The science behind Mozambique’s soils - Food and Agriculture Organization

SYDNEY, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- An Australian study has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, offering a framework to help scientists identify potential locations for future exploration, habitation and food production. The research classifies almost 800 million locations across Mars into a hierarchy of 2,000 soil classes using orbital observations and models, presenting a global map showing where they occur, according to a statement released by Australia's University of Sydney. "Scientists have mapped Mars' geology, mineralogy and chemistry before, but our system brings together multiple properties into a single framework, helping us understand how different Martian soils relate to one another and where they're found," said Daniel Irving, a PhD student at the university, who led the research. The classification system groups Martian soils into 10 major "realms," 100 "assemblages" and 2,000 detailed "forms" based on properties including texture, mineralogy, pH and profile thickness. As a proof of concept, researchers assessed the soil classes for characteristics relevant to plant production.

image: PhD candidate Daniel Irving at the University of Sydney A PhD student at the University of Sydney has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, creating a new framework that could help scientists compare landscapes across the Red Planet and identify promising locations for future exploration, habitation and food production.

LISTEN | Why citizen scientists buried thousands of undies:Quirks and Quarks9:24Why citizen scientists buried thousands of undiesFranz Bender convinced a thousand people to soil their underwear — and he wasn’t asking for bowel movements. In 2021, the Swiss soil ecologist and his team recruited 1,000 citizen scientists to bury and dig up underwear around Switzerland in an effort to better understand soil and soil health. In September, the research won an Ig Nobel Prize, which is awarded annually for research that makes people laugh and then think. The effort yielded some surprising results for the researchers — and the participants when they unearthed their underwear, which the hungry underground microbes had often consumed down to almost nothing. “I think this moment when people dig out the underwear and look at it, it was really a revealing moment for many,” Bender, who works at the Agroscope agricultural research centre in Zurich, told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. “It’s fascinating to see that, yeah, soil is really alive, and there’s a lot of life underground that we usually don’t think about.”The research was published in Plants People Planet in Aug. 2026.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.

Forests that stood on Mozambique's coast thousands of years ago now lie beneath shallow seas, and they have become fish-filled "peat reefs" with marine life comparable to coral reefs, researchers report in Scientific Reports. A team from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory, led by Mario Lebrato, documented the submerged peat in the Bazaruto Archipelago in the Western Indian Ocean. BCSS, founded in 2017, describes itself as Africa's first permanent ocean observatory. Working with universities and institutions in the U. K., U. S. and Canada, the team believes it has carried out the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics. Old forests, new seafloorRadiocarbon dating shows the peat formed between about 300 and 5,000 years ago, and chemical analysis indicates it came mostly from coastal land plants and trees. Some samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. Lebrato said the coastline has very little natural hard seabed, mostly shifting sand. As rising seas expose the old peat layers, they create rare solid habitat where marine life can settle, hide and feed.