Astronomers have used two different exoplanet-detecting satellites to solve a cosmic mystery and reveal a rare family of six planets located about 100 light-years from Earth. The discovery could help scientists unlock the secrets of planet formation.

The six exoplanets orbit a bright star similar to the sun named HD110067, which is located in the Coma Berenices constellation in the northern sky. Larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, the planets are in a little-understood class called sub-Neptunes commonly found orbiting sunlike stars in the Milky Way. And the planets, labeled b through g, revolve around the star in a celestial dance known as orbital resonance.

There are discernible patterns as the planets complete their orbits and exert gravitational forces on one another, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. For every six orbits completed by planet b, the closest planet to the star, the outermost planet g completes one.

As planet c makes three revolutions around the star, planet d does two, and when planet e completes four orbits, planet f does three.

This harmonic rhythm creates a resonant chain, with all six planets aligning every few orbits.

What makes this planetary family an unusual find is that little has changed since the system formed more than 1 billion years ago, and the revelation could shed light on the evolution of planets and the origin of prevalent sub-Neptunes in our home galaxy.

Detecting a mystery

Researchers first took notice of the star system in 2020 when NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, detected dips in the brightness of HD110067. A dip in starlight often suggests the presence of a planet that’s passing between its host star and an observing satellite as the planet travels along its orbital path. Detecting these dips in luminosity, known as the transit method, is one of the main strategies used by scientists to identify exoplanets via ground and space-based telescopes.

Astronomers determined the orbital periods of two planets around the star from that 2020 data. Two years later, TESS observed the star again, and the evidence suggested different orbital periods for those planets.

When the data sets didn’t add up, astronomer and lead study author Rafael Luque and some of his colleagues decided to take another look at the star using a different satellite — the European Space Agency’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, or Cheops. While TESS is used to observe fractions of the night sky for short observations, Cheops observes one star at a time.

“We went fishing for signals among all the potential periods that those planets could have,” said Luque, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of Chicago’s department of astronomy and astrophysics.

The data collected by Cheops helped the team solve the “detective story” started by TESS, he said. Cheops was able to determine the presence of a third planet in the system, which was crucial to confirming the orbital periods of the other two planets, as well as their rhythmic resonance.

As the team matched up the rest of the unexplained TESS data with the Cheops observations, they discovered the other three planets orbiting the star. Follow-up observations with ground-based telescopes confirmed the presence of the planets.

The dedicated time Cheops spent observing the star helped astronomers iron out the mixed signals from the TESS data to determine how many planets were crossing in front of the star and the resonance of their orbits.

“Cheops gave us this resonant configuration that allowed us to predict all the other periods. Without that detection from Cheops, it would have been impossible,” Luque said.

The closest planet takes just over nine Earth days to complete an orbit around the star, and the most distant takes about 55 days. All of the planets have quicker revolutions around their star than Mercury, which takes 88 days to complete one lap around the sun.

Given how close they are to HD110067, the planets likely have blistering average temperatures similar to Mercury and Venus, ranging between 332 degrees Fahrenheit and 980 degrees Fahrenheit (167 degrees Celsius and 527 degrees Celsius).

Why planetary rhythm matters

The formation of planetary systems, like our own solar system, can be a violent process. While astronomers believe that planets tend to initially form in resonance around stars, the gravitational influence of massive planets, a graze with a passing star or a collision with another celestial body can upset the harmonic balance.

Most planetary systems are not in resonance, and those with multiple planets that have preserved their initial rhythmic orbits are rare, which is why astronomers want to study HD110067 and its planets as a “rare fossil” in detail, Luque said.

“We think only about one percent of all systems stay in resonance,” Luque said in a statement. “It shows us the pristine configuration of a planetary system that has survived untouched.”

The discovery is the second time Cheops has helped reveal a planetary system with orbital resonance. The first one, known as TOI-178, was announced in 2021.

“As our science team puts it: Cheops is making outstanding discoveries sound ordinary. Out of only three known six-planet resonant systems, this is now the second one found by Cheops, and in only three years of operations,” said Maximilian Günther, ESA Cheops project scientist, in a statement.

A perfect observation target

The system can also be used to study how sub-Neptunes form, the study authors said.

While sub-Neptunes are common in the Milky Way galaxy, they don’t exist in our own solar system. And there is little agreement among astronomers about how these planets form and what they’re made of — so an entire system consisting of sub-Neptunes could help scientists determine more about their origin, Luque said.

Many exoplanets have been found orbiting dwarf stars that are much cooler and smaller than our sun, such as the famed TRAPPIST-1 system and its seven planets, announced in 2017. While the TRAPPIST-1 system also has a resonant chain, the faintness of the host star makes observations difficult.

But HD110067, which has 80% the mass of our sun, is the brightest known star with more than four planets in orbit, so observing the system is much easier.

Initial detections of the mass of the planets suggest that some of them have puffy hydrogen-rich atmospheres, which makes them ideal targets of study for the James Webb Space Telescope. As starlight filters through the planets’ atmospheres, Webb can be used to determine the composition of each world.

“The sub-Neptune planets of the HD110067 system appear to have low masses, suggesting they may be gas- or water-rich. Future observations, for example with the James Webb Space Telescope, of these planetary atmospheres could determine whether the planets have rocky or water-rich interior structures,” said study coauthor Jo Ann Egger, doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of Bern in Switzerland, in a statement.

Three-toed fossil footprints that date back more than 210 million years were pressed into soft mud by bipedal reptiles with feet like a bird’s, a new analysis of the tracks has revealed.

The footprints, found at several sites in southern Africa, were recently identified as the oldest birdlike tracks ever found, preceding the earliest known skeletal fossils of avians by about 60 million years.

“Given their age they were likely made by dinosaurs,” said Dr. Miengah Abrahams, a lecturer in geological sciences at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Abrahams is lead author of the new study describing the tracks, published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One.

However, because the animals that made the tracks are unknown, their relationship to birds is unclear. The prints could represent a missing clue about avian evolution, or they could belong to reptiles that aren’t close to the avian lineage but independently evolved birdlike feet, the researchers reported.

Fossils without bones

The footprints were discovered in the mid-20th century and were assigned the scientific name Trisauropodiscus by French paleontologist Paul Ellenberger. The name is an ichnogenus, meaning that it describes a genus based on trace fossils, or fossilized impressions that an animal left behind, rather than fossils of its body.

There are thought to be seven ichnospecies linked to Trisauropodiscus tracks, and for decades paleontologists argued over the avian affinity of the group. Some called the tracks birdlike, but others weren’t so sure. Ellenberger may have muddied the waters by assigning many differently shaped tracks to the ichnogenus, “and not all of them are birdlike,” Abrahams said.

What’s more, the shape of a footprint can vary greatly, based on what type of material the animal stepped in. This can make it difficult to pinpoint physical features of extinct animals when fossilized tracks are the only clues that they left behind, said Dr. Julia Clarke, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the study.

At the time that the Trisauropodiscus tracks were stamped into mud, evolutionary adaptations were booming in archosaurs — the ancient reptile group that includes dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodilians — so it’s intriguing to find evidence of birdlike feet in an unknown member of this group, she added.

“The footprints are not a direct match for any fossil animals known from this region and time period. They could belong to other reptiles or cousins of dinosaurs that evolved birdlike feet,” Clarke said. “It’s adding to our understanding of morphological diversification in this really key time period in archosauria.”

Following footsteps

The researchers’ investigation began in 2016: The UCT team was “following in the footsteps of Paul Ellenberger, documenting his sites using modern ichnological standards,” Abrahams said.

During a trip to Maphutseng, a fossil locale in Lesotho, the team found a number of birdlike tracks from the Triassic Period. “It took us a minute to realise we were looking at Trisauropodiscus,” she said. “Our initial impression was that these tracks were indeed very birdlike and we knew we needed to investigate them further.” That entailed visits to fossil sites; analysis of archival photos, sketches and casts; and creating 3D digital models of the footprints.

The scientists reviewed 163 tracks and divided them into two categories, or morphotypes, based on their shapes. Tracks categorized as Morphotype I were tagged as non-avian. These prints were slightly longer than they were wide, with rounder, more robust toes that were narrowly splayed. “They also have a distinct ‘heel’” made by the pads of the third and fourth digits, Abrahams said.

By comparison, the Morphotype II tracks were smaller. They were wider than they were long, with slimmer toes. In their shape and in the wide splay of their digits, this second group of tracks closely resembled those of an avian from the Cretaceous Period (145 million to 66 million years ago): the wading bird Gruipeda, another ichnogenus known only from footprints. And overall, Morphotype II tracks closely resembled modern bird prints, the scientists reported.

The oldest fossil evidence for paravians — the dinosaur group that includes the earliest birds and their closest relatives — appears around the middle of the Jurassic Period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago); the Morphotype II Trisauropodiscus tracks, which date back at least 210 million years, hint that birdlike feet are even more ancient.

“Trisauropodiscus shows that the birdlike foot morphology is much older, a shared trait between modern birds and other Late Mesozoic archosaurs,” Abrahams said. “This investigation contributes to our collective ongoing understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs and birds.”

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.

An Australian police officer has been charged with manslaughter after he allegedly tasered a 95-year-old woman with dementia in a nursing home.

Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother, died in hospital in May, one week after police were called to the home in Cooma, New South Wales, by care home staff who reported a resident armed with a knife.

Kristian White, a 33-year-old senior constable, allegedly tasered Nowland at the home after asking her to drop a steak knife she was holding.

Nowland, who had a walking aid, fell and hit her head, fracturing her skull.

White, who has since been suspended from his role with pay, was initially charged with multiple offenses including recklessly causing grievous bodily harm and assault.

In a statement published online on Wednesday, New South Wales Police said: “Following advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad have today laid an additional charge of Manslaughter against a 33-year-old Senior Constable attached to the Monaro Police District.”

Police were called, and White and another officer, accompanied by ambulance staff, found Nowland in a room holding one of the knives, according to court documents cited by the broadcaster. The other officer attempted to grab the knife, but Nowland is said to have moved towards them with her walker.

White then allegedly activated his taser, telling the victim: “Clare, stop now, see this, this is a taser, drop it now, drop it, this is your first warning.”

She then raised the hand holding the knife to chest height, according to the court documents, and he struck her with the taser in the chest area, causing her to fall and hit her head, still holding her walker.

White, who is due to appear in court on December 6, remains suspended from the force with pay, and has yet to enter a plea.

At 10-months-old, Kfir Bibas has now spent more than a fifth of his young life in captivity, his doe-eyed face and bright red hair a vivid symbol of the pain and suffering endured by Israel’s hostage families.

More than 50 days since his abduction by Hamas militants from their home in southern Israel, Kfir’s family say they are no closer to knowing whether he is safe – or even alive.

“We are not sure if he can make it. Every day that he is staying there is a real, real danger to his life.”

Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel, their mother, Shiri, and presumably their father Yarden were all kidnapped from Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz that was devastated when it came under attack by Hamas militants on October 7. The attackers murdered more than a quarter of the community and seized scores of others, as they fired at people’s homes, looted and destroyed what they could.

Some 1,200 people, most civilians, were slain by Hamas across southern Israel that day – the largest terror attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

A video of the Bibas family’s abduction became one of the early striking moments of that day, as a terrified Shiri clung tightly to her children, with Ariel still sucking his pacifier. The children do not cry, nor make a sound as Hamas militants surround their shaken mother, a blanket wrapped around her body. Their grandparents were killed in the attack, Keshet added.

The boys’ father was hit by a hammer, his sister has said, with no further information available on his current condition or whereabouts. Yarden’s cousin, Keshet, has said the family believes Yarden was separated from his wife and children, based on videos that they have seen.

“It doesn’t make any sense that anyone can let this keep going,” Keshet said. “It’s inhumane. It’s so scary.”

Hamas is believed to have held more than 200 hostages in Gaza prior to the releases negotiated with Israel. Under the breakthrough truce agreement, groups of Israeli citizens and other nationals – mostly women and children, in line with the terms of the agreement – have been freed every day since last Friday.

More than 14,800 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, have since been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, which draws its data from Hamas-run health authorities in the Gaza Strip.

As part of the truce deal Israel has released Palestinian women and children detainees from its prisons, many of whom have never been charged or sentenced.

The initial four-day truce was extended by an additional two days on Monday, as stories began to trickle out from the families of freed hostages, giving the first insights into what life had been like in captivity.

On Monday, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that the Bibas family is not currently held hostage by Hamas, which further complicates release efforts.

While Hamas runs Gaza, other militant groups operate there including organizations such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Kfir, Ariel and Shira’s names are yet to appear on a list of hostages expected to be freed. An estimated eight children are still being held by Hamas, and their faces have galvanized a mourning nation clamoring for their return.

More than 100 people gathered in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to release orange balloons into the sky to honor the two Bibas boys and their mother, agency pictures showed.

The sheer youth of Kfir has captured Israeli attention and anguish. The baby boy was still being bottle-fed and wasn’t at a stage where he was eating solid food when he was taken.

“He needs baby formula,” Keshet said through tears, adding the family is also extremely worried about Ariel’s health.

“Ariel is a fragile child and has several medical conditions,” he said, explaining that the four-year-old has a skin condition which needs treatment. “He is such a lively child, and he really loves cars and tractors,” he added.

For Shiri’s cousin, Yifat Zailer, the days and nights have been “emotional and stressful.”

Every day, Zailer hopes to see her family’s names on the list of hostages to be released.

“There’s a 10-month-old baby that is still being held captive. His life is at risk. No child should be pawned or held as leverage,” she said, her face gaunt and eyes sullen.

“Hopefully this will be over soon, and we can somehow go on to repair our shattered – completely shattered – life here.”

An indigenous community has won a court battle to regain ownership over its ancestral homeland in the Ecuadorian Amazon, more than 80 years after they were displaced because of war.

The Siekopai were displaced during the Peru-Ecuador war in the 1940s.

Last September, the community, which has only about 800 members, filed a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian state, claiming it was violating their right to ancestral property, Amazon Frontline said.

In its ruling on Friday, the Provincial Court of Sucumbios gave Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment 45 days to deliver a property title to the Siekopai people for more than 104,000 acres of land, court documents show.

“This is a historic moment for the Siekopai Nation,” said Elias Piyahuaje, President of the Siekopai Nation of Ecuador. “The land of Pë’këya has always been and will always be ours. For over 80 years, we have been fighting to get our land back.”

The ruling “will mark the first time that the Ecuadorian government delivers a land title to an indigenous community whose ancestral territory is found in a protected area,” Amazon Frontline said, adding it “sets an invaluable precedent for all indigenous peoples fighting to recover their lands across Latin America and the world.”

Piyahuaje said: “We are fighting for the preservation of our culture on this planet. Without this territory, we cannot exist as Siekopai people.”

In early November, drone video surfaced online appearing to show a targeted strike blowing up three antennas on the roof of an apartment block. The Ukrainian drone commander who posted it claimed to have destroyed a Russian Pole-21 electronic warfare system on the eastern front near Donetsk.

Ukraine is already racing to catch up with Russia when it comes to electronic warfare.

This attack also shows how Kyiv is rushing to destroy Moscow’s technology on the battlefield – a sign of how important it may be for the future of the war.

Electronic warfare, or EW, involves weapons or tactics using the electromagnetic spectrum. It is being employed by both militaries in this conflict, predominantly through electronic jammers that throw off GPS guided targeting systems, causing rockets to miss their targets.

After almost six months of Ukraine’s slow and grinding counteroffensive, it’s clear Russia has not just built up physical defenses but formidable electronic ones, and Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are having to adapt quickly.

Pavlo Petrychenko, the drone commander with Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade, which carried out the early November strike, says successfully destroying these systems is critical if Ukraine is to liberate more territory. The video he posted on social media is one of a growing number of Ukrainian military and media reports of successful strikes against Pole-21 systems alone, since the summer.

“But when we started to receive foreign equipment, they started to use these systems to suppress our weapons.

“Since (the both US-provided) HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) and Excalibur 155 (an extended range artillery projectile) are guided by satellites, electronic warfare is actively used by (Russia) as one element of the defense against us,” Petrychenko said.

A chink in Ukraine’s NATO-provided armor

And that’s the problem for Ukraine. Russian jammers have turned the technological advantage of Ukraine’s Western-provided arsenal of “smart” – guided – weapons into a vulnerability.

Precision-guided missiles and guided multiple launch rocket systems – such as HIMARS – are by their nature more vulnerable to electronic warfare than unguided weapons because they rely on GPS to hit their targets. Unguided weapons, common in the Soviet-era stockpiles of both Russia and Ukraine, pre-2022, do not.

The Pole-21 system, designed to jam GPS signals to protect Russian assets from incoming drones or missiles, is just one feature of Moscow’s growing electronic arsenal.

Jamming, as well as “spoofing” GPS – a technique which effectively tricks an enemy drone or missile into thinking it’s somewhere else – which also disrupts radar, radio and even cell communications, are all part of the Kremlin’s playbook.

In September, state news agency TASS reported that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting that production of key types of military equipment, including EW, had doubled in the first eight months of the year.

Experts and Ukrainian officials also say Russia has now fully integrated electronic warfare with its troops.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny wrote in a recent essay that Russia is now mass producing what he calls “trench electronic warfare.”

“The tactical level of the Russian troops is saturated with (this equipment)” and despite equipment losses Moscow still maintains “significant electronic warfare superiority,” Zaluzhny added.

Zaluzhny also singled out American-made Excalibur shells, noting they “have had their capability significantly decreased, since the targeting system (using GPS) is very sensitive to the influence of enemy electronic warfare.”

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz said that, “while the impact of Russian jamming has been observed” in certain United States-provided systems, including HIMARS rocket launchers, “it has not rendered these systems ineffective.”

Dietz said the department has taken steps to reduce those vulnerabilities, undertaking “substantial efforts to re-engineer and update these systems.” He added that updates are “being implemented as swiftly as possible to counteract the effects of EW jamming.”

From drone army to electronic army

Ukraine said it has been able to increase domestic drone production a hundredfold this year – something that has transformed the battlefield.

The man behind this, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, now hopes to repeat that success with electronic warfare – not least because drones are so often the victims of EW.

This involves not just integrating electronic warfare as a layer of protection on the battlefield, but doing it smartly.

Fedorov warns against “oversaturating” the battlefield, but instead supports designing EW systems that can be controlled remotely, so they target only enemy equipment.

Otherwise, there’s a real risk that electronic warfare systems can work against you, downing your own drones, Fedorov added.

A November 2022 report from the British think tank Royal United Services Institute suggested that what it calls “electronic fratricide” – accidentally targeting one’s own forces – was such a big problem on the Russian side in the early days of the war that they had to scale back EW efforts to avoid sabotaging their own battlefield communications.

The most important task for now though, Fedorov says, is for Ukraine to acquire the technology to program its drones to target enemy electronic warfare equipment on a large scale.

That would be a game-changer for drone operators like Petrychenko, who admits they are in a game of cat-and-mouse, hunting Russian equipment.

Right now, the best hope they have is that videos, like the one of his early November drone strike, go viral, Petrychenko said. With so many Ukrainian troops on social media, any viral footage like this would act like a handbook, helping them identify Russian antennas on the battlefield.

It’s clear this is changing the game beyond Ukraine.

“I think what you’re seeing play out in Ukraine is very much a glimpse into what modern warfare looks like today,” said Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former principal deputy under secretary for defense at the Pentagon. It’s a future where “electronic warfare capabilities, tactics are integrated into conventional force operations,” she added.

Dietz, the Pentagon spokesman, said the US is “actively evaluating and adapting its strategies” in electronic warfare, and sees it as a “fundamental aspect of contemporary and future military engagements.”

Fedorov said Ukraine is investing directly in electronic warfare, but also following in the footsteps of his drone program by incentivizing domestic production.

And he is open about the fact that Ukraine needs the help of its Western allies, both in terms of equipment and expertise.

“The West has all the technology we need. The question possibly is how to use it, and it is an important question. We need to think about the next technological stage in the war.”

Picking through the rubble of his destroyed home, Khaled Nabhan lifts a doll that had belonged to his granddaughter and kisses it.

Toys and memories are all he has left of his beloved grandchildren, 3-year-old Reem and 5-year-old Tarek, who were killed last week while they were sleeping in their bed.

Their home was brought down by what Nabhan said was a nearby Israeli airstrike in the Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. Nabhan has only just managed to return, following the pause in fighting.

“They kept asking for fruit but there is no fruit because of the war,” he said. Clutched in his hand was a tangerine that he’d given Reem as a treat, but that she never had the chance to eat. “I could only find them these tangerines.”

The family was asleep when the airstrike hit. Khaled said he woke up screaming for his children and grandchildren, struggling to walk through the dark and the wreckage to find them.

“I couldn’t find anyone, they were buried underneath all this rubble,” he said, standing on a bed in a room full of debris.

The two were inseparable, he said. With their father abroad working, the family lived with their grandfather and he was Reem’s whole world.

Her favorite game was pulling his beard and he would pull her piggy tails, he said.

“I’ll let go, if you let go,” she says giggling in a video.

“I heard Reem screaming next to me, I told her there is something heavy on top of me, I can’t reach you. I said my final prayers and next I woke up in the hospital,” she said.

Maysa woke up to the news her young children were gone. Their lifeless bodies were found together under the rubble.

“At the hospital I was just numb. I hugged them, I wanted to get as many hugs as I could. No matter how much I hugged them I didn’t get enough,” Maysa said.

For nearly seven weeks, most people in the Gaza Strip have been just trying to survive, focusing on the basics: finding shelter, fleeing the fighting, getting access to food and water.

The pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas has given many families in Gaza the chance to go outside, buy supplies and return home to retrieve belongings or even bury the bodies of their loved ones.

For many Gazans like Nabhan, the truce has also deepened the heartache as they take stock of their new, devastated surroundings. The weeks of airstrikes and fighting have left entire neighborhoods levelled to the ground and many are now able to see the full scale of the devastation for the first time.

More than 14,800 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, which draws its data from Hamas-run health authorities in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Gaza is “becoming a graveyard for children,” adding that “The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.”

His comments came four weeks after Israel declared war on Hamas, following the Islamist militant group’s deadly October 7 terror attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and saw about 240 others kidnapped and taken back to Gaza – the largest single day attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

The temporary truce has also brought joy as those hostages released by Hamas as part of the deal agreed last week finally returned to Israel and reunited with their families in heart wrenching scenes. Others still face an anxious wait for news of the fate of their loved ones, including mutliple children, still held captive by militants in Gaza.

Grieving grandfather Nabhan says his grandchildren were too young to understand the war they lived and died in. He is not a fighter, he said, and his family had nothing to do with the war.

Now his grandchildren will never be able to dress up, play, or eat their favorite treats.

Nabhan was seen around the world in a widely shared video of his moment of grief last week as he kissed his lifeless 3-year-old granddaughter goodbye.

“I used to kiss her on her cheeks, on her nose and she would giggle,” he said. “I kissed her but she wouldn’t wake up.”

In another social media video, the two children’s bodies lay prepared for burial in white shrouds while Nabhan fixes Tarek’s hair.

“I combed his hair like he would always ask me to, like a photo he would always show me,” Nabhan said. “He loved his hair like that, now he’s gone.”

From his ruined home, Nabhan searches through his damaged possessions and bundles up armfuls of colorful toys — the loss etched into the lines of his face.

“I was wishing, hoping that they were only sleeping,” he said. “But they weren’t sleeping, they are gone.

Often referred to as a “miracle material,” graphene is one million times thinner than a single human hair and stronger than steel.

The two-dimensional carbon material, made from single layers of graphite, a material mined from the ground, is extremely lightweight, conductive, and flexible, and has the potential to deliver transformational technologies across industries, from electronics to transportation.

Now, researchers at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are exploring another use for graphene: producing drinking water.

“Here in the United Arab Emirates, all of our potable water is actually desalinated water, so it’s a very critical sector of the economy as well as society,” says Hassan Arafat, senior director of the university’s Research & Innovation Center for Graphene and 2D Materials (RIC2D).

Desalination is the process of removing salt from seawater, and cleaning the water to make it drinkable. It isn’t just vital in the UAE: more than 300 million people globally rely on desalinated water. And as climate change and pollution threaten our limited fresh water supplies, that number will increase.

But desalination is a costly and energy-intensive process.

That’s where graphene comes in: Arafat is working on a graphene-enhanced membrane that could make the process more efficient and cheaper.

“This year, we have seen a massive number of calamities due to climate change,” says Arafat. “Water shortage is a global problem, and it’s becoming worse by the day. Knowing that we are contributing to the solution of these problems is very fulfilling.”

Desalination solutions

RIC2D was established in 2022 at Khalifa University, with investment from the government of Abu Dhabi, to further research into graphene innovations and its production.

While Arafat’s role as senior director gives him an overview of many projects, his own research is focused on water.

Arafat says that graphene can extend a membrane’s life by preventing “fouling,” which happens when bacteria accumulate on the filter and degrade the quality. Using graphene to “enhance the performance” of filters could help reduce energy usage and cut costs for desalination, says Arafat.

“Even in small quantities, these graphene materials significantly improve the performance of the membranes in terms of their water production,” he adds.

Currently in the development phase, the membranes will be produced and scaled up next year at the UK’s University of Manchester, RIC2D’s partner in graphene research, says Arafat. After that, the membranes will be tested in a desalination plant.

Arafat isn’t the only one looking into graphene as a solution for desalination — startups like Watercycle Technologies are developing graphene-enhanced membranes to remove specific minerals from water, while Molymem is focused on dye removal — but Arafat claims that RIC2D’s membrane “out-performs” similar water filters in recent academic literature, and the partnership with the University of Manchester allows them to scale the technology for industrial testing.

RIC2D is also exploring other applications for graphene such as sustainable construction materials with the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and renewable hydrogen energy solutions.

Making graphene from methane

Despite its transformational potential, graphene has proven difficult and expensive to produce at scale.

One way to make it is by removing single layers from graphite, which has restricted its impact on mass-market solutions. However, researchers at RIC2D are working on ways to cut costs and time “without compromising the quality,” says Arafat.

Another production method uses plasma chemistry to extract carbon from gases such as methane — a greenhouse gas made up of carbon and hydrogen — that are by-products of the oil and gas industry.

The UAE is one of the top oil producers globally, and around 30% of the nation’s GDP comes from hydrocarbons. However, the UAE is eager to diversify its economy and is aiming for zero emissions by 2050.

Graphene could help with both ambitions.

RIC2D collaborated with UK startup Levidian, which developed its own plasma chemistry process to extract carbon from methane.

By leveraging the UAE’s supply chain, there is a “great opportunity to accelerate the adoption of graphene in support of climate change,” says James Baker, CEO of Graphene@Manchester, the graphene innovation center at the University of Manchester, which partnered with Khalifa University to establish the RIC2D lab in 2022.

Any carbon-based material — including waste from the oil and gas industry, or petroleum products like car tires — could be “effectively recycled or reused” to create chemically manufactured graphene, says Baker. “(There’s) a lot of interest in the UAE around the supply chain of producing graphene, and we’re working to really scale up production of this material from grams to kilograms to tons.”

There’s an added benefit in producing graphene from a gas like methane: the hydrogen extracted can be used as a fuel, says Baker. He adds that graphene-composite materials could also be used to store hydrogen in stronger pressure vessels.

“You’re not only de-carbonizing the waste, you’re using it, rather than putting it to a landfill or burning in it,” Baker adds.

Thinking globally

At the Graphene Flagship Week in September, an initiative funded by the European Union, RIC2D showcased multiple projects that are already on their way to commercialization, including a collaboration with French company Grapheal, which makes graphene-based biosensors, and a partnership with Turkish company NanoGrafen, which explores how to convert waste materials such as used tires into graphene products for composite construction materials.

However, “the more novel and groundbreaking and life-changing the idea is, the longer the path is to be is likely to be to its final commercialization,” says Arafat.

Arafat hopes that his research can have an impact in the Emirates and beyond. “While we’re starting locally, we’re certainly thinking globally,” he says.

At least one person was killed Wednesday after a US military Osprey aircraft crashed off the coast of Japan’s Yakushima Island in southern Kagoshima prefecture, according to a spokesperson from the Japan Coast Guard.

Six people were on board the aircraft, the Coast Guard said. Previously, officials said eight people had been on board.

The spokesperson added that no further information was available on the other individuals on board and the reason behind the crash.

The Coast Guard received information about the crash around 2:47 p.m. local time (12:47 a.m. ET), said the spokesperson, adding the 10th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters has dispatched a patrol boat and aircraft to the crash area.

The Kagoshima prefectural official did not specify if the request came from the US Marines or Air Force.

It is the latest crash to involve an Osprey military aircraft, with numerous accidents reported over the years.

In August this year three US Marines were killed and several others seriously wounded after an Osprey crashed during military exercises in Australia.

In 2022, five US Marines died after their MV-22B Osprey plane crashed during a training mission near Glamis, California. The same year four US service members were killed when their Osprey crashed during NATO training exercises in Norway.

The Osprey is a highly flexible aircraft that is can take off vertically like a helicopter but also carry out high speed cruising of a more conventional turboprop plane with wings.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

A new book on the British royal family has been pulled from shops in the Netherlands amid reports that a translation error revealed the identity of a family member embroiled in a race row over Prince Harry and Meghan’s first child.

“Endgame,” or “Eindstrijd” in Dutch, the latest book from British writer Omid Scobie was released this week.

The Dutch translation was published in the Netherlands by Xander Uitgevers, which said it was “temporarily withdrawing” the book from sale in a statement on its website Tuesday.

“An error occurred in the Dutch translation and is currently being rectified,” adds the statement.

The Dutch translation reportedly revealed the name of a member of the royal family alleged to have questioned the skin color of Prince Harry and Meghan’s son Archie before he was born, according to PA Media.

In March 2021, the Duchess of Sussex revealed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that husband Harry told her that there was concern within the royal family about her baby’s skin tone.

There were several “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born,” she said.

“That was relayed to me from Harry. Those were conversations that family had with him,” Meghan added, declining to reveal who was involved in those conversations. “That would be very damaging to them,” she said.

Winfrey later said that Harry had told her the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip had not made the comments.

In Scobie’s new book, which has received scathing reviews from British press, he makes a number of claims about the Windsor clan. The English-language edition does not name the royal who raised questions about Archie’s skin color but suggests similar remarks were also made by a second individual within the royal household, according to PA Media.

While the publisher has said a translation issue is behind the book being pulled off shelves, it’s unclear why there would be additional detail in a foreign language translation.

After the Dutch edition was taken off shelves, Scobie told local TV channel RTL Boulevard that “there has never been a version that I’ve produced that has names in it.”

“The book is available in a number of languages and unfortunately I can’t speak Dutch so I haven’t seen the copy for myself, but if there have been any translation errors I am sure the publisher has got it under control,” he said.

The US-based author previously co-wrote “Finding Freedom,” a 2020 biography of the couple which covered them favorably.