A team of physicists and engineers at the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder has discovered a new way to measure the orientation of magnetic fields using what may be the tiniest compasses around—atoms. 

The group’s findings could one day lead to a host of new quantum sensors, from devices that map out the activity of the human brain to others that could help airplanes navigate the globe. The new study, , stems from a collaboration between physicist Cindy Regal and quantum engineer Svenja Knappe.

It reveals the versatility of atoms trapped as vapors, said Regal, professor of physics and fellow at between ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

“Atoms can tell you a lot,” she said. “We’re data mining them to glean simultaneously whether magnetic fields are changing by extremely small amounts and what direction those fields point.” 

These fields are all around us, even if you never see them. Earth’s iron-rich core, for example, generates a powerful magnetic field that surrounds the planet. Your own brain also emits tiny pulses of magnetic energy every time a neuron fires.

But measuring what direction those fields are pointing, for precise atomic sensors in particular, can get tricky. In the current study, Regal and her colleagues set out to do just that—with the aid of a small chamber containing about a hundred billion rubidium atoms in vapor form. The researchers hit the chamber with a magnetic field, causing the atoms inside to experience shifts in energy. They then used a laser to precisely measure those shifts.

“You can think of each atom as a compass needle,” said Dawson Hewatt, a graduate student in Regal’s lab at JILA. “And we have a billion compass needles, which could make for really precise measurement devices.”

Magnetic world

The research emerges, in part, from Knappe’s long-running goal to explore the magnetic environment surrounding us.

“What magnetic imaging allows us to do is measure sources that are buried in dense and optically opaque structures,” said Knappe, research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. “They’re underwater. They’re buried under concrete. They’re inside your head, behind your skull.”

In 2017, for example, Knappe co-founded the company that manufactures atomic vapor magnetic sensors, also called optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs). The company builds integrated sensors the size of a sugar cube and fits them into helmets that can map out the activity of human brains.

These OPMs also have a major limitation: They only perform well enough to measure minute changes in magnetic fields in environments shielded from outside magnetic forces. A different set of OPMs can be used outside these rooms, but they are only adept at measuring how strong magnetic fields are. They can’t, on their own, record what direction those fields are pointing. That’s important information for understanding changes brains may undergo due to various neurological conditions.

To extract that kind of information, engineers typically calibrate their sensors using reference magnetic fields, which have a known direction, as guides of a sort. They compare data from sensors with and without the reference magnetic fields applied to gauge how those sensors are responding. In most cases, those references are small metal coils, which, Knappe said, can warp or degrade over time.

Regal and her team had a different idea: They would use a microwave antenna as a reference, which would allow them to rely on the behavior of atoms themselves to correct for any changes of the reference over time.

Study co-authors included Christopher Kiehl, a former graduate student at JILA; Tobias Thiele, a former postdoctoral researcher at JILA; and Thanmay Menon, a graduate student at JILA.

Atoms guide the way

Regal explained that atoms behave a bit like tiny magnets. If you zap one of the team’s atoms with a microwave signal, its internal structure will wiggle—a sort of atomic dance that can tell physicists a lot.

“Ultimately, we can read out those wiggles, which tell us about the strength of the energy transitions the atoms are undergoing, which then tells us about the direction of the magnetic field,” Regal said. 

In the current study, the team was able to use that atomic dancing to pinpoint the orientation of a magnetic field to an accuracy of nearly one-hundredth of a degree. Some other kinds of sensors can also reach this level with careful calibration, but the researchers see atoms as having significant potential with further development.  

Unlike mechanical devices with internal parts that can morph, “atoms are always the same,” Regal said.

The team still has to improve the precision of its tiny compasses before bringing them out into the real world. But the researchers hope that, one day, airplane pilots could use atoms to fly around the globe, following local changes in Earth’s magnetic field, much like migratory birds using their own biological magnetic sensors.

“It’s now a question of: ‘How far can we push these atomic systems?’” Knappe said.

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See a history of quantum research at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder
 

  Learn more

Interested in being part of the quantum incubator? Reach out to 
cubit@colorado.edu

To kick off the in 2025, three ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ universities in collaboration with have announced that a new facility for fostering quantum technologies is coming to ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ.

The State of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ has taken bold action to help bring the advances in quantum physics out of the lab and into the real world through its investment into the Quantum Incubator and related quantum assets throughout the state.

The facility will be housed in a 13,000-square-foot space in east Boulder. It is funded by a state tax incentive and spearheaded by ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, in partnership with ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ State University, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ School of Mines and Elevate Quantum, a coalition of 120 organizations, including the three campuses, in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ, New Mexico and Wyoming. Additionally, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder is providing leadership and staff resources for its development and launch.

  From the partners

Gov. Jared Polis:

"ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ is the national hub for innovation in the fast-growing quantum industry and this new incubator will strengthen the industry in our state. By bringing together our world-class higher education system with the companies who are helping to shape this industry, this incubator will help drive forward the next chapter for quantum in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ, driving more jobs and economic development."

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, House Assistant Minority Leader"

“Thanks to the partnership of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ State University and ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ School of Mines, we were successful in designating ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and the Rocky Mountain West the nation’s leading quantum tech hub under the CHIPS and Science Act. And as we cheer the development of our state’s new quantum incubator—right here in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ’s 2nd—we are also celebrating the advancements and developments still to come."

CSU President Amy Parsons:

"Quantum technology will revolutionize industries, solve complex problems and significantly improve lives. CSU is proud to collaborate with other quantum experts across the state as part of this effort. We will continue to develop a leading-edge degree program infrastructure that will meet future workforce needs in this high-demand space."

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ School of Mines President Paul C. Johnson:

"The new quantum incubator is a great example of the strong collaborative spirit driving ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ's leadership in quantum innovation. The quantum incubator and the Quantum COmmons shared-use campus in Arvada will be great attractors for and enablers of the technological innovation and quantum industry growth that is the Elevate Quantum vision."

Elevate Quantum CEO and Regional Innovation Officer Zachary Yerushalmi:

"With these new facilities from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and our R1 universities, we're strengthening the foundation of what is already the world's largest quantum industry cluster. Elevate Quantum could not be more excited to see this vital piece of infrastructure come to life."

University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ President Todd Saliman:

"As a longstanding leader in this research, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ is excited to team up with CSU, the School of Mines, our partners at Elevate Quantum and the State of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ to realize this wonderful new facility. This meaningfully advances our efforts to establish ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ as a global epicenter of quantum research and technology, and it will enable our great state to continue to drive this critical industry."

“I couldn’t be prouder of the role ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder is playing in this important work,” said Massimo Ruzzene, vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. “By stepping up to secure the physical facility, establish the operating entity, identify prospective tenants and ready the building to ramp up operations starting in January, we are positioning the incubator to quickly fill an important need in advancing quantum innovation across the region.”

The facility will include a collaborative office environment for early-stage quantum companies and state-of-the-art scientific equipment—providing a testbed to transform ideas for quantum technologies into products that will benefit consumers in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and beyond. Quantum technologies could include sensors for detecting signs of illness in human breath or networks that may one day send data that can’t be hacked over long distances.

“Quantum science and technologies will enable life-changing advances that touch every segment of society,” said Chancellor Justin Schwartz. “This collaborative facility will allow our researchers’ discoveries to progress more quickly from lab to market and will help cement ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and the United States as global leaders in this exciting field.”

The quantum incubator is one piece of a wide-ranging effort to grow the Mountain West region as a “center of mass” for quantum technology, said Scott Sternberg, executive director of the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶbit Quantum Initiative at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. It is especially timely as UNESCO has deemed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Rapid growth

Momentum around quantum has been building.

JILA, a joint research institute between ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has served as the regional epicenter for quantum research for over 60 years.

In 2023, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) named Elevate Quantum, headquartered in Denver, as an official tech hub for quantum information technology. Since that designation, the coalition has secured more than $120 million in funding to grow the quantum industry in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and the Mountain West.

As part of that effort, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Gov. Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 1325 in 2024, which directed funds to create the new incubator. Today, the quantum industry supports about 3,000 jobs in the state, but that number could grow to more than 10,000 in the next decade.

“We asked the question: What is Boulder great at when it comes to quantum?” Sternberg said. “And how can the incubator provide a catalyst to make these assets even greater?”

Center of mass

The quantum incubator will not be alone in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ. In June, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced a $20 million National Quantum Nanofab facility that will be constructed on the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder campus. Elevate Quantum is also launching a 70-acre campus in Arvada, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ, called the Quantum COmmons, with an initial 30,000 square feet of shared-use facilities being developed by ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ School of Mines in support of Elevate Quantum partners.

Sternberg sees these facilities as part of a progression—helping companies go from papers in a scientific journal, to new prototypes, to products built at scale and, eventually, to the market.

“ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ’s new quantum facilities will help turn discoveries in the lab into real-world applications, continuing our leadership in quantum science and creating thousands of new jobs for Coloradans,” said Eve Lieberman, executive director of the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Office of Economic Development and International Trade. “We are excited to celebrate this milestone and look forward to the achievements it will bring to our state.”

The new Boulder facility will also be a vibrant place to work. Physicists, engineers, lab workers and businesspeople can meet quantum experts from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and around the world to share ideas and expertise. They’ll also be able to run experiments on equipment rarely seen outside of large universities. That could include working atomic clocks or devices that measure the extremely fast “ticking” of atoms.

The quantum incubator will be located in BioMed Realty’s Flatiron Park at 5555 Central Ave. in Boulder. Flatiron Park, a hub for life science and technology innovation, consists of 23 buildings and more than 1 million square feet of lab and office space.

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In ŷ���ڱ���Ƶriosity, experts across the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Jingchun Li, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, answers: “How do sea creatures make light?”

From shallow reefs to pitch-black depths, the ocean is alive with sparkling lights. Fish, squid, clams and plankton have found a wide range of ways to glow, shimmer and flash, lighting up the dark water like stars in the night sky.

Scientists estimate that in the deep ocean where sunlight cannot reach, can produce some kind of light.

“Light is important for signaling,” said Li, who has spent much of her career working in oceans around the world to study marine life. “It helps animals of the same species communicate and recognize each other, and it can also serve as a warning to other animals.”

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Do animals have emotions?

Bioluminescence is one of the most common methods animals use to do this. By triggering a chemical reaction between oxygen, a molecule called luciferin and an enzyme, luciferase, in their bodies, they can light up.

On land, fireflies use bioluminescence to emit their electric green light. In the deep ocean, anglerfish, a terrifying antagonist seen in Finding Nemo, use the same method to shine in the abyss.

The fish has a bony structure on its forehead that lights up like a lantern, thanks to the large number of bioluminescent bacteria living inside the fish.

But not all animals are born with the right chemical ingredients to generate light on their own. Some still find ways to shine.

The disco clam (Ctenoides ales), a mollusk living in the shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean, has evolved a unique strip of tissue on their mantle that can reflect ambient light. has found that the clam’s reflective strip contains silica, the main component in glass. When disco clams furl and unfurl their mantles quickly, they reflect sunlight, creating an effect reminiscent of a disco ball.

Li said scientists are still working to understand how disco clams developed their reflective tissue through evolution. Other closely related species, such as rough file clams (Ctenoides scaber), lack the silica structure in their tissue.

The disco clam’s dazzling display might serve as a defense mechanism. Disco clams regularly open and close their shells, but Li and her team found that when the clams sense a shadow looming over them—a sign that a predator might be approaching—they flash much faster, up to six times per second, like a strobe light.

Anglerfish, on the other hand, light up to draw smaller fish toward them, helping to attract prey in the dark. The ostracod, a tiny, bioluminescence crustacean that looks like a shrimp inside a pod, glows to attract mates. Males spit out a glowing mucus to create a special pattern during mating rituals.

The question of why deep-sea animals produce light remains an intriguing scientific mystery.

“To survive in extremely dark and cold water, every bit of energy matters. But having a vision is energetically demanding,” Li said. “From an evolutionary perspective, it’s surprising that so many animals in the deep ocean retained the ability to see and even evolved ways to illuminate their surroundings.”

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In ŷ���ڱ���Ƶriosity, experts across the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, answers: “Do animals have emotions?”

Pet owners tend to see their animals’ feelings clearly. Dogs wagging their tails when the owners get home? Happiness. Crouching down after being caught raiding the trash? Embarrassment. Barking, and jumping up and down when they see their friends? Excitement.

But what about less cuddly creatures? Do crustaceans and birds have emotions, too?

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“Of course they do,” Bekoff said “There's solid science showing very clearly that a wide diversity of animals have emotions, from mammals to all the vertebrates and invertebrates.”  

Bekoff has spent decades observing animals from coyotes in the Rocky Mountains to Adélie penguins in Antarctica. He has written multiple books about animal sentience including “The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter.”

He said emotions play an important role in helping animals make decisions about how to respond to social situations, such as whether to run from a potential danger or to approach a mate. For group-living animals like coyotes and wolves, having emotions is fundamental to forming packs.

Evidence has shown that mammals—including humans—emit similar brain chemicals during emotional situations. For example, birds secrete dopamine, a chemical that makes humans feel good, when they sing songs to attract a potential mate.

But even invertebrates like insects and crustaceans could experience emotions, according to a growing body of . While scientists can't definitively say lobsters experience happiness the same way as humans do, they certainly avoid painful situations.

“There is a biodiversity of emotions,” Bekoff said. He explained that the feeling of joy varies even between different people, but that doesn’t mean animals like lobsters or ants don’t experience happiness. “It may simply look different than in humans.”

Recognizing all animals have emotions can help people develop more empathy toward wildlife and support wildlife conservation efforts, he added.

In a published earlier this year, Bekoff and his collaborators proposed that treating individual animals as creatures with emotions and personalities, in addition to understanding the species as a whole, could help preserve biodiversity.

For example, people might be more willing to use loud sounds or strong scents to scare away predators they encounter rather than resort to killing.

Bekoff said ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ could apply these approaches to help manage its wildlife, including grey wolves, which were reintroduced in the state in December following a voter-approved initiative. For social animals like wolves, if the leader dies, it can lead to the dissolution of the entire pack, he said.

“Wolves have very tight bonds with their pack members,” Bekoff said. “Pups have very tight bonds with their mom. Killing any of these individuals will not support a sustainable population.”

In the end, Bekoff says humans shouldn’t be so quick to brush off other animals. 

“It's really easy to write off an ant or a lobster or a crayfish, but there's no reason to. My take as a scientist is to keep the door open until we are sure that it is not true.” 

Off

Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.

In a new study, planetary scientists at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars—weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit. The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.

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Heshani Pieris, lead author of the study, said the findings are a first step toward forecasting extreme weather on Mars, just like scientists do on Earth.

“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Pieris, a graduate student at the (LASP) at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”

She will at the in Washington.

To put dust storms under the magnifying glass, the researchers drew on real observations from NASA’s satellite.

So far, they have identified weather patterns that may underly roughly two-thirds of the major dust storms on Mars. You won’t see Mars weather reporters standing in front of a green screen just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction, said study co-author Paul Hayne.

“We need to understand what causes some of the smaller or regional storms to grow into global-scale storms,” said Hayne, a researcher at LASP and associate professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t even fully understand the basic physics of how dust storms start at the surface.”

Dusty demise

Dust storms on Mars are something to behold.

Many begin as smaller storms that swirl around the ice caps at the planet’s north and south poles, usually during the second half of the Martian year. (A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days). Those storms can grow at a furious pace, pressing toward the equator until they cover millions of square miles and last for days.

The 2015 film The Martian starring Matt Damon featured one such apocalyptic storm that knocked over a satellite dish and tossed around astronauts. The reality is less cinematic. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, so dust storms on the Red Planet can’t generate much force. But they can still be trouble.

In 2018, for example, a global dust storm buried the solar panels on NASA’s Opportunity rover under a layer of dust. The rover died not long after.

“Even though the wind pressure may not be enough to knock over equipment, these dust grains can build up a lot of speed and pelt astronauts and their equipment,” Hayne said.

Hot spells

In the current study, Pieris and Hayne set their sights on two weather patterns that tend to occur every year on Mars known as “A” and “C” storms.

The team pored over observations of Mars from the Mars Climate Sounder instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter over eight Mars years (15 years on Earth). In particular, Pieris and Hayne looked for periods of unusual warmth—or weeks when more sunlight filtered through Mars’ thin atmosphere and baked the planet’s surface.

They discovered that roughly 68% of major storms on the planet were preceded by a sharp rise in temperatures at the surface. In other words, the planet heated up, then a few weeks later, conditions got dusty.

“It’s almost like Mars has to wait for the air to get clear enough to form a major dust storm,” Hayne said.

The team can’t prove that those balmy conditions actually cause the dust storms. But, Pieris said, similar phenomena trigger storms on Earth. During hot summers in Boulder, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ, for example, warm air near the ground can rise through the atmosphere, often forming those towering, gray clouds that signal rain.

“When you heat up the surface, the layer of atmosphere right above it becomes buoyant, and it can rise, taking dust with it,” Pieris said.

She and Hayne are now gathering observations from more recent years on Mars to continue to explore these explosive weather patterns. Eventually, they’d like to get to the point where they can look at live data coming from the Red Planet and predict what could happen in the weeks ahead.

“This study is not the end all be all of predicting storms on Mars,” Pieris said. “But we hope it’s a step in the right direction.”

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In ŷ���ڱ���Ƶriosity, experts across the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Integrative Physiology Professor Ken Wright, answers: “What does an all-nighter do to your body?”

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Whether we’re cramming for finals, catching a red-eye flight, binge-watching rom-coms, or indulging in a bit too much cheer, the holiday season can wreak havoc on sleep.

Surveys suggest that of U.S. adults stay up all night at least once during the year, and report pulling an all-nighter monthly. But can just one night of missed sleep really hurt us?

“Absolutely,” said Integrative Physiology Professor Ken Wright, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. “Pulling an all-nighter is a significant stressor, both physiologically and cognitively, to the body.”

Over the past two decades, Wright has invited countless paid volunteers into his lab for days-long, tightly controlled experiments. In in their 20s, he found that staying up all night and sleeping all day just once disrupted the levels and timing of 129 key proteins circulating in the blood, including those that regulate appetite and energy, keep blood sugar in check and fend off illness.  

Exposure to light when the body is accustomed to darkness can also throw off the timing of hormones, including melatonin (which, among other things, signals our body that it’s time to rest) and cortisol (the “stress hormone”). These shifts can disrupt our body clock, or circadian rhythm, making it harder to sleep when we want to.

Eating at a time when our body is not ready to process food can promote weight gain and boost Type-II diabetes risk—as studies show we store more calories as fat and are less efficient at turning sugar into energy at night.  

“A calorie is not just a calorie. If you eat junk food in the middle of the night, it can be even worse for you than eating that same junk food during the day,” said Wright.

The immune system also stands down, even when we are awake, during our “biological night” (a time when our body is conditioned to rest and recover and is not typically exposed to pathogens.) This makes us more vulnerable to injury and illness if they hit us in the wee hours of morning.

For instance, one study by another research team found that humans heal 60% faster when they sustain wounds during the day than at night. to viruses when they were supposed to be resting, those pathogens replicated 10 times faster than in mice infected during waking hours.

“Timing matters,” said Wright. “If you are awake in the middle of the night and you’re exposed to someone who is sick, you have an increased risk of getting sick.”

Lack of sleep can also do a number on our thinking the next day, with that skipping a night’s sleep is about the same as having a 0.08 blood alcohol level.

“If you drive after staying up all night, it is the equivalent of driving drunk,” Wright warned.

The sleep scientist has some advice for students cramming for finals: Don’t wait until the night before your test and stay up studying until dawn. Instead, study days prior to a test and review your notes right before bed because sleep can help consolidate your memories. If you do have to stay up late, make sure your midnight snack is as healthy as possible and avoid driving the next day.

Your body will thank you, and your grades might, too.

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The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s sea ice, an ominous milestone for the planet, could occur as early as 2027.

For the first time, an international research team, including ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder climatologist Alexandra Jahn and  from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, used computer models to predict when the first ice-free day could occur in the northernmost ocean. An ice-free Arctic could significantly impact the ecosystem and Earth’s climate by changing weather patterns. 

“The first ice-free day in the Arctic won’t change things dramatically,” said Jahn, associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and fellow at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “But it will show that we've fundamentally altered one of the defining characteristics of the natural environment in the Arctic Ocean, which is that it is covered by sea ice and snow year-round, through greenhouse gas emissions.”  

The findings were Dec. 3 in the journal Nature Communications. Jahn will also the results Dec. 9 at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in Washington D.C.

A Blue Arctic

As the climate warms from increasing greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice in the Arctic has disappeared at an unprecedented speed of more than 12% each decade.

In September, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that this year’s Arctic sea ice minimum—the day with the least amount of frozen seawater in the Arctic—was one of the lowest on record since 1978.

At , or 4.28 million square kilometers, this year’s minimum was above the all-time low observed in September 2012. But it still represents a stark decline compared to the average coverage of 6.85 million square kilometers between 1979 and 1992.

When the Arctic Ocean has less than 1 million square kilometers of ice, scientists say the Arctic is ice free.

Previous projections of Arctic sea ice change have focused on predicting when the ocean will become ice free for a full month. Jahn’s prior research suggested that the first ice-free month would occur almost inevitably and might happen by the 2030s.

As the tipping point approaches, Jahn wondered when the first summer day that melts virtually all of the Arctic sea ice will occur.

“Because the first ice-free day is likely to happen earlier than the first ice-free month, we want to be prepared. It’s also important to know what events could lead to the melting of all sea ice in the Arctic Ocean,” Heuzé said.

Non-zero possibility

Jahn and Heuzé projected/estimated the first ice-free Arctic day using output from over 300 computer simulations. They found that most models predicted that the first ice-free day could happen within nine to 20 years after 2023 regardless of how humans alter their greenhouse gas emissions. The earliest ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur within three years. 

It’s an extreme scenario but a possibility based on the models. In total, nine simulations suggested that an ice-free day could occur in three to six years.

The researchers found that a series of extreme weather events could melt two million square kilometers or more of sea ice in a short period of time: A unusually warm fall first weakens the sea ice, followed by a warm Arctic winter and spring that prevents sea ice from forming. When the Arctic experiences such extreme warming for three or more years in a row, the first ice-free day could happen in late summer.

Those kinds of warm years have already happened. For example, in March 2022, areas of the Arctic were , and areas around the North Pole were nearly melting. With climate change, the frequency and intensity of these weather events will only increase, according to Heuzé.

Sea ice protects the Arctic from warming by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. With less reflective ice, darker ocean waters will absorb more heat from the Sun, further increasing temperatures in the Arctic and globally. In addition, warming in the Arctic could change wind and ocean current patterns, leading to more extreme weather events around the world.

But there’s also good news: A drastic cut in emissions could delay the timeline for an ice-free Arctic and reduce the time the ocean stays ice-free, according to the study. 

“Any reductions in emissions would help preserve sea ice,” Jahn said.

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Dezell Turner slips on a set of sleek augmented reality goggles in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. Behind him stretches a floor-to-ceiling mural of space—a deep blue sky dotted with constellations and the cloudy shape of the Milky Way.

In his Microsoft HoloLens headset, however, Turner is experiencing a different kind of outer space.

Turner, a graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences and Smead Scholar at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, waives his hands in front of him and pinches his fingers. Inside the headset, which only he can see, curving red and yellow lines appear. They join two dots, one representing Earth and the other the moon. With a few swipes, the lines shift, transforming from a relatively simple arc to more complicated curls and loop-de-loops.

It looks like a more dizzying version of directions you might follow on your phone during a road trip.

“This is like a holographic Google Maps for planning space missions,” he said.

The new tool, which Turner developed working under advisor Jay McMahon, projects various paths a spacecraft could take to get to the moon through what scientists call “cislunar” space. He named the software ASTROMECH, a nod to a class of droids in the Star Wars franchise.

Turner’s work arrives as the moon is having a moment. NASA’s plans to land humans on the lunar surface sometime this decade. Other entities, including a growing number of private companies, have their eyes set on space. Turner hopes that his AR tool will help some of those groups plan out their missions—picking routes and weighing factors like speed versus fuel cost.

For the budding aerospace engineer, the project is a chance to make the technology from some of his favorite movies a reality. Picture the scene in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which a droid projects a holographic map that will lead the characters to the location of a missing hero.

“When R2D2 projects the map to Luke Skywalker, we’re creating a real-world version of that that’s hopefully just as intuitive to use,” Turner said.

Miniature planetarium

Turner, who’s 24, has loved space for as long as he can remember. When he was 4 years old, his parents bought him a projector that displayed a star map on the ceiling of his bedroom. He spent so long staring at the projection that he memorized many of the constellations.

But space is a lot more complicated than movies or his bedroom planetarium might make it seem. In Star Wars, if Han Solo needs to get somewhere, he just points the Millennium Falcon in the right direction and goes. In reality, spacecraft leaving Earth’s orbit are caught in the push and pull between the planet and its moon.

“Your trajectories aren’t always going to be traditional shapes like ellipses and circles,” Turner said. “Spacecraft may take all sorts of weird paths, and that can become very mathematically complicated.”

In 1969, for example, Apollo 11 took a relatively direct route to the moon, arriving in an orbit close to the lunar surface in about three days. More recently, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, which launched in 2022 with no humans aboard, made a more circuitous pass. The mission’s Orion space capsule first circled the moon, using its gravity to slingshot roughly 40,000 miles out into space. That trip took five days.

Turner explained that some small aerospace companies may not have employees versed in those kinds of gravitational intricacies. ASTROMECH does the math for them.

“The ways in which Dezell is leveraging AR in designing ASTROMECH has the potential to make cislunar trajectory design much more understandable for most people in the industry,” said McMahon, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “This could be hugely beneficial for training new employees and increasing small companies' ability to operate spacecraft in cislunar space.”

Alternate routes available

Back in the aerospace lobby, Turner demonstrates how he can pinch and swipe to compare those different routes.

Currently, the tool only tabulates fairly simple trajectories, similar to the direct path Apollo 11 took to the moon. But Turner would like to eventually add in more complicated routes. They include ones that take advantage of “Lagrange points,” or special spots in space where gravitational forces allow spacecraft to, essentially, park. The tool also includes an estimate for what aerospace engineers call delta-V, a calculation that roughly captures how much fuel a spacecraft will need to burn making maneuvers. Do you want to get to the moon fast and spend a bit more money or take your time and save on fuel?

Turner has a lot more work to do before aerospace companies can begin using ASTROMECH. One day, he envisions laying out trajectories for undertaking journeys even deeper into the solar system.

For now, he’s happy to have space at his fingerprints—just like Rey gazing at R2D2’s map.

“Getting to wear the headset really makes my day, especially when I’ve been fighting bugs in my code,” Turner said. “Getting to play with holograms makes me feel like a little kid.”

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As this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 29, comes to an end, world leaders are uncertain about the future of climate change progress given the result of the latest U.S. presidential election.

Many expect the president-elect, Donald Trump, to again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, a pact that governments agreed to during COP 21. The 2015 agreement aimed to reduce emissions and prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2°C, or 3.6°F, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels. Trump of the agreement in 2017 during his first term as president.

Walking away from the agreement again would mean that the U.S., the of carbon dioxide, could further stall international efforts to slash emissions at a time when the world is already falling far short of the 2°C goal.

“This is a time when we need to be leaning into climate policy action, but the Trump administration's withdrawal would lose some of that momentum,” said Max Boykoff, professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder.

It also means that the world’s largest economy might no longer to developing countries to help them transition to low-carbon economies and cope with the impact of climate change, a key topic in recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) conferences.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder Today sat down with Boykoff to discuss what a second Trump presidency could mean for U.S. and international climate policies.

If the Trump administration backs out of the Paris agreement again, do you expect a worse impact than the previous withdrawal?

The Trump Administration, if they were to withdraw, would join only a small handful of countries, including Libya, Iran and Yemen, as the only defectors from this international agreement. Currently contributing 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. would leave behind nearly 200 countries that are working together to significantly address climate change at a global level.

As the United States is potentially flip flopping in terms of its commitment on climate change in the international arena, there is a loss of trust and a loss of opportunity for the U.S. to be in a position of leadership in a clean energy economy, and more generally on other global issues as well.

The withdrawal may also cause other leaders, who have also to addressing climate policy as a priority in their own countries, to leave the agreement.

What impact could a Trump Administration have on renewable energy and electric vehicles that are already becoming more mainstream?  

The renewable energy sector has grown to a point where it actually makes great financial sense to continue to benefit from these market trends. With the way the economy has been moving, the Trump administration's withdrawal from supporting renewable energy projects may carry more symbolic significance than actual functional significance.

Even during Trump’s first term, there were still trends toward decarbonization. Despite Trump’s advocacy for fossil fuel use, emissions remained pretty steady before they dropped off precipitously during the pandemic. The amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels actually went down slightly. The amount of renewable energy that supplied industry and other aspects of society actually increased nearly 50% during the first Trump administration.

Do you think the US will stay on track to meet its own climate pledge of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050?

With this incoming second Trump administration, it is likely that there will be a lack of leadership and commitment to address climate change through policy actions at the scale, level, and urgency required.

But some elements of the incoming Trump administration, including their stance on deregulation, can actually help with the ongoing decarbonization process. For example, many of the permitting requirements have been inhibiting the proliferation of new infrastructure like transmission lines that can carry electricity from renewables across the country. So some of the Trump administration promises, while symbolically aligning with a stance that isn't favorable for climate policy action, may inadvertently help.

Are you worried that the Trump administration will roll back federal investment in renewable projects around the country?

Yes, but much of the funding from many of the decarbonization policies put forward during the Biden administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act, has flowed to many Republican-led states. While there have been many early indications that the Trump Administration will curtail renewable energy investments, we may see enough resistance and pushback from members of his own party in these states. 

Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint for the next Republican president, calls for withdrawing not only from the Paris agreement, but also its parent treaty, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How concerning would it be if the U.S. withdraws from UNFCCC?

The 900+ page report devotes about 40 pages to dismantling climate and environmental policies in the U.S. Withdrawing from the 1992 UNFCCC can have many consequences in terms of U.S. leadership and involvement in ongoing COP negotiations.

The UNFCCC will continue to go forward with or without the United States. So withdrawing is, frankly, unwise. When you're still in the treaty, you can influence the conversations and decision-making that take place, but withdrawing from it places the Trump administration and their emissaries on the outside of ongoing negotiations.

What are you most concerned about regarding how the second Trump administration will impact climate policies?

What worries me most is the loss of support for everyday working-class people here in the United States who are experiencing the impacts of climate change and other connected issues because of potential decisions that the Trump administration may make along with support—or lack of resistance—from Congress.

Those who are at the forefront of climate impacts, those who are vulnerable within this country are often those with the least influential voices, often those with the least amount of power to call for the kind of actions that are needed to improve their lives and livelihoods. It remains to be seen where the funding cuts will be proposed, but on climate terms—irrespective of left-right politics—the second Trump administration’s early signaling of their plans is worrisome. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

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In a new study, a team of astrophysicists led by ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder has set out to unravel the mysteries of UFOs—not the alien spacecraft, but a class of unusually large and red galaxies that researchers have nicknamed Ultra-red Flattened Objects, or UFOs for short.

The research shines a spotlight on some strange galaxies, said Justus Gibson, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder researchers first discovered UFO galaxies in images from the (JWST).

Now, Gibson and his colleagues think they know more about the galaxies’ inner workings.

The researchers explained that UFOs are odd cosmic ducks for various reasons. For starters, they reside near the limit of how far earlier space instruments, like the Hubble Space Telescope, could peer into the universe. But Hubble had completely missed them because these galaxies emit very little visible light.

The new study relies on observations from the Webb telescope, a pioneering spacecraft that launched in December 2021. Drawing on those images and computer simulations, the team reports that UFO galaxies seem to be similar in size and shape to the Milky Way. But these new galaxies are much dustier.

The team in The Astrophysical Journal.

“JWST allows us to see this type of galaxy that we never would have been able to see before,” Gibson said. “It tells us that maybe we didn't understand the universe as well as we thought.”

The universe is turning out to be more interesting than some scientists assumed, said study co-author Erica Nelson, .

“They’re so visually striking,” said Nelson, assistant professor of astrophysics at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. “They’re enormous red discs that pop up in these images, and they were totally unexpected. They make you say: ‘What? How?’”

Hidden galaxies

Gibson noted that UFO galaxies look red because they emit very little visible light—most of the light that escapes these galaxies is infrared radiation, and what little visible light they emit is at the limit of what human eyes can see (red, in other words). As a result, the UFO galaxies were all but invisible to Hubble, which only records visible light. The Webb telescope, in contrast, collects infrared light, which means it’s well-suited to spotting these kinds of objects.

“Prior to the launch of James Webb, we thought we would find really, really far away galaxies,” Gibson said. “But we thought that closer to us, we already had a pretty good understanding of all the types of galaxies there are.”

In the new study, Gibson and his colleagues drew on observations from a collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). In all, the team identified 56 UFO galaxies in images from JADES.

They found a lot of dust.

Biting the dust

The researchers noted that all galaxies, and even Earth’s solar system, contain interplanetary dust, the remnants of dying stars that exploded a long time ago, shooting tiny particles of metal far into space. But the UFO galaxies contain a lot more dust than the Milky Way—enough dust to block about 50 times more light from beaming into space. It’s a bit like a sandstorm on Earth obscuring the sun.

The researchers also used computer simulations, or models, to understand how the galaxies are shaped. Gibson noted that galaxies can come in many shapes and sizes, from Frisbee-like discs to football shapes and spheres.

The team’s calculations suggest that UFO galaxies may be shaped like run-of-the-mill discs (think Milky Way).

“You have these big bad disks—like our home, the Milky Way—flying around space, completely invisible to us,” Nelson said.

How these galaxies got so dusty isn’t clear. Nelson said she hopes that by studying them, astrophysicists can learn how galaxies grow and form new stars over time. For now, the UFOs raise a lot more questions than answers.

“Why on Earth do these galaxies have so much more dust than all the other galaxies?” she said. “Got me.”

Other co-authors on the new study include researchers from the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, University of Massachusetts, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, European Space Agency, University of Melbourne, Sorbonne University, University of Hertfordshire, University of Arizona, The Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Santa Cruz and NRC Herzberg.

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