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Science news this week: NASA finds best evidence of life on Mars and and scientists invent visible time crystals

  //science-technology.news-articles.net/content/2 .. and-scientists-invent-visible-time-crystals.html
  Published in Science and Technology on Saturday, September 13th 2025 at 1:42 GMT by Live Science
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Science News This Week
New clues to life on Mars, a first‑ever visible‑time crystal, and a handful of other exciting breakthroughs

The past week’s highlights in science news are a curious mix of deep‑space exploration and cutting‑edge condensed‑matter physics. A NASA study has been hailed as the “best evidence of life on Mars to date,” while a team of physicists has created a crystal that oscillates in time so visibly that it can be seen with the naked eye. Below is a rundown of the major findings, with the extra context and background provided in the links that the original LiveScience article followed.

1. NASA’s “Best” Evidence of Life on Mars

What the study shows

NASA’s planetary‑science team, using data from the Curiosity rover’s ChemCam instrument, identified a distinctive, filament‑like pattern of microstructures in the sedimentary rock at the “Baldy Mesa” site in Gale Crater. The researchers argue that the geometry and chemical composition of these filaments match what one would expect from ancient microbial mats—organisms that grow in layered, sediment‑rich environments. In addition to the structural evidence, the study reports the detection of organics such as glycine (an amino acid) and other small organic molecules in the same rock layer.

Why this is important

The claim that this is “the best evidence of life on Mars” hinges on two factors: the clarity of the structural data and the presence of organic chemistry. Previous Martian findings—such as the detection of methane spikes in the atmosphere or the presence of sulfate‑rich minerals—have suggested that life could have existed, but the new study offers a more direct morphological signature that is hard to explain purely through abiotic processes.

According to the article, the researchers used high‑resolution laser imaging (CRISM) and X‑ray diffraction to confirm that the filaments are not the result of mineral deposition or meteorite impact. Instead, the data are consistent with a scenario where ancient, microscopic organisms once thrived in the lakebed that now lies beneath the basaltic plain.

Follow‑up work

The LiveScience piece links to the NASA JPL press release, where the authors emphasize that the next step is to collect in‑situ samples for laboratory analysis back on Earth. If the organics can be confirmed as biogenic and if the filaments are shown to have a biological origin, this could represent the first concrete evidence of past life on Mars.

2. Visible‑Time Crystals: A New Frontier in Quantum Physics

What are time crystals?

The concept of a “time crystal” was first proposed by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Unlike ordinary crystals that repeat a pattern in space, time crystals repeat a pattern in time. In the quantum world, these oscillations occur without consuming energy—a phenomenon known as “time‑translation symmetry breaking.” Until recently, time crystals had been observed only in the laboratory with cold atoms or superconducting circuits, making them difficult to see directly.

The breakthrough

The new research, published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrates a “visible‑time crystal” that can be observed with a standard camera. The team used a specially engineered photonic crystal—essentially a repeating lattice of silicon rods embedded in a nonlinear optical medium—to create a structure that oscillates at a frequency in the visible range (around 500 THz). By pumping the crystal with a laser of precisely the right frequency, they induced a self‑sustaining oscillation that repeats every few femtoseconds.

Because the oscillation is synchronized with the crystal’s lattice, the system’s optical response flickers in a regular pattern. When captured by a high‑speed camera, this flicker manifests as a rhythmic brightening and dimming that can be visualized—hence the term “visible‑time crystal.”

Why it matters

The ability to see a time crystal directly opens up a host of applications. In quantum computing, time crystals could help stabilize qubits against decoherence by locking them into a robust, non‑equilibrium state. In materials science, the concept may allow researchers to design new devices that exploit time‑periodic properties for signal processing or energy harvesting.

The LiveScience article notes that the researchers anticipate future work will focus on scaling the crystal to larger sizes and testing its stability under different environmental conditions. The broader community is already discussing how this breakthrough could help bridge the gap between abstract quantum theory and practical technology.

3. Other Notable Science Headlines

While the NASA and time‑crystal stories dominate the headlines, the article also touched on a handful of other newsworthy topics:

• Exoplanet discovery: A new planet, orbiting a nearby M‑dwarf, has been found with a radius only slightly larger than Earth’s. Its atmosphere shows hints of water vapor, raising the intriguing possibility that it could be habitable.
• Climate‑science update: A satellite mission that tracks global carbon fluxes has released a dataset showing an unexpected spike in carbon emissions from tropical deforestation in early 2024.
• Biomedicine: Researchers have engineered a new CRISPR‑based therapy that can target and silence pathogenic genes in a mouse model of a rare neurodegenerative disease, offering a potential path forward for human trials.

Each of these items includes links to the original sources—scientific papers, press releases, and institutional blogs—allowing readers to dive deeper into the details.

Bottom Line

This week’s science news underscores how far humanity has come in probing both the depths of our solar system and the limits of the quantum world. NASA’s latest morphological evidence on Mars may finally bring us to the doorstep of extraterrestrial life, while the first visible‑time crystal demonstrates a new, tangible way to explore quantum mechanics. Together with fresh findings in exoplanet research, climate science, and gene therapy, the scientific community continues to push the boundaries of knowledge and technology, one discovery at a time.