Activist and researcher Amanda Nguyen, who flew on Blue Origin’s all-female spaceflight in April 2025, has admitted to suffering from severe psychological distress after the mission. After months of battling depression, she has reported feeling better and shared her experience of overcoming severe trauma.

Activist and researcher Amanda Nguyen emotionally exits the New Shepard capsule immediately after landing. Photo: Blue Origin

Dream that turned into a challenge

In her Instagram post, Amanda revealed the deep depression that overwhelmed her after returning to Earth.

“Another dream turned into a nightmare,” she wrote. Nguyen described feeling that all her achievements – her scientific work, her historic status as the first Vietnamese woman in space – were “buried under an avalanche of misogyny” and hostile comments in the media.

A 34-year-old woman, the child of refugees who fled Vietnam by boat, felt like a “collateral victim.” She couldn’t get out of bed for weeks, and a month after the flight, she couldn’t speak through her tears during a call from a Blue Origin employee.

The star-studded crew of the Blue Origin NS-31 space tourism mission. Photo: Blue Origin

Despite her experiences, Amanda emphasized the positive outcomes of the mission. The flight drew attention to her breast cancer research and helped achieve the goal of using science as a tool for diplomacy. She recalled the symbolism: when Neil Armstrong was on the moon, bombs were falling on Vietnam, and now her family had seen a Vietnamese woman in space.

“We arrived in boats, and now we are in spaceships,” she wrote.

The road to recovery

Eight months later, Nguyen felt that “the fog of grief had begun to lift.” In her diary, she wrote, “I am happy to report that my depression is gone.” She concluded that the past never completely leaves us, but she is proud that she kept her promise to fight for her dreams and focus on kindness.

“The best gift this season is that I feel the fog lifting. I can say that it won’t take years,” Amanda Nguyen summed up.

Earlier, we reported on how a space tourist “saw death” after flying on New Shepard.

• Provided by eonline.com

The star described in the Gospels, which heralded the appearance of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, behaves extremely strangely for a celestial body. However, scientists have calculated that under certain conditions, a comet could exhibit similar behavior. They even found a possible candidate.

The Star of Bethlehem. Source: phys.org

The Star of Bethlehem

Recently, the Journal of the British Astronomical Association published an article in which scientists attempted to explain the nature of the star that, according to the Bible, heralded the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem and guided the three wise men from the East to him. Surprisingly, they found a completely rational explanation for it.

This is not the first time scientists have tried to understand whether there is any real astronomical event behind the Gospel myth. And it is clear that the word “star” can actually mean any celestial body. However, in the Gospel of Matthias, where it is described in the most detail, its behavior seems too strange.

Based on the text, the star of Bethlehem was initially somewhere in the east, then, overtaking the Magi, it flew west and hovered somewhere at the zenith above the city where Jesus was born. And it is precisely its stopping in one place that seems most strange. Whether it is a planet, a comet, or something else in space, its rotation should be affected by the rotation of our planet; that is, one way or another, it should rise and set during the day.

But in reality, there is one object that truly seems to hover above one place – a satellite in geostationary orbit. Of course, it actually moves, but its linear velocity is such that its angular velocity coincides with the Earth’s rotation.

Comet from Chinese sources

And now scientists have calculated that the same suspension effect could have occurred when a comet flew close to Earth. Of course, it did not enter geosynchronous orbit. But it moved much faster than a satellite in geostationary orbit. This means that at some point, it could have actually hovered over Bethlehem for a couple of hours.

And the most interesting thing is that the authors have already found a good candidate for the role of the Star of Bethlehem – a comet mentioned in the Chinese chronicle “Han Shu,” also known as the History of the Former Han Dynasty. According to this document, the comet appeared in the second month of the second year and was visible for 70 days. This means that it was indeed very bright.

The specified time period is March-April 5 BC. And this coincides perfectly with assumptions about the true date of Jesus’ birth. After all, King Herod, the same one who is credited with the mass murder of infants, ruled Judea from 37 to 4 BC. So, from this point of view, everything is indeed reliable.

However, opponents of the “comet” theory have another argument. In the tradition of Eastern mystics, which theoretically included the three wise kings, the comet was associated with something bad. However, researchers have recently discovered that this is not entirely true, as its appearance could also be linked to events in the royal family. So it could indeed have been perceived as a sign of the birth of a new king.

• Provided by: phys.org

NASA scientists have proposed a new, unexpected source of energy that could sustain life in the deep ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa. It may not be deep heat, but radioactive elements seeping from the ocean floor.

Jupiter rising over Europa. Illustration: Space Engine

A revolutionary model was presented at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union. It suggests that the key to life may lie not in the moon’s interior, but in the rocks at the bottom of its ocean. Radioactive decay of uranium and potassium in these rocks could provide the energy necessary for biology.

The scale of the possible biosphere

Europa (moon). Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Researchers were inspired by terrestrial ecosystems in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where microorganisms exist thanks to chemosynthesis – the process of obtaining energy from chemical reactions. A similar process may occur on Europa. Radioactive decay splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen ions, which can become “fuel” for microbes.

The depth of the ocean on Europa can reach 100 km. Illustration: NASA

Internal structure of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Illustration: NASA

A team led by planetary scientist Ngoc Tuan Truong has modeled the concentration of radioactive isotopes in Europa’s ocean. Calculations showed that the energy released is sufficient to sustain biomass equivalent to a thousand blue whales. This discovery is particularly important in light of new data on Europa’s thick ice crust, which may insulate the ocean from the heat of the core.

Checking the theory

Evidence for this theory may be found by NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will reach Jupiter’s system in 2030. The spacecraft will study the composition of the ice and the deep processes of the moon. If the hypothesis is confirmed, Europa will be revealed as a world where life can feed on the energy of radioactive decay – a rather original scenario for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Poster Europa Clipper: Journey to an Ocean World. Source: NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech

Earlier, we explained whether Europa will be habitable when the Sun becomes old and red.

• Provided by science.org

It is quite possible that Mars was the first planet in the solar system where life originated. And only later did microorganisms from Mars reach Earth. So, from a certain point of view, we may be all Martians.

Earth and Mars. Source: phys.org

A bold hypothesis

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don’t yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology, or when the first primitive life forms appeared.

But what if Earth’s life did not originate here, instead arriving on meteorites from Mars? It’s not the most favored theory for life’s origins, but it remains an intriguing hypothesis. Here, we’ll examine the evidence for and against.

Timing is a key factor. Mars formed around 4.6 billion years ago, while Earth is slightly younger at 4.54 billion years old. The surfaces of both planets were initially molten, before gradually cooling and hardening.

Life could, in theory, have arisen independently on both Earth and Mars shortly after formation. While the surface of Mars today is probably uninhabitable for life as we know it, early Mars probably had similar conditions to early Earth.

The possibility of life forming on Mars

Early Mars seems to have had a protective atmosphere and liquid water in the form of oceans, rivers, and lakes. It may also have been geothermally active, with plenty of hydrothermal vents and hot springs to provide the necessary conditions for the emergence of life.

However, about 4.51 billion years ago, a Mars-sized, rocky planet called Theia crashed into proto-Earth. This impact caused both bodies to melt together and then separate into Earth and its moon. If life had begun before this event, it certainly would not have survived it.

Mars, on the other hand, probably didn’t experience a global remelting event. The red planet had its fair share of impacts in the violent early solar system, but evidence suggests that none of these would have been large enough to destroy the planet, and some areas could have remained relatively stable.

So if life arose on Mars shortly after the formation of the planet 4.6 billion years ago, it could have continued evolving without major interruptions for at least half a billion years. After this time, Mars’ magnetic field collapsed, marking the beginning of the end for Martian habitability. The protective atmosphere disappeared, leaving the planet’s surface exposed to freezing temperatures and ionizing radiation from space.

The time required for life to emerge

But what of Earth: how soon did life appear after the impact that formed the moon? Tracing the tree of life back to its root leads to a microorganism called Luca – the last universal common ancestor. This is the microbial species from which all life today is descended. A recent study reconstructed Luca’s characteristics using genetics and the fossil record of early life on Earth. It is inferred that Luca lived 4.2 billion years ago – earlier than some previous estimates.

Luca was not the earliest organism on Earth, but one of multiple species of microbe existing in tandem on our planet at this time. They were competing, cooperating, and surviving the elements, as well as fending off attacks from viruses.

If small but fairly complex ecosystems were present on Earth around 4.2 billion years ago, life must have originated earlier. But how much earlier? The new estimate for the age of Luca is 360 million years after the formation of Earth and 290 million years after the moon-forming impact. All we know is that in these 290 million years, chemistry somehow became biology. Was this enough time for life to originate on Earth and then diversify into the ecosystems present when Luca was alive?

A Martian origin for terrestrial life circumvents this question. According to the hypothesis, species of Martian microorganism could have traveled to Earth on meteorites just in time to take advantage of the clement conditions following the moon’s formation.

The timing may be convenient for this idea. However, as someone who works in the field, my hunch would be that 290 million years is plenty of time for chemical reactions to produce the first living organisms on Earth, and for biology to subsequently diversify and become more complex.

Surviving the journey

Luca’s reconstructed genome suggests that it could live off molecular hydrogen or simple organic molecules as food sources. Along with other evidence, this suggests that Luca’s habitat was either a shallow marine hydrothermal vent system or a geothermal hot spring. Current thought in the origin of life field is that these kinds of environments on early Earth had the necessary conditions for life to emerge from non-living chemistry.

Luca also contained biochemical machinery that could protect it from high temperatures and UV radiation – real dangers in these early Earth environments. However, it’s far from certain that early life forms could have survived the journey from Mars to Earth. And there’s nothing in Luca’s genome to suggest that it was particularly well adapted to space flight.

To have made it to Earth, microorganisms would need to have survived the initial impact on Mars’ surface, a high-speed ejection from the Martian atmosphere, and travel through the vacuum of space while being bombarded by cosmic rays for at least the best part of a year.

They would then have needed to survive the high-temperature entry through Earth’s atmosphere and another impact onto the surface. This last event may or may not have deposited it in an environment to which it was even remotely adapted.

The chances of all of this seem pretty slim to me. However difficult the transition from chemistry to biology may appear, it seems far easier to me than the idea that this transition would occur on Mars, with life forms surviving the journey to Earth, and then adapting to a completely new planet.

The resilience of microorganisms in space

It’s useful to look at studies of whether microorganisms could survive the journey between planets. So far, it looks like only the hardiest microorganisms could survive the journey between Mars and Earth. These are species adapted to preventing damage from radiation and capable of surviving desiccation through the formation of spores.

But maybe, just maybe, if a population of microorganisms were trapped in the interior of a sufficiently large meteorite, they could be protected from most of the harsh conditions of space. Some computer simulations even support this idea. Further simulations and laboratory experiments to test this are ongoing.

This raises another question – if life made it from Mars to Earth within the first 500 million years of our solar system’s existence, why hasn’t it spread from Earth to the rest of the solar system in the following four billion years? Maybe we’re not the Martians after all.

• Provided by: phys.org