How to watch USA in the Women’s World Cup for free

Soccer ball on grass

SAVE 49%: Livestream every USWNT match in the Women’s World Cup for free with ExpressVPN. A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $107.58, and includes a generous money-back guarantee.


The USWNT have won the Women’s World Cup four times, and are the current champions after winning the 2019 tournament in France. Needless to say, USA will be among the favourites to win the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this year.

If you’re interested in watching every USWNT fixture in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, we’ve got the information you need.

When are USWNT playing in the Women’s World Cup?

USWNT will begin their World Cup journey against Vietnam. Here’s the USWNT group stage schedule in full:

  • July 21: United States v Vietnam (BBC iPlayer / 9 p.m. ET)

  • July 26: United States v Netherlands (BBC iPlayer / 9 p.m. ET)

  • Aug. 1: Portugal v United States (ITVX / 3 a.m. ET)

Commit those dates to memory, because you don’t want to miss a minute of this potentially historic campaign.

How to watch USWNT in the Women’s World Cup for free

Soccer fans in the U.S. have a number of options for watching USWNT in the 2023 Women’s World Cup:

  • DirecTV Stream — $75 per month

  • Fox — $74.99 per month

  • Fubo — $75 per month

  • Hulu+Live TV — $70 per month

  • Sling TV Blue — $40 per month

  • YouTube TV — $73 per month

The issue here is that none of these services are free, unlike BBC iPlayer and ITVX. These services are offering free English-language streams of all 64 games this year, including all USWNT fixtures.

The only way to access BBC iPlayer and ITVX from outside the UK is with a VPN. These cybersecurity services can hide your real IP address and connect you to a secure server in the UK, meaning you can unblock BBC iPlayer or ITVX from anywhere in the world.

This might sound complicated, but the process is actually really quick and easy:

  1. Sign up for a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

  2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

  3. Open up the app and connect to a server in the UK

  4. Connect to BBC iPlayer or ITVX

  5. Watch USWNT in the Women’s World Cup from anywhere in the world

ExpressVPN logo

Credit: ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN (1-Year Subscription + 3 Months Free)
(opens in a new tab)

$107.58 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee)


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The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer money-back guarantees or free trials. By using these offers, you can watch USWNT in the World Cup without committing with your cash. This obviously isn’t a long-term solution, but it does mean you can watch the majority of the Women’s World Cup for free.

What is the best VPN for the FIFA Women’s World Cup?

There are a lot of impressive services for unblocking streaming sites, but it is tough to beat ExpressVPN. This popular VPN is the top choice for streaming sport, for a number of reasons:

  • Servers in 94 countries including the UK

  • Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

  • Strict no-logging policy so your data is always secure

  • Fast streaming speeds free from throttling

  • Up to five simultaneous connections

  • 30-day money-back guarantee

A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for £82.82, saving you 49% on list price. This discounted plan includes an extra three months of coverage and a year of unlimited cloud backup for free. Subscribers also get a generous 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can unblock BBC iPlayer or ITVX to watch USWNT in the Women’s World Cup, and then recover your investment when the tournament has finished.

Watch USWNT in the FIFA Women’s World Cup for free with ExpressVPN.

Mashable is in no way affiliated with the FIFA Women’s World Cup

Wordle today: Here’s the answer and hints for July 16

Woman plays Wordle on her smartphone from the living room of her home

Sunday is here, and with it a new Wordle. As always, we’re here with some tips and tricks to help you figure out the solution.

If you just want to be told the answer, you can jump to the end of this article for July 16’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you want to solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the Wordle answer for July 15.

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you like being strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.

Why are there two different Wordle answers some days?

Though usually Wordle will only accept one correct solution per day, occasionally it will rebel against the norm and deem two different answers acceptable. This is due to changes the New York Times made to Wordle after it acquired the puzzle game.

The Times has since added its own updated word list, so this should happen even less frequently than before. To avoid any confusion, it’s a good idea to refresh your browser before getting stuck into a new puzzle.

Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:

What a gem.

Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?

Not today!

Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…

Today’s Wordle starts with the letter T.

SEE ALSO:

Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL.

What’s the answer to Wordle today?

Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to Wordle #757 is…

TOPAZ.

Don’t feel disheartened if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

‘Quordle’ today: Here are the answers and hints for July 16

A woman's hands holding a mobile phone playing 'Quordle'

If Quordle is a little too challenging today, you’ve come to the right place for hints. There aren’t just hints here, but the whole Quordle solution. Scroll to the bottom of this page, and there it is. But are you sure you need all four answers? Maybe you just need a strategy guide. Either way, scroll down, and you’ll get what you need.

What is Quordle?

Quordle is a five-letter word guessing game similar to Wordle, except each guess applies letters to four words at the same time. You get nine guesses instead of six to correctly guess all four words. It looks like playing four Wordle games at the same time, and that is essentially what it is. But it’s not nearly as intimidating as it sounds.

Is Quordle harder than Wordle?

Yes, though not diabolically so.

Where did Quordle come from?

Amid the Wordle boom of late 2021 and early 2022, when everyone was learning to love free, in-browser, once-a-day word guessing games, creator Freddie Meyer says he took inspiration from one of the first big Wordle variations, Dordle — the one where you essentially play two Wordles at once. He took things up a notch, and released Quordle on January 30. Meyer’s creation was covered in The Guardian six days later, and now, according to Meyer, it attracts millions of daily users. Today, Meyer earns modest revenue from Patreon, where dedicated Quordle fans can donate to keep their favorite puzzle game running. 

How is Quordle pronounced?

“Kwordle.” It should rhyme with “Wordle,” and definitely should not be pronounced exactly like “curdle.”

Is Quordle strategy different from Wordle?

Yes and no.

Your starting strategy should be the same as with Wordle. In fact, if you have a favorite Wordle opening word, there’s no reason to change that here. We suggest something rich in vowels, featuring common letters like C, R, and N. But you do you.

After your first guess, however, you’ll notice things getting out of control if you play Quordle exactly like Wordle.

What should I do in Quordle that I don’t do in Wordle?

Solving a Wordle puzzle can famously come down to a series of single letter-change variations. If you’ve narrowed it down to “-IGHT,” you could guess “MIGHT” “NIGHT” “LIGHT” and “SIGHT” and one of those will probably be the solution — though this is also a famous way to end up losing in Wordle, particularly if you play on “hard mode.” In Quordle, however, this sort of single-letter winnowing is a deadly trap, and it hints at the important strategic difference between Wordle and Quordle: In Quordle, you can’t afford to waste guesses unless you’re eliminating as many letters as possible at all times. 

Guessing a completely random word that you already know isn’t the solution, just to eliminate three or four possible letters you haven’t tried yet, is thought of as a desperate, latch-ditch move in Wordle. In Quordle, however, it’s a normal part of the player’s strategic toolset.

Is there a way to get the answer faster?

In my experience Quordle can be a slow game, sometimes dragging out longer than it would take to play Wordle four times. But a sort of blunt-force guessing approach can speed things up. The following strategy also works with Wordle if you only want the solution, and don’t care about having the fewest possible guesses:

Try starting with a series of words that puts all the vowels (including Y) on the board, along with some other common letters. We’ve had good luck with the three words: “NOTES,” “ACRID,” and “LUMPY.” YouTuber DougMansLand suggests four words: “CANOE,” “SKIRT,” “PLUMB,” and “FUDGY.”

Most of the alphabet is now eliminated, and you’ll only have the ability to make one or two wrong guesses if you use this strategy. But in most cases you’ll have all the information you need to guess the remaining words without any wrong guesses.

If strategy isn’t helping, and you’re still stumped, here are some hints:

Are there any double or triple letters in today’s Quordle words?

Two words have double letters.

Are any rare letters being used in today’s Quordle like Q or Z?

No.

What do today’s Quordle words start with?

S, S, S, and T.

What are the answers for today’s Quordle?

Are you sure you want to know?

There’s still time to turn back.

OK, you asked for it. The answers are:

  1. STEAM

  2. SALTY

  3. SLOOP

  4. TRUSS

Twitter starts paying…but only Elon Musk’s favorite creators

Elon Musk and Twitter

Elon Musk promised that creators on Twitter would start getting paid for their tweets…back in February.

“Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads,” Musk tweeted on February 3.

It took a little more than 5 months, but on Thursday, July 13, Twitter surprised some creators and started sending out payment notifications. “Surprise! Today we launched our Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program,” the official Twitter account posted after creators started receiving and sharing their earned amounts for Twitter’s new revenue share program.

Yet it appears, so far at least, that only dozens have been paid when hundreds of thousands should technically be eligible. 

Furthermore, many of these lucky high-paid users should also technically be ineligible for the revenue share program, according to Twitter’s very own monetization policies. 

Musk’s favorites prioritized

As some users shared their tens of thousands in ad share revenue earnings on Twitter, many other users salivated at the chance to get paid big bucks to tweet. So, how do Twitter users sign up and get paid?

SEE ALSO:

Elon Musk unveils his AI company, xAI

According to Twitter’s own monetization rules, in order to be approved, a user must be subscribed to the platform’s paid subscription service, Twitter Blue. Travis Brown, an independent researcher who tracks Twitter Blue subscription numbers, tells Mashable that he estimates there are currently around 790,000 Twitter Blue subscribers.

Yet, only dozens shared their earnings or even revenue share notification. And that’s because the program isn’t for everyone, even if they are a Twitter Blue subscriber. Users  must also receive at least 5 million impressions on their tweets over the past 3 months. However, even Twitter Blue users who hit that requirement reportedly didn’t receive payment notifications.

One Twitter Blue subscriber with more than 300,000 followers reached out to Twitter to find out how they could officially take part in the monetization program after failing to receive a payment notification of their own.

Twitter responded, saying that the “creators ad revenue sharing is only available to a selected group of people” currently.

As Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post pointed out, the users that Twitter prioritized in this first batch of creators in the monetization program featured quite a lot of right wing influencers. 

Conservative media personality Ian Miles Cheong tweeted a screenshot showing his earnings of more than $16,000. Right-wing account, “@EndWokeness,” also showed a screenshot of their revenue share of more than $10,000. YouTuber Tim Pool and both Benny Johnson and Ashley St. Clair of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, all shared their mid-to-high four figures in earnings as well.

However, right-wing personalities aside, there were others who received payment notifications too. YouTube’s most popular creator Mr. Beast shared his $25,000 payout. Billy Markus, one of the founders of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, tweeted a screenshot showing more than $37,000 in earnings.

Creators accepted in the program also have a varying range in their follower counts. Some users have just tens of thousands of followers. Others have millions.

Looking through the list of those in the program, there is a more prevalent pattern in exactly who got paid: Users who have some connection to Twitter owner Elon Musk, himself. 

Most of the creators who received a payment notification frequently interact with Musk on the platform. Many even pay Musk directly for exclusive paywalled tweets as part of another one of Twitter’s monetization programs, Subscriptions. A number of Tesla fan accounts reported earning thousands of dollars from the program. And, of course, many of the right-wing political personalities who got paid frequently associate with Musk on the platform as well. 

None appear to be critics of Musk.

Twitter’s monetization eligibility rules

According to Twitter’s monetization rules, there are content-related eligibility rules as well. Certain types of content disqualify a user from being monetized on Twitter.

However, it appears that those rules do not apply to Musk’s chosen few.

For example, the highest paid user appears to be a meme account called Internet Hall of Fame. A screenshot shared by the account showed earnings of more than $107,000. The account just shares memes and photos it finds online. Many times these just consist of a screenshot of another user’s original tweet on the platform. The account doesn’t normally add any sort of original content or commentary to their posts either.

All of this means the account technically should not be eligible for monetization, according to Musk.

“Anyone engaging in repeated theft of posts [will] be demonetized,” Musk tweeted on Thursday evening in reply to another user questioning if the program encourages stealing from others in order to drive engagement for payment.

Andrew Tate, an online influencer currently awaiting trial after being charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania, tweeted that he made more than $20,000 from Twitter’s monetization program. In a series of online videos, as well as on his now-defunct former adult webcam website, Tate had frequently bragged about his “business” model. For example in a series of social media videos, Tate describes using the “Loverboy” method, in which he would convince a woman that they are in a relationship and then coerce her to work for him. Romanian investigators specifically cited the Loverboy method in their trafficking allegations against the influencer. “You must not monetize content which depicts or describes criminal behaviors including but not limited to…human trafficking,” reads a list of content which would make a user ineligible for monetization according to Twitter’s policies.

@WarMonitors frequently posts war and armed conflict footage pulled from Telegram and other channels. Violent content as well as war and conflict content also disqualifies a user from monetization, according to Twitter’s rules. Yet, that didn’t affect @WarMonitors from receiving more than $16,000 from Musk.

An Elon Musk parody account, @ElonMuskAOC, also claimed to have been paid more than $5,000, although it’s unclear if their post was part of their gimmick. Under Twitter’s original monetization policy, the account, which has a friendly relationship with Musk himself and is frequently confused for the real Musk by Twitter’s users, should’ve been ineligible for payment. However, on Saturday, Musk tweeted that he was removing the policy making parody accounts and fictional character accounts ineligible for monetization.

“Consider this silly policy deleted as of now,” Musk said, replying to another user critiquing the now-removed rule.

Many of the creators reviewed by Mashable also routinely post video content they found online and re-upload to share. “You must not monetize content you do not have the rights to monetize,” reads Twitter’s monetization policy under the unowned or unlicensed content section. Twitter evidently paid these creators, regardless.

Make it make cents

“It makes a lot of cents to create here!” Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted after the monetization program launched on Thursday.

However, Twitter’s monetization program only makes sense if a user is one of Musk’s hand-picked favorites.

According to Musk, users in the monetization program only get paid for other Twitter Blue users who are served ads in the replies to their tweets. That’s a very small subset of Twitter’s user base. That’s also a very specific portion of the ads Twitter serves.

In addition, Musk says it’s not based on ad impressions anyway. So, how exactly is Twitter determining how much it can even pay its chosen users? Is it even really based on advertising anyway?

Last month, Musk tweeted that Twitter put aside $5 million to pay the first group in its monetization program. Interestingly, that’s right around how much the company is estimated to pull in from Twitter Blue’s $8 subscription fees each month. Is that really where that first block payment is coming from? And how long can Twitter afford to keep paying out users tens of thousands of dollars when the company is delinquent on its own bills

One thing is clear, however. At least for now, Twitter’s monetization program is for Elon’s faves only.

Musk admits Twitter cash flow is still negative, lost 50% of ad revenue

Elon Musk speaking at a conference

After drastic cost-cutting measures and various efforts to monetize the platform, Twitter is still in the red.

On July 15, Elon Musk tweeted, “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”

It’s been a wild ride since Musk took the helm of the social media platform, promising to turn Twitter into a “digital town square,” and stem the negative cash flow. So far, that’s included laying off 80 percent of Twitter employees, charging third-party apps up to $42,000 for the API, and making verified Twitter accounts subscription-based. Many advertisers have left the platform over Musk’s, shall we say, laissez-faire attitude towards content moderation. Recently, Musk brought in former NBCUniversal exec Linda Yaccarino as CEO who is tasked with bringing back ad revenue.

But based on Musk’s tweet, that hasn’t happened yet. In March, Musk shared his goal of being cash-flow positive by now, meaning Twitter is way behind schedule. As part of its long-term plan to entice content creators and lure influencers back to the site, Twitter has started sharing ad revenue with select Twitter Blue subscribers. User Brian Krassenstein was recently paid almost $25,000.

Based on Twitter’s balance, maybe now isn’t the best time to be sharing ad revenue.

MIT study: ChatGPT increases productivity for human workers

OpenAI logo on a smartphone on a notebook next to a pair of eyeglasses

The big question with generative AI these days is whether tools like ChatGPT will widen the inequality gap or empower workers with newfound skills and abilities.

A study from MIT’s Department of Economics designed to answer this question found that participants using OpenAI’s ChatGPT increased productivity and the likelihood that they would use ChatGPT in future tasks. In the controlled study, this implies that “the technology will be more strongly complementary to human workers,” meaning it favors tools like ChatGPT as a way to empower workers. But how these tools are actually implemented in the real world remains uncertain.

SEE ALSO:

How generative AI will affect the creator economy

Unlike earlier AI tools which raised concerns about automation of “routine” tasks, deep learning tools like ChatGPT are capable of executing more complex, creative tasks like writing and design. How generative AI is implemented in the workforce could negatively or positively impact labor inequality. “Inequalities between workers could either decrease if lower-ability workers are supported more by ChatGPT or increase if higher-ability workers have the skills necessary to take advantage of the new technology,” said the study.

The experiment comprised 453 college-educated professional and randomly assigned half of the participants with ChatGPT after completing their first assignment. The assignments were writing-based tasks including press releases, short reports, and “delicate emails,” mimicking those that grant writers, marketers, consultants, data analysts, and HR professionals would do in their day-to-day work.

The study found the group that was given access to ChatGPT decreased in time taken to accomplish a task by 11 minutes and increased in quality. Notably, the performance of the treatment group (those using ChatGPT) increased between their first assignment (without ChatGPT) and subsequent assignments (with ChatGPT), which the study concluded could close the inequality gap between skilled and unskilled labor.

This has been anecdotally true for anyone using ChatGPT. But the study provides hard evidence that workers armed with ChatGPT can be more productive and perform tasks better. Yet, how this plays out in the real world remains to be seen. Is this proof that ChatGPT should be taken as a new tool in workers’ toolkits? Or will companies interpret this as evidence that generative AI can successfully replace entire jobs? Ultimately, this study underscores how the implementation of generative AI depends on a wildly complex and unpredictable factor: human nature.

Twitter is producing errors. What we know.

the Twitter logo frozen polar ice

If you’re having problems with Twitter Saturday, you’re far from alone.

At 10:17 a.m. ET, Downdetector was picking up a massive spike in reports on Twitter, with users reporting 596 errors for that period, compared to the baseline level of 12 errors.

Similarly, the outage tracker website Down for Everyone or Just Me was “detecting problems with Twitter,” as of this writing. The problems in question had started around 8 a.m. ET.

As for what this looked like on the site itself, from our vantage point here in the U.S., there didn’t seem to be much of a problem. Though Down for Everyone of Just Me, for its part, was showing three recent errors in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and two in the U.S. The problem may be in a non-U.S. region.

Twitter’s API status page was reporting “All Systems Operational,” and Mashable’s staff was able to tweet in-browser and on the app.

However, as is often the case, Twitter’s functions were noticeably spotty. For instance, the “Latest” tab in Twitter’s search page wasn’t working.

a Twitter search showing an error in the Latest tab


Credit: Twitter screengrab

This is a developing story, and we’ll update it we learn more.

NASA’s Webb telescope video is a mind-blowing trip

Thousands of vivid galaxies viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Intergalactic travel is technically impossible today. But with the most technologically advanced space telescope, you can still experience the great cosmic expanse.

The James Webb Space Telescope — the observatory with an over 21-foot-wide mirror orbiting 1 million miles from Earth — collects bounties of light, allowing it to capture detailed views of galaxies billions of light-years away. Using this imagery, astronomers created a visualization of galaxies seen during a survey of the early universe, called CEERS, short for “Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science.”

The one-minute flight video, shown below, is well worth your time:

SEE ALSO:

Spectacular Webb telescope image reveals things scientists can’t explain

  • You begin the journey by passing through “nearby galaxies,” located several billion light-years from Earth. You’ll spot many spiral galaxies, similar to our Milky Way.

  • You’ll travel through time, billions of years, eventually arriving at one of the earliest galaxies ever formed, called “Maisie’s Galaxy.” It’s a blurrier red object, owing to its great distance away. You’re seeing how it looked a whopping 13.4 billion years ago, just some 390 million years after the universe formed. These are the type of objects astronomers really want to see.

    “This observatory just opens up this entire period of time for us to study,” Rebecca Larson, an astronomer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the CEERS researchers, said in a statement. “We couldn’t study galaxies like Maisie’s before because we couldn’t see them. Now, not only are we able to find them in our images, we’re able to find out what they’re made of and if they differ from the galaxies that we see close by.”

Enjoy the trip. As NASA explains: “Each second amounts to traveling 200 million light-years into the data set, and seeing 200 million years further into the past.”

In that video, you’re flying through just a tiny patch of space, a part of the “Extended Groth Strip” located between the constellations Ursa Major and Boötes (the Big Dipper makes up part of Ursa Major).

Many of the closer galaxies to us contain hundreds of billions of stars. And each of those stars likely contain planets…

An artist's conception of the James Webb Space Telescope viewing the cosmos with its giant mirror.

An artist’s conception of the James Webb Space Telescope viewing the cosmos with its giant mirror.
Credit: NASA

The Webb telescope’s powerful abilities

The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, the ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal unprecedented insights about the early universe. But it’s also peering at intriguing planets in our galaxy, and even the planets in our solar system.

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Here’s how Webb, which just celebrated a year of science operations, is achieving unparalleled feats, and likely will for decades:

  • Giant mirror: Webb’s mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That’s over two and a half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. As described above, the telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

    “We’re going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed,” Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.

  • Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that’s visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn’t as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb’s infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can’t.

    “It lifts the veil,” said Creighton.

  • Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrometers that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be it gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb will look at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we’ll find?

    “We might learn things we never thought about,” Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.

    Already, astronomers have successfully found intriguing chemical reactions on a planet 700 light-years away, and the observatory has started looking at one of the most anticipated places in the cosmos: the rocky, Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST solar system.

This story has been updated with more information about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Water worlds in the galaxy could be 100 times more common than once thought

Scientists studying water worlds in space

The chance of finding worlds in the Milky Way with water — a basic requirement for Earth-like life — could be 100 times greater than previously thought, a new study finds.

NASA uses an old joke to explain why astronomers prioritize looking for signs of life throughout space on rocky planets similar to our own:

A police officer offers to help a man who’s searching for his keys under a streetlight in the park. After a few minutes, the officer says, “Are you sure this is where you lost them?”

“No,” the man says, “but the light is much better here.”

Perhaps alien life could thrive in conditions unlike Earth, but it’s easier for scientists to look for something familiar. That’s why exoplanet hunters, those searching for worlds outside of this solar system, often focus on Earth doppelgangers in so-called “habitable zones.” The concept, dating back to the 1950s, defines regions around a host star where it is not too hot or cold for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface. In this solar system, that sweet spot encompasses Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Today, scientists are realizing this notion is outdated, Lujendra Ojha, an astrophysicist at Rutgers University, told Mashable. He and a team of researchers used computer modeling to look at planets found around red dwarf stars, the most ubiquitous in the Milky Way. They concluded that even on exoplanets where the solar conditions aren’t ideal for atmospheres and oceans, many would likely have internal sources of heat capable of creating lakes beneath ice sheets.

“If you were to ask any planetary scientist, ‘Hey, after Earth, which body do you think is potentially most habitable?’ most people would tell you that the next best place to look for life in the solar system is not Mars, not Venus, which are two planets in the habitable zone,” he said. “It’s places like Europa and Enceladus,” two moons encased in ice in the outer solar system.

SEE ALSO:

The curious planets scientists have ogled in 2023, so far

Scientists have previously estimated about one rocky planet per 100 stars has liquid water. But a study published in Nature Communications by this team, which considered the potential for water below ice, expands that probability about 100 times to one world for every star.

Israeli astrophysicist Amri Wandel, who was not involved in the research, wrote a commentary using this new data to advocate for broadening the Goldilocks boundaries for habitable planets to include potential worlds with “subglacial liquid water and life in colder planets and their satellites.”

The number of confirmed exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than the sun — has risen to 5,470, with 9,700 more candidates under review. Most of these are in the Milky Way, though scientists think they discovered the first planet within another galaxy two years ago.

Statistically speaking, the growing tally only scratches the surface of planets believed to be in space. With hundreds of billions of galaxies, the universe likely teems with many trillions of stars. And if most stars have one or more planets around them, that’s an unfathomable number of worlds.

Drilling into a subglacial lake

By drilling deep through the ice cover into lakes, scientists have discovered microorganisms known as psychrophiles, for example, that survive in the harsh environment.
Credit: National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs

The idea of flowing water underneath glaciers is not hypothetical — scientists have observed it here on Earth. They first discovered subglacial lakes several miles below the surface of Antarctica in the 1970s with radar. Since then, a team at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom has cataloged over 700 such bodies of water locked under ice throughout the world.

In these reservoirs, the heat that melts icy layers into lakes doesn’t come from the sun but Earth itself. Natural radioactive elements found in everyday rocks — primarily uranium, thorium, and potassium — slowly decay, producing geothermal energy.

By drilling deep through the ice cover into these lakes, scientists have discovered microorganisms known as psychrophiles, for example, that survive in the harsh environment.

Europa and Enceladus

Europa, left, and Enceladus are two moons in the frigid outer solar system suspected to have oceans under icy shells.
Credit: NASA

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“Some of these lakes may have been isolated from the outside world for up to 35 million years, and may be final refuges for life, the like of which exists nowhere else on Earth,” wrote Bethan Davies, a glaciologist, on the website she founded, AntarcticGlaciers.org.

Scientists have identified Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, as an icy world with an ocean beneath its surface. What gave away its secret were geyser-like plumes spraying water vapor more than 6,000 miles into space, roughly the distance of New York to Seattle and back. Mounting evidence points to the same phenomenon happening at Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. NASA plans to explore it with the uncrewed Europa Clipper mission, expected to launch as early as 2024.

Cassini observing Enceladus' geysers

Geyser-like plumes on Enceladus spew water vapor more than 6,000 miles into space.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI


“If you were to ask any planetary scientist, ‘Hey, after Earth, which body do you think is potentially most habitable?’ most people would tell you that the next best place to look for life in the solar system is not Mars, not Venus, which are two planets in the habitable zone.”

Mars Orbiter studying south polar ice cap

Even Mars is suspected to have a subglacial lake under its south polar ice cap.
Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS

Even Mars is suspected to have a subglacial lake under its south polar ice cap. An Italian research team published evidence from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft in the journal Science in 2018. The discovery bolsters the belief that the Red Planet could have hosted life at one time, possibly even still today.

About 4 billion years ago, when the sun wasn’t as big and bright, Earth was a snowball covered in ice. Yet early Earth appears to have had liquid water that supported life. Scientists like Ojha think the solution to this mystery for our planet and ancient Mars is that other sources of heat allowed life to persist.

“On one hand, the astronomers are saying ‘Hey, the sun just did not have enough power to cause water to flow.’ And then when you talk to geologists, they say, ‘Well, that’s bullshit. Obviously, we see evidence of liquid water on both of these planets,'” he said. “The entirety of Earth was frozen for such a long period of time. Why didn’t life just die off? The answer to that is related to geothermal heat.”

A question astrobiologists want to answer is whether exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars — about 70 percent of the stellar population in the galaxy — can have liquid water and potentially life. These stars are a mere fraction of the sun’s size but burn extraordinarily bright, with toxic UV and X-rays. Recently, researchers have used the James Webb Space Telescope, the leading science observatory in space, to begin investigating the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, a red dwarf only 41 light-years away with seven Earth-size worlds.

So far, Webb has found a lack of atmospheres shielding these planets, perhaps because red dwarf stars are too violent. Though that could come as a letdown to people hopeful at least one of these worlds is covered in oceans, Ojha feels optimistic that even the harshest environments could harbor hidden reservoirs — and, thus, life.

After all, neither Europa nor Enceladus has an atmosphere.

“When you include this perspective,” he said, “it’s not necessary for the planet to be at the right place at the right time.”

Mars spacecraft looks back and snaps poignant view of Earth

An illustration of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter flying above Mars.

Astronomers always want to look back home.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter — which has been studying Mars from above for two decades — captured a poignant view of our planet and moon from millions of miles away.

“In these simple snapshots from Mars Express, Earth has the equivalent size as an ant seen from a distance of 100 metres, and we are all in there,” Jorge Hernández Bernal, a planetary scientist working on the orbiter’s mission, said in a statement. “Even though we have seen images like these before, it is still humbling to pause and think: we need to look after the pale blue dot, there is no planet B.”

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The farthest-away pictures of Earth ever taken

In the footage below, you’re seeing the moon zip around Earth from 186 million miles (300 million km) away. It’s similar to view you’d see if you were standing on Mars, with binoculars, peering back at Earth.

Over the decades, the orbiter has provided researchers with bounties of Martian insight. It’s found evidence that Mars, earlier in its history, was a blue watery world with the ability to host life (though its unknown if any primitive Martian life ever existed). “Key discoveries include the presence of minerals that form only in the presence of water, the detection of water-ice deposits underground, and evidence to suggest volcanism on Mars may have persisted until recent time,” the European Space Agency said.

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Down on the Martian surface, NASA currently has two car-sized rovers exploring the Red Planet’s desert. The Perseverance rover parachuted down to a region of Mars called the Jezero Crater, a place planetary scientists suspect once teemed with rivers and streams. Together with several orbiters, these trusty robots will guide NASA and other space agencies as they look for the best places to land future robotic explorers, and, one day, brazen astronauts.