By Heather Hobbs


BRINGING YOU THE LATEST NEWS & EVENTS FROM THE SCIENCE INDUSTRY


New Temperate Rocky Worlds Discovery – Tracing the Emergence of Biology


“It is important to detect as many temperate terrestrial worlds as possible to study the diversity of exoplanet climates and eventually to be in a position to measure how frequently biology has emerged in the Cosmos,” Amaury Triaud.


Astronomers at the University of Birmingham working as part of an international research team have announced the discovery of two ‘super-Earth’ planets orbiting LP 890-9, a small, cool star located about 100 light-years from Earth.


The star, also called TOI-4306 or SPECULOOS-2, is the second-coolest star found to host planets, after the famous TRAPPIST-1 discovery [1].


The system’s inner planet, called LP 890-9b, is about 30% larger than Earth and completes an orbit around the star in just 2.7 days. This first planet was initially identified as a possible planet candidate by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space mission searching for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. This candidate was confirmed and characterised by the SPECULOOS telescopes (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra- cOOl Stars), one of which is operated by the University of Birmingham. SPECULOOS researchers then used their telescopes to seek additional transiting planets in the system that would have been missed by TESS.


“TESS searches for exoplanets using the transit method, by monitoring the brightness of thousands of stars simultaneously, looking for slight dimmings that might be


caused by planets passing in front of their stars,” explained Laetitia Delrez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège, and the lead author of the article.


“However, a follow-up with ground-based telescopes is often necessary to confirm the planetary nature of the detected candidates and to refine the measurements of their sizes and orbital properties.”


Limited sensitivity


This follow-up is particularly important in the case of very cold stars, such as LP 890-9, which emit most of their light in the near-infrared and for which TESS has a rather limited sensitivity.


The telescopes of the SPECULOOS project, installed at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile and on the island of Tenerife, are optimised to observe this type of star with high precision, thanks to cameras that are very sensitive in the near-infrared.


“The goal of SPECULOOS is to search for potentially habitable terrestrial planets transiting some of the smallest and coolest stars in the solar neighbourhood, such as the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, which we discovered in 2016”, recalls Michaël Gillon, from the University of Liège, and the principal investigator of the SPECULOOS project. “This strategy is motivated by the fact that such planets are particularly well suited to detailed studies of their atmospheres and to the search for possible chemical traces of life with large observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).”


The observations of LP 890-9 gathered by SPECULOOS proved fruitful as they not only confirmed the first planet, but they were critical for the detection of a second, previously unknown planet. This second planet, LP 890-9c (renamed SPECULOOS- 2c by the SPECULOOS researchers), is similar in size to the first (about 40% larger than Earth) but has a longer orbital period of about 8.5 days. This orbital period, later confirmed with the MuSCAT3 instrument in Hawaii, places the planet in the so-called ‘habitable zone’ around its star.


Earth-like conditions Amaury Triaud


“The habitable zone is a concept under which a planet with similar geological and atmospheric conditions as Earth, would have a surface temperature allowing water to remain liquid for billions of years” explained Amaury Triaud, a Professor of Exoplanetology at University Birmingham and the leader of the


The SPECULOOS telescopes installed at the Paranal Observatory Chile and the island of Tenerife


SPECULOOS working group that scheduled the observations leading to the discovery of the second planet. “This gives us a license to observe more and assess its habitability.”


The next step will be to study the atmosphere of this planet, for example with the JWST, as LP 890-9c appears to be the second-most favourable target among the potentially habitable terrestrial planets known so far, surpassed only by the TRAPPIST-1 planets (for which Professor Triaud was also co-discoverer).


“It is important to detect as many temperate terrestrial worlds as possible to study the diversity of exoplanet climates and eventually to be in a position to measure how frequently biology has emerged in the Cosmos,” Professor Triaud told International Labmate. “The planets we just discovered are a little bigger than the TRAPPIST-1 planets, so we could expect more gas, for instance, more water vapour; however at this stage this is really uncertain (and we still do not know what sort of climate the TRAPPIST-1 planets, and even, whether they have an atmosphere).


“The best way to find out is to use the James Webb telescope and find out whether they have an atmosphere and then what the atmospheres are made of. In many ways this is why such a discovery is important. There are only three types of climates for terrestrial worlds in the solar system: one like venus (CO2


know whether exoplanets will follow these three classes of atmospheres, or whether there will be more. This is why it is important to identify as many terrestrial planets as possible, to understand why climates and environments are possible.”


dominated) and one like Titan (CH4


1. This rare discovery is the subject of a forthcoming publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/9xg5 58742pr@reply-direct.com


Discovery changes thinking around Cancer Metastasis


“These findings are among the most important to have come out of my lab for three decades.” Richard Gilbertson


New research by scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that cancer cells can ‘hijack’ a process used by healthy cells to spread around the body. The team, based at the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Institute, found that blocking the activity of the NALCN protein in cells in mice with cancer triggers metastasis; and were also surprised to find that the removal of NALCN from mice without cancer also caused healthy cells to leave their original tissue and travel around the body where they joined other organs.


For example, healthy cells from the pancreas which migrated to the kidney became healthy kidney cells, suggesting that metastasis isn’t an abnormal process limited to cancer as previously thought, but is a normal process used by healthy cells that has been exploited by cancers to migrate to other parts of the body to generate metastases.


Group Leader for the study and Director of the CRUK Cambridge Centre, Professor Richard Gilbertson, said: “These findings are among the most important to have come out of my lab for three decades. Not only have we identified one of the elusive


drivers of metastasis, but we have also turned a commonly held understanding of this on its head, showing how cancer hijacks processes in healthy cells for its own gains. If validated through further research, this could have far-reaching implications for how we prevent cancer from spreading and allow us to manipulate this process to repair damaged organs.”


NALCN (sodium (Na+) leak channel, non-selective) are leak channels expressed predominately in the central nervous system and throughout the rest of the body. These channels control the amount of salt – sodium – that goes in and out of the cell, a process that also alters the balance of electricity across the cell membrane. It is not yet clear why these channels seem to be implicated so directly in cancer metastasis.


Lead researcher on the study Dr Eric Rahrmann, said: “We are incredibly excited to have identified a single protein that regulates not only how cancer spreads through the body, independent of tumour growth, but also normal tissue cell shedding and repair. We are developing a clearer picture on the processes that govern how cancer cells spread. We can now consider whether there are likely existing drugs which could be repurposed to prevent this


dominated), one like the Earth (N2 dominated). We do not and O2


Research team of Professor Gilbertson Credit CRUK Cambridge Institute


mechanism from triggering cancer spreading in patients.”


The research, published in Nature Genetics was funded by CRUK


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/K2mX 58919pr@reply-direct.com


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