Image: Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (NIRSpec IFU) - UNIVERSE

As interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS began moving away from the Sun in December 2025, astronomers took the opportunity to turn NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope in its direction and capture detailed measurements of its chemical components. The comet was freshly warmed from its closest pass by the Sun, and its ancient ice had been converted to a bright coma of gas ideal for observation. 

Webb captured detailed data, including chemical ratios of carbon and deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen, that are not found in solar system comets. The results surprised researchers. Working backward, astronomers used the components that make up comet 3I/ATLAS to understand the environment in which it formed. 

A paper detailing the findings published June 22 in the journal Nature. 

Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map specific chemical contents of comet 3I/ATLAS as it moved away from the Sun. 

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Martin Cordiner (CUA, NASA-GSFC); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

The comet’s name comes from its status as the third confirmed interstellar comet, meaning it originated outside the solar system, and the telescope that first spotted it, the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System).

“This was a unique opportunity to study an ancient object from the distant galaxy, probably pre-dating our Sun and solar system,” said astro-chemist Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study. “On the one hand, we get direct insight into that distant time and place, and on the other, we learn something about how unusual our own solar system may be.”

Cordiner and the research team joined astronomers from many sub-disciplines in taking the opportunity to get a look at 3I/ATLAS on its journey through the solar system. They received approval to interrupt Webb’s planned schedule of observations to make use of its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument to study the comet. 

NIRSpec revealed exceptionally high levels of deuterium, about 30 times more than seen in solar system comets. This implies that 3I/ATLAS may have originated in a very cold system much earlier in the history of our galaxy. During its formation, the material that became incorporated into 3I/ATLAS was likely exposed to plenty of radiation, but not any long-term warmth that would have reprocessed its “heavy water” ice, with deuterium, into the type of H₂O ice we are familiar with on Earth.

Image: 3I/ATLAS Compared to Solar System Comets

These graphs lay out the significant difference in composition between the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS and comets originating in our solar system. This very specific data helps researchers build a picture of the comet’s original planetary system. 

Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Martin Cordiner (CUA, NASA-GSFC), Leah Hustak (STScI)

Additionally, NIRSpec showed only traces of carbon-13 compared to lighter-weight carbon-12. This also points to a very old origin for 3I/ATLAS, as stellar systems become enriched with carbon-13 over time as generations of stars are born and die in the galaxy. That is why there are higher levels of carbon-13 in our system, around our Sun, which formed relatively recently, 4.5 billion years ago.

The research team estimates that 3I/ATLAS could have formed as long as 10 to 12 billion years ago, during the universe’s “cosmic noon,” when star formation was at its height. Its young origin system was likely ensconced in a relatively cold, dense cloud. The abundance of heavy water shows that 3I/ATLAS spent its formative years in a deeply frozen state. 

A separate study using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, led by astronomer Cyrielle Opitom of the University of Edinburgh, complements Webb’s findings with an analysis of 3I/ATLAS’s carbon and nitrogen varieties in the form of the chemical cyanide.

“For us as scientists, finding these rare isotopes is fascinating, but the bigger picture here is looking at the possibilities of prebiotic chemistry elsewhere in the galaxy,” said Stefanie Milam of NASA Goddard and co-author of the study with Cordiner. “So far, we know of only one place in the vast cosmos where chemical ingredients led to life – our solar system, our Earth. Analysis of these interstellar objects is a major step towards learning how common, or uncommon, the conditions for the evolution of life are in the universe.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/webb 

Source: NASA’s Webb Finds Clues to Ancient, Distant Origin of Comet 3I/ATLAS - NASA Science

Does Music Change Memory?

Most of us already know music can bring old memories flooding back. A song from a particular summer, a wedding dance, a tune that played on a long drive: hear a few bars decades later and the moment returns almost whole. But a more interesting question is whether music can shape memories as they’re being formed in the first place, while they’re still fresh and unsettled.

The forgotten window right after learning

A 2025 study from Rice University, led by graduate student Kayla Clark and adjunct professor Stephanie Leal, looked specifically at what neuroscientists call the post-encoding period: the short stretch right after you learn something, when the brain is quietly working to lock that information into long-term storage. Most memory research focuses on what happens while we’re learning. Clark and Leal wanted to know what happens in the silence afterward, and whether music playing during that silence changes anything.

Their setup, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, was simple. Participants viewed a series of everyday images, then were randomly assigned to one of three groups for a 20-minute rest period: one group listened to classical music, another listened to ambient soundscapes, and a third sat in silence. After the rest, everyone was tested on what they remembered, both the general gist of what they’d seen and the finer details.

It’s not the music. It’s how the music made you feel

The results revealed something more nuanced than “music helps memory.” People who experienced a moderate level of emotional arousal while listening, not too calm, not too intense, remembered specific details better. Those who felt very strongly aroused or barely aroused at all tended to retain only the broad outline of what they’d seen, missing the finer details.

“Moderate levels of emotional arousal predicted better memory for details, like specific features in an image,” Clark said. “People with either very high or very low arousal were more likely to remember the gist.”

This pattern lines up with the Yerkes-Dodson Law, a long-standing idea in psychology that performance tends to peak at moderate arousal and drop off at the extremes. The twist Clark and Leal added is that different kinds of memory, the gist versus the fine detail, may each have their own sweet spot of emotional intensity.

Even more telling: the exact same piece of music left different listeners in completely different emotional states. Some found a track calming, others found it energizing. It was each person’s individual emotional response, not the music itself, that predicted how their memories were stored.

Songs as time machines

This new work on memory formation pairs with a separate strand of research on memory retrieval. A 2025 study from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, drawing on nearly 2,000 participants across 84 countries, confirmed that music from adolescence, especially around age 17, tends to hold the most lasting emotional significance throughout life, a pattern researchers call the “reminiscence bump.” Songs act as temporal landmarks, anchoring us to specific periods and people, which is part of why a single melody can summon an entire scene rather than just a feeling.

Separately, researchers at UCLA found in 2025 that listening to music after an experience only improved memory for people who felt a moderate emotional response while listening, echoing the Rice findings from an independent angle.

Why this matters beyond curiosity

Both research teams see real clinical potential here. If the right music, matched to the right person’s emotional response, can be used deliberately during that post-learning window, it could become a low-cost, noninvasive tool to support people with memory impairments, including those with Alzheimer’s disease or depression.

“If we can figure out how to match the right kind of music to the right individual at the right time,” said Leal, “it opens up exciting possibilities for supporting people with memory impairments.”

Clark is now expanding the research to include adults of all ages, and plans to add physiological measures like heart rate and pupil dilation to better understand exactly how music-induced arousal shapes what we remember.

Sources

·         Clark, K., & Leal, S. (2025). Post-encoding emotional arousal and memory. Journal of Neuroscience. Rice University.

·         Burunat, I., et al. (2025). Memory bumps across the lifespan in personally meaningful music. Memory.

·         UCLA Newsroom (2025). How music-induced emotional arousal impacts forms of memory.

Source: Does Music Change Memory? – Scents of Science