Analysis: Science & Technology — 06 October 2026
Layered Co₁/₄TaSe₂ shows experimental signs of altermagnetism
A University of Central Florida team led by Madhab Neupane reports experimental signatures of altermagnetism in Co₁/₄TaSe₂, published in Nature Communications and covered on 5 October. Angle-resolved photoemission showed a split in the electronic bands; spin-resolved measurements then found those split states carrying opposite spin. The signal appears to come from the interior of the crystal, not only the surface. That combination is the clearest evidence yet that this intercalated transition-metal dichalcogenide belongs to a magnetic class theorists separated from ferromagnets and antiferromagnets only in recent years.
Ferromagnets align spins and produce a net field that can disturb neighboring components. Antiferromagnets cancel that field but are harder to use for reading and writing spin. Altermagnets are proposed to do both: no net magnetization, yet momentum-dependent spin splitting that can source and detect spin currents. Co₁/₄TaSe₂ is a van der Waals stack with cobalt between weakly bound sheets, so layers can in principle be isolated and stacked with other materials.
The measurements match theory, but they are spectroscopic, not a working device. Photoemission is sensitive to surface contamination, and the group had to screen for exceptionally clean crystals. Why this order wins over ferromagnetism or other antiferromagnetic arrangements is still unsettled. Claims about faster memory or lower-energy electronics remain projections until spin transport is measured in a thin-film structure.
Sources: ScienceDaily; Nature Communications (Sprague et al., 2026).
NASA selects GIMLI to test a possible lava tube at Marius Hills
NASA has selected the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation, or GIMLI, to determine whether the Marius Hills Pit opens into a subsurface void. The Planetary Science Institute leads the payload under the PRISM program, with delivery planned on a Commercial Lunar Payload Services lander and rover. Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, will build the active-source seismic system, gravimeter, and cameras. The Norwegian Space Agency is supplying the ground-penetrating radar.
Orbital images have long suggested that some lunar pits are skylights into lava tubes left by ancient basaltic volcanism. Marius Hills is one of the Moon’s most volcanically varied regions, and the pit walls already expose stacked regolith and lava that are otherwise buried. GIMLI is meant to move that question from orbit to the surface by combining radar, seismics, gravity, and imaging. Active-source seismics have essentially not been used in planetary science since Apollo.
A detected tube would give a size estimate and a direct comparison with terrestrial lava caves. A null result would still constrain how the pit formed. No landing date is stated in the selection announcements, and the instruments will not enter a cave; they infer a void from the surface. Shelter for astronauts is a possible later use, not a result this payload can demonstrate.
Sources: ScienceDaily; Phys.org; Planetary Science Institute.
BC200 remains a mobile gene after 40 million years in primate neurons
Cornell researchers report that BC200, a non-coding RNA gene expressed mainly in neurons, still moves through genomes. A Science paper dated 24 September, widely reported on 5 October, identifies two insertions of BC200 in molluscum contagiosum virus, a human-specific poxvirus. The copies were likely acquired by LINE-1-mediated retrotransposition during modern human history, probably in infected skin cells. Phylogenetic work indicates BC200 has also seeded hundreds of lineage-specific insertions across anthropoid primates.
BC200 was co-opted from a transposon roughly 40 million years ago. Domesticated transposon-derived genes usually lose the ability to jump. This one did not. It is abundant in neurons, where it may regulate translation of messenger RNA, and it is present at low levels in germ cells, so new insertions could be inherited. The team also finds insertion polymorphisms in living people, including individual-specific copies consistent with ongoing activity.
The cellular role is still inferred, not fully demonstrated. Abnormal expression in some tumors and higher levels in Alzheimer’s brains are correlations; the paper does not show that jumping causes those diseases. Whether the virus uses the captured RNA to manipulate host cells is untested. The result blurs the gene–transposon boundary, but it does not yet establish a disease mechanism.
Sources: ScienceDaily; Science (Gao et al., 2026); Cornell Chronicle.