Month: August 2025

Future technology could one day allow a miniature, laser-propelled spacecraft — no heavier than a paperclip — to travel to a nearby black hole, according to a bold new proposal published on Thursday (Aug. 7).

The ambitious mission would aim to test the limits of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in one of the universe’s most extreme environments. It may sound like the plot of a sci-fi novel, but to cosmologist Cosimo Bambi, this idea is rooted in real physics — and could be achievable within our lifetime.

"It may sound really crazy, and in a sense closer to science fiction," Bambi, who is a researcher in the department of physics at Fudan University in China, said in a statement. "But people said we’d never detect gravitational waves because they’re too weak. We did—100 years later. People thought we’d never observe the shadows of black holes," he added. "Now, 50 years later, we have images of two."

"The possibility of an interstellar mission to study a black hole is not completely unrealistic, even if it is certainly very speculative and extremely challenging," he wrote in a paper about the idea.The plan calls for launching one or more tiny spacecraft, called "nanocrafts," to orbit a nearby black hole. Each gram-scale probe would be outfitted with sensors and a light sail, then propelled to nearly a third the speed of light using powerful ground-based lasers.

At that speed, a nanocraft could reach a black hole located 20 to 25 light-years away in about 60 to 75 years, the study estimates. The data it collects would take another 20 to 25 years to reach Earth, putting the total mission duration at nearly a century.

One of the key goals would be to determine whether black holes truly possess event horizons, the invisible boundaries beyond which nothing — not even light — can escape. General relativity predicts the existence of these phenomena, but they’ve never been directly confirmed.

In the proposed mission, one nanocraft would observe another as it plunges toward the black hole. If an event horizon exists, the falling probe’s signal should gradually redshift and fade, consistent with Einstein’s predictions. But if the black hole is instead a "fuzzball" — a theoretical object without an event horizon, proposed by some alternative models — the signal could vanish more abruptly, potentially pointing to new physics.

"We would be able to obtain very valuable information about black holes and general relativity that might be difficult to obtain in other ways," Bambi wrote in the paper.

The mission would require two major advances: the discovery of a sufficiently close black hole, and the development of laser propulsion systems and miniature spacecraft capable of surviving interstellar travel. While the closest known black hole, Gaia BH1, is a little over 1,500 light-years from Earth, stellar evolution models suggest an as-yet-undetected one could lie just 20 to 25 light-years from Earth, the new study notes.

"I think it’s reasonable to expect we could find a nearby one within the next decade," Bambi said in the statement.

Today, building the necessary laser array would cost around $1.1 trillion, far beyond the reach of current science budgets. But if trends in technology continue, Bambi estimates that cost could fall to around one billion euros within 30 years, putting it on par with current flagship space missions.

"We don’t have the technology now," Bambi said in the statement. "But in 20 or 30 years, we might."

"If there exists a black hole within 20–25 light-years of Earth and we find a way to discover it, it is probably only an issue of time to reach the technology necessary to send a probe to the object," he wrote in the paper.

The paper was published on Thursday (Aug. 7) in the journal iScience.

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It’s late at night, and you badly need a ride. Your cellphone’s battery is dangerously low.

Should a ridehailing company such as Uber or Lyft be able to charge you more because its artificial intelligence programming thinks you’re desperate since it knows your phone is about to die?

Not if Hayward Democratic Sen. Aisha Wahab has her way.

Her Senate Bill 259 would prevent retailers from using artificial intelligence to jack up prices using the information stored on customers’ phones. That could include the phone’s battery life, whether it’s an older model, what apps are installed, what time of day it is, where its user is located and where they live.

“Our devices are being weaponized against us in order for large corporations to increase profits, and it has to stop,” Wahab told the Assembly Judiciary Committee last month.

Wahab’s bill to limit surveillance pricing that’s coasting through the Legislature is the latest example of California lawmakers trying to reign in the explosion of AI technology this year. Their 29 other legislative proposals this year include a ban on using algorithmic systems to set rent prices and a measure to protect people from automated discrimination by AI models that make critical decisions about a person’s employment, education, housing, health care, finance, criminal sentencing and access to government services.

Wahab’s measure has been an easier sell than some of the other AI proposals that have already failed thanks, in part, to it being billed as part of Democrats’ post-election pledges to cut costs for Californians.

It also has the backing of the state’s influential labor unions, which tend to get their way in the Legislature.

Its labor supporters include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the California Labor Federation. In total, those labor groups have donated at least $8.5 million to lawmakers in the last 10 years, according to CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

‘A high-tech assault on working people’

The unions argue that using algorithms and AI to generate higher prices for customers is inherently discriminatory and should be illegal.

Ivan Fernandez, a lobbyist with the California Labor Federation, called the practice of surveillance pricing a “high-tech assault on working people” during a hearing before the Assembly privacy committee in June. He argued that people are already struggling to afford the high cost of living in California, and companies should not be able to “use our data to squeeze every cent they can.”

“Using data such as a person’s geolocation or their phone battery to determine how much to upcharge them for a good or service further exacerbates this issue of affordability for our affiliate members and for workers,” Fernandez said.

On the other side are business and tech groups that also have donated heavily to legislators but tend to get their way less often than labor does.

Opponents include the California Chamber of Commerce and the Silicon Valley lobbying organizations TechNet and Chamber of Progress. The 17 groups opposed to the measure have given at least $11.7 million to legislators since 2015, according to Digital Democracy.

The opposition argues that the bill is unnecessary under California’s existing data privacy laws, would stifle innovation, cut into tech company profits and lead to higher prices.

“The bill would unfairly cause companies to overhaul their pricing models and strategies at significant cost, to the detriment of both the businesses themselves and their consumers,” wrote Ronak Daylami, a policy analyst with CalChamber, in an opposition letter to the Assembly Judiciary Committee. That committee voted 10-4 to send the bill to the Assembly floor.

CalChamber spokesperson John Myers declined to comment further.

So far, the bill has faced little resistance from lawmakers. Only Republicans have voted against it as it easily passed the California Senate and as it made its way through the Assembly.

“This overregulation is impeding how we do business and how people want to do business,” said Assemblywoman Diane Dixon, a Republican who represents the Huntington Beach area, during an Assembly judiciary committee hearing. “I just believe that the market resolves these issues.”

A few Democrats, such as assemblymembers Chris Ward of San Diego and Lori Wilson of Suisun City, asked about enforcement and also some exceptions for “legitimate uses” of geolocation data, but Wahab has mostly received kudos.

“It’s modern-day redlining,” Assemblymember Liz Ortega, a Democrat who represents the Hayward area, told the Assembly privacy committee, referring to racist lending practices that relegated Black and other non-white families into less safe and less desirable neighborhoods prior to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Proponents of SB 259 argue that without additional guardrails, companies could use consumers’ data to engage in similarly racist price discrimination.

“It was not OK then, and it’s not OK today,” Ortega said.

Notwithstanding her concerns about equitable pricing, Ortega’s support for the union-sponsored proposal isn’t surprising. She is the former statewide political director for one of AFSCME’s local unions. Since 2023, she voted with AFSCME and its affiliate unions’ positions on legislation 100% of the time in 127 opportunities, according to Digital Democracy. She’s also received $77,800 in campaign donations from AFSCME and its affiliates.

Testing Newsom’s tech loyalty

As she pitched her proposal, Wahab has frequently referred to herself as “a former tech worker in Silicon Valley” and leaned on her experience working with tech companies as a business IT consultant. Yet she is also strongly aligned with labor and unions, voting their way more than 90% of the time. Since 2021 she has received nearly $50,000 in campaign contributions from the California Labor Federation and AFSCME, according to the Digital Democracy database.

Wahab painted the companies in her former industry as profit-hungry villains that unscrupulously use Californians’ personal data to pad their bottom lines.

Wahab pointed to a ProPublica report that exposed the test prep company Princeton Review charging higher prices for online SAT tutoring to customers in zip codes that had a high percentage of Asian residents, even in neighborhoods with low median incomes.

“You are being discriminated against based on your perceived socioeconomic status,” Wahab told CalMatters.

She also cited reporting from SFGate that alleged hotel booking platforms would upcharge users whose devices showed they were browsing from the Bay Area, sometimes up to $500 a night more than users in other parts of the country.

And she highlighted a report from the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog that alleged ridehailing apps such as Uber and Lyft charged higher prices to riders whose phone batteries were low – a claim that the companies deny.

“Suggestions that our systems manipulate pricing unfairly or discriminate are simply false and not supported by evidence,” wrote Zahid Arab, a spokesperson for Uber, in an emailed statement. Shadawn Reddick-Smith, a representative for Lyft, said in an emailed statement that the company “does not base fares on battery percentage.”

At least one expert on tech says the critiques from business groups that the bill would stifle innovation and lead to profit losses are inaccurate, specious and “wildly overblown.”

“Industries have built a business model around systematically violating our privacy in ways that we do not want, and generally do not consent to,” said David Evan Harris, a former research manager at Meta and a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. “People shouldn’t have to be misled into consenting to things.”

Robert Boykin, a representative for the trade group TechNet, noted that California’s privacy law already gives consumers “meaningful rights,” such as the ability to opt out of the sale of precise geolocation and protection from discrimination should they choose to do so.

He said the law also allows companies to offer customers “benefits like loyalty programs and pricing discounts, as long as they’re tied to the value of the data and meet strict standards.”

Wahab’s measure is likely to be heard by the full Assembly when lawmakers reconvene from their summer recess in mid-August. It could end up on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk soon after.

The governor has a friendlier relationship with tech companies than the Legislature does. Last year, Newsom vetoed a handful of bills that sought to regulate AI. They included bans on self-driving trucks and weaponized robots as well as a comprehensive measure compelling testing of AI models.

In July, Newsom convened a panel of California tech executives to identify inefficiencies in state government operations, a nod to Trump’s deployment of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to remake the federal bureaucracy. He reportedly even sent “burner” phones to nearly 100 tech executives so they could contact him confidentially.

Tara Gallegos, a Newsom spokesperson, told CalMatters the governor’s office does not comment on pending legislation.

This article was originally published on The Markup and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Hurricane season has a new contender, and it’s swirling above the poles.

Behold, the space hurricane. Just like its terrestrial namesake, it spins in vast spirals and has a calm, eye-like center. But instead of clouds and rain, these electromagnetic tempests are made of plasma, charged particles whipped into motion by Earth’s magnetic field.

Now, a new study reveals that space hurricanes can mimic the effects of a geomagnetic storm, shaking Earth’s magnetic field and scrambling GPS signals even when space weather appears calm.

The study examined satellite and ground data from the first known space hurricane, which was observed in 2014. It shows, for the first time, that this stealthy, swirling structure was an active electrodynamic storm, capable of triggering real and potentially disruptive space weather effects.

"The space hurricane formed during very quiet conditions," lead author Sheng Lu of Shandong University in China, told Spaceweather.com. "Solar activity was low."

The 2014 hurricane was spotted in imagery from the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). The large spiral pattern, centered over the magnetic north pole, with curved arms and a dark central "eye," glowed faintly with auroral light.

But this was no ordinary aurora.

Two satellites flew through the 2014 storm just minutes apart. DMSP F17 passed through the center, while the European Space Agency’s Swarm B clipped the edge. The data they collected painted a striking picture. This was an active, swirling system in Earth‘s ionosphere, complete with fast-moving plasma flows, density shears, and upward electric currents, just like a hurricane’s convection engine, but electromagnetic.

To try and understand what this silent storm was up to, the team turned to ground and satellite data from the Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Network (CHAIN). And that’s where things got even more weird.

GPS signals passing through the storm’s outer regions were affected by phase scintillation, a kind of "twinkling" that occurs when plasma turbulence interferes with radio signals. One GPS satellite, PRN 11, showed a particularly strong disturbance, with a scintillation index of 0.81, enough to significantly degrade positional accuracy.

Meanwhile, ground-based magnetometers in Greenland picked up sharp, localized changes in Earth’s magnetic field, up to 400 nanoteslas, values normally associated with minor geomagnetic storms.

"These disturbances are comparable in magnitude to those observed during geomagnetic storms," the authors wrote in the study.

The stealth storm no one saw coming

What makes space hurricanes so surprising is how they can form during the most unlikely of scenarios, calm space weather conditions.

Most geomagnetic storms and subsequent impressive aurora displays occur when the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) aligns southward, essentially "opening the door" in Earth’s magnetic field, allowing the charged particles of the solar wind to pour in. That’s when you’ll often find aurora chasers and space weather forecasters alike on high alert for some activity.

But researchers found that the space hurricane formed under a northward-aligned IMF, which typically "closes the door" to geomagnetic activity. As a result, these storms often go unnoticed by standard space weather indices and could be more common than we think.

"Note to forecasters: Not all storms come from the sun," Spaceweather.com warned.

So how do space hurricanes form under such calm conditions? The study suggests that, instead of entering through the usual "front door," energy from the solar wind sneaks in through the magnetic "lobes" at the back of Earth’s magnetosphere. This process, called lobe reconnection, sends energy straight into the polar cap. There, it sets up circular flows of plasma and electric currents, creating a swirling storm — a space hurricane — right above the pole.

What does it mean for us?

As GPS, satellite communications, and polar aviation continue to expand, so does our reliance on stable signals in space. That makes understanding high-latitude disturbances like space hurricanes increasingly important, especially since these events often go undetected by standard geomagnetic indices. As our technology reaches farther into the polar skies, recognizing hidden storms like these could be key to keeping our systems safe, even when the sun looks quiet.

The new study was published in the July 2025 issue of the scientific journal Space Weather.