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The Bacteria That Outsmarted NASA
Published about 2 months ago • 9 min read
Ines Lee Lead Writer at VeMail
Hi Reader, physicists in Germany built the world’s smallest light-emitting pixel last week. It’s only 300 nm across yet shines as bright as a standard OLED pixel 300 times larger. It uses a gold nano-antenna that prevents short circuits, paving the way for ultra-dense displays in smart glasses and even contact lenses. Our top stories this week share a similar theme: what might we discover when we push science to its "smallest" possible unit?
Coming up this week 🦠 Bacteria found on NASA’s “clean” spacecrafts 📞 The World’s Longest Un-hackable Data Transmission 💻 Google Quantum Breakthrough (13,000× Faster Than Supercomputers) +More
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The cable running through Adnan Hajomer's lab looked ordinary: standard TeraWave SCUBA 125 fiber built to carry internet traffic underground and under oceans. But inside, quantum-encrypted data was traveling 120 km - surpassing the previous 100 km record - while regular internet traffic flowed through the same cable.
Hajomer's team at the Technical University of Denmark, working with researchers in the Czech Republic, just broke the distance record for quantum-secure communication through shared fiber. This marks a turning point for quantum security.
Today's encryption relies on hard-to-factor keys that take conventional computers years to crack. But powerful quantum computers could solve those problems in minutes, potentially unraveling financial systems and state secrets. Quantum key distribution (QKD) sidesteps this by encoding keys in quantum states of light, which cannot be copied (a principle known as the no-cloning theorem). Any interception attempt collapses those states, flagging the intrusion instantly.
But distance has been the challenge. Photons decay and scatter in fiber, and noise from classical data traveling alongside quantum signals typically kills the quantum channel after a few tens of kilometers. Previous continuous-variable records topped out below 100 km.
Hajomer's group used continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD), which hides encryption keys in the phase and amplitude of laser light. They broke the distance barrier by exploiting a previously overlooked built-in filter within the CVQKD setup itself, the local oscillator, a reference laser at the receiver that naturally blocks noise from classical channels. They also optimized how they encode the quantum signal to suppress phase noise.
The result: quantum signals at 1550 nanometers co-traveled with classical data channels carrying 9.81 gigabits per second in the same fiber, without measurable interference. Published in Physical Review Letters, the findings confirm CVQKD works as a promising solution for typical 80-100 km city-to-city networks.
TL;DR: Researchers pushed quantum-secure communication to 120 km through standard fiber while classical internet traffic flowed alongside. This is double the previous record and a major step toward quantum-proofing existing networks.
In 2007, scientists swabbing the floor of NASA's Phoenix Mars lander clean room at Kennedy Space Center found something that shouldn't exist: a new species of bacterium. Stranger still, the same microbe turned up thousands of kilometers away at the European Space Agency’s spacecraft facility in French Guiana. In 2013, genetic sequencing confirmed both labs had been colonized by the same organism, a tiny sphere later named Tersicoccus phoenicis.
That shouldn't have been possible. NASA's spacecraft are built in clean rooms bombarded with ultraviolet light and soaked in disinfectant. Air flows outward only, preventing any microbe from drifting in. These precautions exist to stop "forward contamination": Earth's microbes hitching rides to other worlds and confounding the search for alien life.
How had Tersicoccus survived? For over a decade, no one knew. Now, researchers at the University of Houston have uncovered how this happened. In a study published in Microbiology Spectrum, microbiologist Madhan Tirumalai and colleagues showed the bacterium can enter a state called 'viable but non-culturable'. "They were alive but silent," Tirumalai says.
Under starvation, cultivable cell counts plummeted from 50 million per milliliter to just one to four detectable cells, a millionfold drop. Yet the cells remained intact. Add one protein, a resuscitation-promoting factor (Rpf), and the microbes sprang back. The lag phase before growth resumed shortened from 58 hours to 31 hours. Rpf is found in many actinobacteria, including close relatives on human skin. A simple touch could revive a dormant stowaway clinging to a spacecraft.
The discovery exposes a gap in planetary-protection protocols. Spores are tested for routinely; dormant cells like these aren't. "This is what bothers me most," says co-author William Widger. "You have clean rooms in pharmaceutical companies. You have clean rooms in hospitals. You have clean rooms in food preparation. Have they ever checked for dormant bacteria in there?".
TL;DR: Scientists discovered how Tersicoccus phoenicis, a bacterium found in NASA's spacecraft clean rooms, survived for years undetected. It enters a reversible dormant state and can be revived by a single protein, revealing a microbial survival trick that challenges planetary-protection protocols.
PHYSICS
Google Quantum Breakthrough (13,000× Faster Than Supercomputers?)
Google's 105-qubit Willow processor just ran a quantum algorithm about 13,000 times faster than state-of-the-art classical supercomputers performing the same task. The calculation, published in Nature last week, is the first demonstration of verifiable quantum advantage, where the results can be cross-checked using independent validation methods, not just accepted on trust.
The experiment uses an algorithm called Quantum Echoes, which tracks how quantum information spreads through a system. Think of it like dropping a stone in a pond: the ripples spread outward, carrying information about where the stone landed. Willow sends a signal through its qubits, creates a tiny disturbance, then runs everything backward and listens for what bounces back. The quantum version of this "echo" gets amplified, quantum waves add together, revealing connections that would otherwise be invisible.
This differs from Google's 2019 "quantum supremacy" claim, which generated random numbers faster than classical simulators but had no scientific application. Quantum Echoes tackles a real physics problem: tracking how quantum information scrambles. Classical computers hit a wall because the calculation explodes exponentially, with each added qubit doubling the difficulty.
To test whether this matters beyond benchmarks, Google teamed up with UC Berkeley chemists to simulate real molecules: one with 15 atoms, another with 28. They used the quantum chip to map out how the atoms' magnetic properties interact, the same information doctors get from MRI machines, but for molecules instead of bodies. Willow’s results matched theoretical predictions for 15- and 28-atom molecular spin models and revealed long-range correlations consistent with experimental observations.
"Google's Quantum Echoes algorithm showcases the potential for quantum computers to efficiently model the intricate interactions of these spins, possibly even across long distances," says Ashok Ajoy, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley and collaborator on the project. "As quantum computing matures, such approaches could enhance NMR spectroscopy, adding to its toolbox for drug discovery and the design of advanced materials."
The simulations aren't yet faster than classical codes for molecules this small, but they demonstrate a path toward problems classical computers can't solve, battery design, catalysts, drug development. Skeptics at IBM and elsewhere argue clever classical algorithms might still close the gap. But Willow's echoes nevertheless mark the first quantum calculation that others can verify.
TL;DR: Google’s 105-qubit Willow processor achieved a verifiable quantum advantage, running a “Quantum Echoes” algorithm about 13,000× faster than classical supercomputers on the same task. The experiment, validated internally and published in Nature, simulated how quantum information spreads and modeled small molecular spin systems, hinting at applications in chemistry and materials science.
In Other News
Parasitic worms use static electricity to catch flies. When roundworms launch themselves into the air, up to 25 times their body length, they curve mid-flight toward charged fruit flies, boosting their hunting success from under 10% to about 80%. Published in PNAS, the discovery highlights an emerging field some researchers call ‘electrostatic ecology.’
Mysterious glow at the Milky Way’s center caused by dark matter? For more than a decade, the Milky Way’s center has glowed with no clear cause. New simulations now point to a bold possibility: dark matter itself may be shaping the light, flattened into a vast disk spinning just beneath our own.
Japan and US Team Pin Down Neutrino Mass Gap. By combining nearly a decade of data, Japan’s T2K and America’s NOvA experiments measured the mass gap between neutrino types with record precision (< 2 % uncertainty) bringing us closer to understanding why matter, not antimatter, fills the universe.
MIT scientists use ordinary light to see individual atoms. MIT physicists have achieved atom-level precision using visible light. Their new computational method, DIGIT, combines optical data with a crystal’s atomic “seating chart,” pinpointing atom positions with 0.178-ångström accuracy (a thousand times beyond the diffraction limit).
Is gravity really quantum? Maybe not, says new theory. Physicists have long believed that if two objects became entangled through gravity, it would prove gravity itself is quantum. A new paper argues that even classical gravity could mimic quantum entanglement. The finding raises the bar for future “quantum-gravity” experiments, which will now need to measure how entanglement scales, not just whether it exists.
U.S. funding cuts could lead to a spike in child tuberculosis cases. A Lancet Child & Adolescent Health study warns that reductions in U.S. bilateral health aid could trigger a surge in childhood tuberculosis. Without that support, an estimated 2.5 million additional infections and 340,000 deaths could occur in low- and middle-income countries between 2025 and 2034, erasing decades of global health progress.
The Earth is getting darker (And that’s not good news). NASA’s CERES satellites have tracked a steady dimming of Earth’s reflectivity since 2001. As melting ice, cleaner air, and changing clouds reduce how much sunlight the planet reflects, more solar energy stays trapped in the atmosphere, subtly accelerating global warming.
This Week in History
Oct 27, 1904. New York’s first subway opened in 1904, linking City Hall to 145th Street with 21 miles of tunnels carved by 8,000 workers through rock and clay. For just a nickel, riders could cross Manhattan in minutes instead of hours.
Oct 27, 1938. DuPont unveiled nylon, a fiber spun from coal, air, and water that would transform everything from stockings to parachutes. The first fully synthetic material, originally called Yarn 66, was strong, flexible, and cheap, proving chemistry could rival nature. Nylon reshaped fashion and industry alike, launching the age of engineered materials.
Oct 28, 1957. In the 1950s, programming meant speaking in strings of machine code, until John Backus at IBM proposed the unthinkable: a program that could translate math into something computers understood. In 1957 his team released FORTRAN, the first high-level programming language, letting scientists write equations instead of binary. It became the bridge between human thought and machine logic, the ancestor of nearly every programming language today.
This Week’s Puzzle
🧩
The Miracle Builders
I had a window on the north wall of my house that is a perfect square, 1 metre by 1 metre. But it never seemed to let in enough light.
So I hired a company called The Miracle Builders, who promised to perform the impossible. They remodelled the window so that it let in more light.
When they finished, the window was still a perfect square, still 1 metre wide and 1 metre high.
How did they do it?
Until next time,
The Ve Team 👋
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Most people picture the first window with its edges vertical and horizontal (like a normal square sitting upright). But the puzzle never said it was positioned that way.
The original window was a 1 m × 1 m square measured along its diagonals (a “diamond” shape with one corner pointing straight up). In that position, the height (the distance from top to bottom) is actually the square’s diagonal, not its side.
When the Miracle Builders reoriented the square so its sides were upright and horizontal, its diagonal became √2 m ≈ 1.414 m, and its area doubled.
Same “height” and “width” on paper but the new square actually covered twice as much glass and let in twice as much light.
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