s atmosphere as heavier water sinks while the lighter hydrogen rises, resulting in an outer, hydrogen-rich envelope and an inner, water-rich one.”

The finding could also help solve the mystery of why Uranus emits much less heat than Neptune even though these planets are very similar in size.

“Rainout of water may have so far occurred to a greater extent in Neptune than in Uranus, thus generating more internal heat within Neptune,” Gupta said. “This could explain why Uranus exhibits significantly lower heat flow compared to Neptune.”  

The work has implications for planets outside our solar system, such as K2-18 b and TOI-270 d, which have been argued to be potentially habitable worlds with a hydrogen atmosphere overlying a water ocean. However, the internal temperatures of such exoplanets, if high enough, could lie entirely in the regime where hydrogen and water can’t separate, so that they would consist of a single homogeneous hydrogen-water fluid.

“If water and hydrogen are indeed substantially mixed throughout a planet’s interior, the structure and thermal evolution of Earth- and Neptune-like exoplanets can be substantially different from the standard models typically used in the field,” said Hilke Schlichting, study co-author and UCLA earth, planetary, and space sciences professor.

“On the other hand, planets that are colder could have a separate layer enriched in water, possibly in liquid form.”

The research thus further provides a physics-inspired framework to narrow the search for planetary systems in our galaxy in which water-rich exoplanets could have water oceans or if they might have atmospheres where hydrogen and water are completely mixed and uncovers what possibly governs this bifurcation. 

The research was funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation and Princeton University.

---

Journal

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

XI PRO GLOBALISM AND FREE TRADE

China's Xi to meet with BMW, Mercedes, Qualcomm CEOs, sources say

Chinese President Xi Jinping · Reuters

Reuters
Thu, March 27, 2025 


SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The global heads of German automakers BMW and Mercedes, as well as chip giant Qualcomm are among foreign business leaders due to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, two sources said on Thursday.

The meeting in Beijing planned for Friday comes as Chinese authorities seek to bolster ties with foreign companies amid a drop in investment and in the face of U.S. tariffs targeting the world's second-biggest economy.


The meeting follows on from last weekend's China Development Forum (CDF), a flagship business event that this year saw Premier Li Qiang urge countries to open their markets and combat "rising instability and uncertainty".

Li also pledged that China would deliver more active macroeconomic policies.

Executives from Apple, Pfizer, Mastercard, Cargill and others met with Chinese commerce ministry officials over the course of CDF.

The sources, who have direct knowledge of the planned meeting between Xi and the Mercedes, BMW and Qualcomm executives, asked not to be named as they are not authorized to speak with media. They gave no details regarding the expected substance of the talks.

The companies did not immediately reply to Reuters' requests for comment. The Chinese foreign ministry also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The frequency of meetings between foreign executives and high-level Chinese authorities has picked up over the past month after official data showed foreign direct investment (FDI) plummeted 27.1% year-on-year in local currency terms in 2024.


That marked the biggest drop in FDI since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Global firms have been moving manufacturing away from China in an effort to diversify their supply chains and derisk their operations among escalating geopolitical tensions.

China's slowing economy has also played a role in the decline in investment, while a sweeping crackdown on consultancy and due diligence firms has rattled some foreign executives.

Beijing is also eager to mend relations with global business leaders to help fend off disruptions sparked by tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

China remains one of the biggest markets for German automakers, including BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen, in spite of market share leakage to Tesla and Chinese rivals including BYD and Xiaomi.

It may become even more important after Trump's announcement of a new 25% tariff on imported autos to the U.S. due to go into effect on April 3.

German automakers have recently ramped up efforts to seek technology partnerships with Chinese companies to enhance their product competitiveness there.

(Reporting by Shanghai newsroom; Editing by Joe Bavier)


China's Xi urges global CEOs to protect trade as Trump tariffs loom

Thu, March 27, 2025 
By Joe Cash and Casey Hall

BEIJING (Reuters) -China's President Xi Jinping urged a gathering of multinational CEOs on Friday to protect global industry and supply chains, as Beijing seeks to assuage foreign firms' concerns over the Chinese economy's health amid threats of more U.S. tariffs.


Beijing is battling to dispel fears that a renewed trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump will further pinch growth in the world's second-largest economy, which has been struggling to recover since the pandemic.

Longstanding unease over China's tightening regulations, abrupt crackdowns on foreign firms, and an uneven playing field favouring state-owned Chinese companies are also sapping business sentiment.

"We need to work together to maintain the stability of global industry and supply chains, which is an important guarantee for the healthy development of the world economy," Xi told the business leaders, who included the bosses of AstraZeneca, FedEx, Saudi Aramco, Standard Chartered and Toyota.

Around 40 executives joined the meeting, the majority of whom represented the pharmaceuticals sector. The meeting ran for just over 90 minutes and seven companies were invited to speak, a source with direct knowledge of its planning said.

"The CEOs I spoke with, and I spoke with a lot of them, felt it was worth it," said Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council and one of the meeting's attendees. "Not only did the president acknowledge various challenges facing companies and industry, in many cases he pledged the government would take action."


The executives sat in a horseshoe formation, with Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius and FedEx's Raj Subramaniam sitting directly across from Xi.

HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery, SK Hynix boss Kwak Noh-jung, Saudi Aramco president and CEO Amin Nasser, and chair of Hitachi Toshiaki Higashihara also sat in the first row.

"This meeting is a big illustration of business diplomacy. Now there is not just dialogue between bodies, WTO entities and states, but diplomacy being led by companies that are not just representing themselves, but also their sectors," said Frank Bournois, VP and dean of the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, adding that its success would depend on future actions and not just words.

The frequency of meetings between foreign executives and high-level Chinese officials has picked up over the past month, after official data showed foreign direct investment plummeted 27.1% year-on-year in local currency terms in 2024.


That marked the biggest drop in FDI since the 2008 global financial crisis.

"Foreign enterprises contribute one-third of China's imports and exports, one-quarter of industrial added value and one-seventh of tax revenue, creating more than 30 million jobs," Xi said.

"In recent years, foreign investment in China has also been interfered with by geopolitical factors... I often say that blowing out other people's lights does not make you brighter."

Trump has renewed his trade war with China since taking office and has announced a wave of fresh "reciprocal" tariffs to take effect on April 2, targeting countries with trade barriers on U.S. products, which could include China.


He imposed 20% tariffs on Chinese exports this month, prompting China to retaliate with additional duties on American agricultural products.

"The essence of China-U.S. economic and trade relations is mutually beneficial and win-win," Xi told the meeting.

The Chinese leader last year singled out American business leaders for an audience after the China Development Forum, but USCBC's Stein said such meetings were unlikely to become a routine fixture at the annual business summit, which this year ran from March 23-24.

"China's messaging is that it isn't an annual event and that businesses shouldn't expect it to be."

(Reporting by Joe Cash Beijing and Casey Hall in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Liz Lee and Bu Shi; Editing by Saad Sayeed, Stephen Coates and Mark Potter)