Technologies

Huge ancient lake on Mars could be hiding fossilized signs of alien life

An ancient river delta at the site where NASA’s Perseverance rover landed might hold proof of past life on Mars.

Mars rovers may soon get a few new checkpoints to explore. Geologists say specific areas of an ancient river delta near where NASA’s Perseverance rover is stationed could hold fossilized evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Though they don’t expect to find any bug-eyed, green aliens, they do say vital organic compounds that suggest the presence of past life might exist there, waiting to be uncovered.

The crew of researchers behind the new study, published on Oct. 7 in the journal Science, dissected photographs taken by NASA’s recently landed Perseverance rover and uncovered ways that water flowed on Mars billions of years ago.

Their analysis unveiled spots on the arid orb that could house the highly sought-after biosignatures.

“We know that water was running on the surface at one point in the past, but we don’t know the duration of this activity,” said the study’s lead author, Nicolas Mangold, a geologist at the University of Nantes in France.

NASA’s Perseverance and the legend of Jezero

Once upon a time in space, Mars wasn’t a dry and dangerous world. It was covered in fresh rivers and lakes, a lot like those on Earth. And where there’s water, there could be life.

The vast bodies of H2O dried up eons ago as the formerly blue planet’s delicate atmosphere disappeared. This turned the environment into the inhospitable land we’ve come to know today.

Scientists have long been intrigued by the past existence of water on Mars. That’s why NASA sent Perseverance to traverse the planet in hopes of finding fingerprints of life. More specifically, they sent the rover to a huge crater called Jezero.

Believed to have once been flooded by water, the Jezero crater houses an ancient river delta — a delta that could be holding signs of alien life.

Deltas are landforms generated by rock and sediment swept up by a river’s flow. That stream often carries organic molecules and bacteria in its path, which means Jezero’s delta could easily contain an accumulation of such materials.

In other words, it could contain fossilized building blocks of life.

With that in mind, the study team’s proposed points of interest for locating evidence of life on Mars are all anchored by that delta. Initially, Mangold says, he hoped Perseverance would catch clear images of the spot, but unfortunately, Percy is a bit too far from the old river for that.

“Despite our disappointment,” he said, “we tried to look at the delta from a distance using our best cameras, and that gave really wonderful results.”

Clues from Kodiak

Surprisingly, the researchers didn’t find the prized areas just by analyzing Jezero’s main delta. They observed a nearby butte, or mound of rock, dubbed Kodiak. Kodiak is a part of the delta that’s slightly farther away.

“You can imagine that the delta was a little bit extended to the south and to the east, then erosion removed some of the material,” said Mangold. “But Kodiak is, by miracle, preserved.”

Kodiak serves as a geologic representation of the main river delta’s features. The stratigraphy, its rock layers, is relatively easy to see from afar, according to the researchers.

“By understanding the stratigraphy at Kodiak, it enables us to identify the deposits which are the most likely of interest for life preservation,” Mangold said.

He described the team’s first look at the photos as a “shock.”

“The first image is actually [one] where we can see boulders,” he said. “A delta fault … is not supposed to get some big boulders. It’s supposed to be consistent.”

Those boulders, he said, mean Jezero’s river delta is what’s called a Gilbert-type delta. These are formed with stronger water flow such as waves and tides, like that found in a lake. Thus, the team believes the river’s flow suddenly grew more intense during the course of its life.

“A big question for us,” Mangold said, “is to understand why there was this change of hydrological activity, because that is probably the signature of a change of climate.”

Kodiak also offered insight into how high the ancient body of water rose. Mangold says it would’ve been about 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) high, based on striations of rocks in the butte. That elevation varied over time, he says, which is also consistent with the idea the river advanced into a lake.

“That kind of observation is really key,” he explained. “Because it shows that there was a lake in Jezero, no doubt about that … in addition, the change from horizontal bedding to the faults, which are deep in layers, indicates the past water level.”

In the end, all this knowledge led Mangold’s team to isolate places where remnants of life could be found — deeper layers of Kodiak that likely have mud-dominated residue as well as sand grains. These types of sediments have been known to contain organic, life-sustaining molecules.

“Kodiak is not easily accessible by the rover because it’s a bit vertical facing,” Mangold noted.

“But we have identified some locations on the main delta fault where we can access similar types of layers. Those locations are some of our preferred targets for future rover travels.”

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.