エピソード

  • : AI Takes the Wheel: Autonomous Driving on Mars

    : AI Takes the Wheel: Autonomous Driving on Mars
    2026/02/09
    This episode explores how NASA’s Perseverance rover completed its first Mars drives guided by generative AI.

    Using vision-language models to analyze orbital images and terrain, the system planned safe routes without real-time human control—overcoming Earth–Mars communication delays.

    These tests mark a major step toward fully autonomous planetary exploration and future human missions.

    This episode includes AI-generated content.
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    28 分
  • JWST’s Quintet: Five-Galaxy Merger in the Early Universe

    JWST’s Quintet: Five-Galaxy Merger in the Early Universe
    2026/02/07
    Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, this episode explores a rare five-galaxy merger seen just 800 million years after the Big Bang. Known as JWST’s Quintet, the discovery shows galaxies forming stars and interacting far earlier and faster than expected.

    A surrounding oxygen halo reveals that these collisions were already spreading heavy elements into space, forcing astronomers to rethink how galaxies formed in the early universe.

    This episode includes AI-generated content.
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    30 分
  • Stellar Flares Near the Milky Way’s Black Hole

    Stellar Flares Near the Milky Way’s Black Hole
    2026/02/05
    This episode explores how the South Pole Telescope detected powerful millimeter-wave stellar flares near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

    Triggered by magnetic reconnection, these bursts reveal how stars and their magnetic fields survive in one of the galaxy’s most extreme, dust-shrouded regions.

    This episode includes AI-generated content.
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    29 分
  • Einstein’s Law and the Dearth of Two-Sun Planets

    Einstein’s Law and the Dearth of Two-Sun Planets
    2026/02/03
    New astrophysical research suggests that general relativity helps explain why planets are rare in binary star systems. As close stellar pairs evolve, relativistic orbital effects create resonances that destabilize nearby planetary orbits.

    The result is a hostile environment where planets are either ejected or destroyed, leaving a planetary “desert” around tight binaries. Only distant worlds can survive—often too far away to be easily detected.

    This episode includes AI-generated content.
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    31 分
  • A Dark Matter Sheet Shapes the Motion of the Milky Way

    A Dark Matter Sheet Shapes the Motion of the Milky Way
    2026/02/01
    New research suggests the Milky Way and Andromeda lie within a vast, flat sheet of dark matter stretching millions of light-years. Using detailed computer simulations, scientists explain puzzling galaxy motions that once seemed to defy gravity.

    This planar structure—bounded by enormous cosmic voids—allows nearby galaxies to follow the universe’s expansion despite strong local gravity, bringing theory and observation into rare alignment in our cosmic neighborhood.
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    35 分
  • Did Earth’s Water Come from Space? New Clues from Lunar Samples

    Did Earth’s Water Come from Space? New Clues from Lunar Samples
    2026/01/30
    This episode examines new evidence from Apollo-era lunar samples suggesting that most of Earth’s water did not come from asteroid or comet impacts.

    By studying oxygen isotopes preserved on the Moon’s stable surface, researchers found that meteoritic contributions were surprisingly small.

    These findings challenge long-standing theories about the origin of Earth’s oceans, while offering new insight into how our planet became habitable—and how lunar resources could s
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    38 分
  • Enceladus and the Chemistry of Life Beneath Icy Moons

    Enceladus and the Chemistry of Life Beneath Icy Moons
    2026/01/28
    Laboratory experiments in Japan and Germany have recreated the subsurface ocean conditions of Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon.

    By cycling simple chemicals through heat and freezing—mimicking hydrothermal activity—scientists produced amino acids, key building blocks of life. The results match organic signatures detected by NASA’s Cassini mission, suggesting Enceladus may be actively generating complex chemistry today.

    This research strengthens the case for ocean worlds as promising targets in the search for extraterrestrial habitability.
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    30 分
  • Dark Energy Survey Reveals New Clues About the Expanding Universe

    Dark Energy Survey Reveals New Clues About the Expanding Universe
    2026/01/26
    After six years of observations, the Dark Energy Survey has delivered its most precise analysis of cosmic expansion, based on hundreds of millions of galaxies.

    Using weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering, scientists refined measurements of dark energy and confirmed much of the standard cosmological model—while revealing a persistent tension in how matter clusters across time.

    These results deepen our understanding of the accelerating universe and set the stage for the next generation of cosmic observatories.
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    27 分