James' World 2

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They first met in middle school – when they were wide-eyed and 10, 11, or 12: before Americans could so easily separate themselves based on what they believed.

“Even then, he was political,” Christina Lorey wrote in a social media post after his death. “A Republican – but not an extremist. He was funny, friendly, and always the first to debate anything and everything.”

Lorey, a left-leaning journalist with a Substack following, who now lives in Wisconsin, and conservative influencer Charlie Kirk grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. On Sept. 10, a shooter is believed to have fired a single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, on the campus of Utah Valley University.

Now, Lorey is paying tribute to her childhood friend, years after their paths diverged. She declined to speak further out of respect for his family.

In her post, Lorey wrote that Kirk “talked a lot.” She did, too. They “became friends,” she said. They weren’t “best friends,” but “the kind of people who’d work well together on a school project and have fun doing it.”

Then, at the end of 6th grade, both Lorey and Kirk were voted “Most Likely to Become President.”

“He was much more excited about that than I: it always seemed like he might actually run for president someday,” Lorey wrote. “In high school, we were on different tracks, but had one memorable class together senior year: AP Government. It was an election year, too; Charlie’s Super Bowl.” Former President Barack Obama and former Arizona Sen. John McCain were on the ballot.

“I got to know Charlie very well during that year,” Lorey said. “One of my favorite memories was the schoolwide campaign he launched to get the cafeteria to lower the price of its chocolate chip cookies. I don’t remember what they’d hiked the price to or if his campaign was even successful, but he was extraordinarily passionate about it.”

She continued: ‘That trait stayed with him until the end – When Charlie believed in something, he REALLY believed in it.” Then, just before they both graduated from Wheeling, senior superlatives were released. They were both voted “Most Likely to Become President” – again.

Graduation came and went. The Wheeling Wildcats from the class of 2012 walked their own paths. Lorey said Kirk started Turning Point USA that summer. The organization advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. His high school friend Lorey went to college. Kirk dropped out.

“We didn’t talk much besides the occasional check-in, and even though I didn’t at all agree with or admire what his organization turned into, I was amazed that the middle school boy that always wanted to debate built THAT,” Lorey said on social media. “It was impressive.”

But she built something impressive, too: Lorey now boasts 125,000 Facebook followers while sharing good news across Wisconsin.

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The most enthralling rock yet found on Mars—a speckled hunk of mudstone that just may contain evidence of ancient alien life—is still worth getting excited about.

Teased last year in a preliminary announcement from NASA, that’s the official conclusion of a peer-reviewed paper, published today in Nature, that reports a deeper analysis of the curious outcrop. Were it found on Earth instead of Mars, the rock’s speckles would likely be interpreted as evidence for a microbial feeding frenzy that occurred long ago. But getting certainty about what this rock truly contains likely requires hauling it off the Red Planet and delivering it back to Earth—an ambitious multiphase mission that NASA calls Mars Sample Return.

The rock in question is packed with organic carbon—another promising prerequisite for life—and lies within a lithic formation called Bright Angel, which is exposed along a channel called Neretva Vallis. Eons ago, that now dry channel was a river valley, formed by water rushing into and feeding a lake-and-delta system in what’s now known as Jezero Crater. Those apparently warm, wet origins led to NASA targeting Jezero as the landing spot for the space agency’s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the site for any past or present signs of life since it touched down in 2021.

“This result gives us reason to consider the possibility that Mars was host to microbial life,” says the new study’s co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University. Although this is nowhere close to direct, clinching evidence of Martian life, Hurowitz and his team hope that the findings help scientists “make progress in our quest to understand whether there’s life on other planets in the solar system and beyond.”

After NASA’s initial teaser, scientists who were eager for more information paid close attention to a presentation by Hurowitz in mid-March of this year at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the Woodlands, Tex. During his talk, Hurowitz recounted how he and his colleagues on the Perseverance team had found a carbon-rich rock with small patches ranging from black to dark blue to dark green, which they called “poppy seeds,” as well as larger patches with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned centers, which they referred to as “leopard spots.” They called the rock itself “Cheyava Falls.”

Using multiple instruments on Perseverance, an early analysis showed that the poppy seeds and rims of the leopard spots were enriched with iron and phosphorus, while the centers of the leopard spots had abundant iron and sulfur. That distribution of elements hints at both types of patches forming from organic carbon reacting with iron and sulfate minerals—a process that, on Earth, is typically kick-started by certain types of microbes to fuel their metabolism. But it can also occur abiotically via chemical reactions that happen at high temperatures.

In their Nature study, Hurowitz and his co-authors elaborate on the likely mineralogical composition of Cheyava Falls and its speckles, as well as on the conditions in which it probably formed. Perseverance’s measurements suggested the speckles contained the minerals vivianite, an iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide, and that both formed in close association with organic carbon. On Earth, vivianite frequently forms in lakes and coastal sediments where microbes use iron in their metabolism. Greigite tends to form when microbes break down sulfate. When found together on Earth, these minerals and organic molecules are usually considered a sort of biosignature, a physical sign of past or present life—at least if they can be shown to have formed at low temperatures rather than via hotter, less life-friendly conditions.

The most enthralling rock yet found on Mars—a speckled hunk of mudstone that just may contain evidence of ancient alien life—is still worth getting excited about.

Teased last year in a preliminary announcement from NASA, that’s the official conclusion of a peer-reviewed paper, published today in Nature, that reports a deeper analysis of the curious outcrop. Were it found on Earth instead of Mars, the rock’s speckles would likely be interpreted as evidence for a microbial feeding frenzy that occurred long ago. But getting certainty about what this rock truly contains likely requires hauling it off the Red Planet and delivering it back to Earth—an ambitious multiphase mission that NASA calls Mars Sample Return.

The rock in question is packed with organic carbon—another promising prerequisite for life—and lies within a lithic formation called Bright Angel, which is exposed along a channel called Neretva Vallis. Eons ago, that now dry channel was a river valley, formed by water rushing into and feeding a lake-and-delta system in what’s now known as Jezero Crater. Those apparently warm, wet origins led to NASA targeting Jezero as the landing spot for the space agency’s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the site for any past or present signs of life since it touched down in 2021.

“This result gives us reason to consider the possibility that Mars was host to microbial life,” says the new study’s co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University. Although this is nowhere close to direct, clinching evidence of Martian life, Hurowitz and his team hope that the findings help scientists “make progress in our quest to understand whether there’s life on other planets in the solar system and beyond.”

After NASA’s initial teaser, scientists who were eager for more information paid close attention to a presentation by Hurowitz in mid-March of this year at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the Woodlands, Tex. During his talk, Hurowitz recounted how he and his colleagues on the Perseverance team had found a carbon-rich rock with small patches ranging from black to dark blue to dark green, which they called “poppy seeds,” as well as larger patches with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned centers, which they referred to as “leopard spots.” They called the rock itself “Cheyava Falls.”

Using multiple instruments on Perseverance, an early analysis showed that the poppy seeds and rims of the leopard spots were enriched with iron and phosphorus, while the centers of the leopard spots had abundant iron and sulfur. That distribution of elements hints at both types of patches forming from organic carbon reacting with iron and sulfate minerals—a process that, on Earth, is typically kick-started by certain types of microbes to fuel their metabolism. But it can also occur abiotically via chemical reactions that happen at high temperatures.

In their Nature study, Hurowitz and his co-authors elaborate on the likely mineralogical composition of Cheyava Falls and its speckles, as well as on the conditions in which it probably formed. Perseverance’s measurements suggested the speckles contained the minerals vivianite, an iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide, and that both formed in close association with organic carbon. On Earth, vivianite frequently forms in lakes and coastal sediments where microbes use iron in their metabolism. Greigite tends to form when microbes break down sulfate. When found together on Earth, these minerals and organic molecules are usually considered a sort of biosignature, a physical sign of past or present life—at least if they can be shown to have formed at low temperatures rather than via hotter, less life-friendly conditions.

The Nature study correspondingly details further analyses that suggest a low-temperature origin for the speckles—that is, they seem to have arisen in relatively clement conditions near the surface, where life could possibly thrive, rather than the inhospitably hot depths of the Martian subsurface. “We believe that these features happened early in the life of the sediment, shortly after it was deposited and likely before it had been ‘lithified’ to form hard rock,” Hurowitz says.

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Keir Starmer has sacked Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US over his association with Jeffrey Epstein.

The Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told MPs that Lord Mandelson had not disclosed the extent and depth of his friendship with Epstein, a convicted child sex offender, when he was appointed as the ambassador.

He said No 10 had not known about emails from Mandelson to Epstein suggesting his 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution was wrongful and should be challenged.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “In light of the additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelson, the prime minister has asked the foreign secretary to withdraw him as ambassador.

“The emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment. In particular, Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information.

“In light of that, and mindful of the victims of Epstein’s crimes, he has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect.”

Before Mandelson’s departure was announced, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told an event that he was “completely disgusted” by messages Mandelson sent to Epstein and that his future was “a decision for the prime minister”.

Government sources said Starmer took the decision during a meeting with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, on Thursday morning, after reviewing the new material on Mandelson’s defence of Epstein the previous night. It is understood Mandelson himself had not, until the leak, had access to the emails written in 2008 because they came from a long-deleted account.

Mandelson’s departure comes at a difficult time for No 10 as it prepares a state visit for the US president, Donald Trump, who is facing his own questions about his friendship with Epstein. It is understood that James Roscoe, the deputy head of mission in Washington, will be interim ambassador and supervise the state visit.

Both David Miliband, a former Labour foreign secretary, and Cathy Ashton, a former EU commissioner, were previously on the shortlist for the US ambassador job. Karen Pierce, who held the job before Mandelson, is among those who could be asked to return.

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Peter Mandelson’s departure will be a huge blow for No 10 as it prepares for the US president’s state visit. Photograph: Carl Court/AP

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Wednesday, 11:52 a.m.

The gunman was seen arriving near the university campus about half an hour before the shooting occurred, officials said at a news conference on Thursday morning. Officials said they were able to later use surveillance footage to track the gunman’s movements onto the campus and then through a stairwell to the roof of the building from where the shot was fired.

Noon

Mr. Kirk’s event was free to attend and scheduled to start at noon local time. The event was the first of a 15-stop itinerary on what was called the “American Comeback” tour, which had planned appearances at U.S. college campuses.

As the event began, Mr. Kirk was addressing the crowd and answering questions while sitting under a tent, emblazoned with the tour’s name, in the outdoor courtyard of the school’s main campus.

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Aerial image by Google Earth by Ashley Wu, Lazaro Gamio, Daniel Wood, and Anjali Singhvi

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An eon ago, when only microbes dwelled on Earth, a pair of black holes some 1.3 billion light-years beyond the solar system spiraled toward each other until they crashed. The two became one big black hole that rang out in far-reaching undulations of spacetime called gravitational waves.

These ripples finally reached Earth in January 2025, where they registered in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment as the most precise direct measurements of gravitational waves ever made. These measurements confirmed a 54-year-old theorem from the late physicist Stephen Hawking about how black holes grow when their mass increases. The waves also confirmed a bizarre property of black holes known as the “no-hair” theorem. Scientists announced the findings in a paper published today in Physical Review Letters.

The black holes involved in the smash-up contained about 33 and 32 times the mass of the sun, respectively. As they fell toward each other and coalesced, the resulting gravitational waves spread out into the universe in all directions; the fraction that trickled into LIGO’s detectors was a signal that researchers named GW250114. Studying the particular features of this signal allowed them to determine the black holes’ initial sizes, as well as the fact that the resulting larger black hole contained about 62 times the mass of the sun. The waves also revealed that the original black holes had a combined surface area of about 240,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Oregon), whereas the final black hole had an area of some 400,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of California).

These measurements confirm a prediction Hawking made in 1971 about black hole event horizons—the boundaries beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape from their gravitational grasp.

Researchers previously tried to test these predictions with gravitational waves, but the comparatively weaker signals left a lot of uncertainty in the conclusions. The new tests offer a much greater level of confidence, says theoretical physicist Feryal Özel of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the research. “If we found any evidence of violation of either the area theorem or of the Kerr solution, then one or both of the assumptions would have to be changed,” she says. “In other words, either general relativity would need to be modified, or the objects are not black holes.”

This latest announcement from LIGO comes almost exactly 10 years after the project saw its first gravitational waves. The precision of the recent measurements was only possible now, after scientists have tweaked and tuned LIGO to be roughly four times as sensitive as it was when it started. It can now identify distortions in spacetime smaller than one ten-thousandth the width of a proton.

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An illustration imagines GW250114, a powerful collision between two black holes observed in gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment, from the perspective of one of the black holes as it spirals toward its cosmic partner.  Aurore Simonnet (SSU/EdEon)/LVK/URI

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