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Losing your only charging cable in the middle of a long drive is the kind of thing that makes reasonable people take impulsive risks. Buying a charging cord from a gas station is one of the worst decisions you can make. Some of them are a legitimate security threat, and the ones that aren't can still do real damage to your hardware over time.

The whole point of running a home server is being able to reach your files, media, dashboards, and other self-hosted services whenever you need them. Unfortunately, the easiest way to use remote access is also the riskiest one: through port forwarding.

A sound system isn't a cheap proposition, and if you're going to spend the money, you don't want any regrets a year or two down the road. Rather than buying a soundbar, you should piece together your own system—it'll age better and offer better performance.

Emissions regulations, electrification, and ever-stricter fuel economy standards have forced manufacturers to downsize their engines or abandon internal combustion altogether. Even Ferrari has an EV now. The days of the V12 engine are numbered. But they aren’t over, thanks to Zenvo.

Home Assistant is the best smart home platform in almost every way. The problem is that it has a bit of a reputation for being overly complex, which can put a lot of people off. But the project is actively focused on improving the user experience, prioritizing user-friendliness to increase adoption.

We typically think of a smartwatch as an extension to a phone, but there’s no reason it can’t be a useful companion for a computer, too. I was able to set up a simple automation to launch apps on my desktop from my Galaxy Watch—and I did it with two apps I already had installed.

I love streaming services. I see them as an affordable way to watch movies, and when those movies rotate away, I can stream something new.

There was an age where partitioning drives was not only common, but encouraged. But PCs have changed a lot in the past few years. Nowadays, while partitioning is still an option, I'd argue that 90% of users probably shouldn't.

If you've ever dual-booted a PC, you've probably noticed a pretty marked difference between how quickly apps launch on Linux compared to Windows. On Linux, everything seems to snap open instantly, while on Windows there is a perceptible hesitation. Installing Linux on an old PC only exaggerates that even more.

Pull the plug on your internet connection and your Amazon Echo suddenly seems useless. But there's a difference between Alexa being offline and Alexa being completely switched off. I took my Echo offline to find out what still works and what doesn't.

There was a time when AIO (All-In-One) liquid coolers were the perfect middle ground between expensive and complex custom loops and loud and ineffective air coolers. No matter which AIO you chose, it was probably better than most air coolers you could have used in the same build.

Excel has changed dramatically since I first started using it. Microsoft has added features like AI tools, dynamic arrays, Power Query improvements, Python integration, and many new functions—but one of the first "advanced" features I learned is still one of the tools I use most. Setting up Custom Lists only takes a few minutes, yet it quietly saves me time every time I enter or sort recurring data.

The Raspberry Pi may have fallen out of favor among homelabbers and hobbyists for its high price-to-performance ratio, but the single-board computer still has some compelling use cases. Detecting earthquakes and other seismic activity is up there with the best of them.

If you struggle to learn terminal commands, I have four perfect remedies I've picked up over many years, some of which will boost your skills instantly.

I've heard about Linux distributions designed to be difficult to break, and it got me wondering whether I could build something similar with Windows. I actually have a few good reasons to want one. I keep a PC in my garage connected to a large monitor next to my workout equipment. In addition, I do a lot of software testing for my job, and there's a shared media PC in my living room that my family and guests can all use. In all three cases, being able to restart the computer and immediately return it to a known-good state could be incredibly useful.

Do you understand quantum parallel repetition? What about quantum complexity, lattice cryptography, or extremal combinatorics?

The new OpenAI model Astra knows all about them.

Recently, OpenAI confirmed the existence of Astra, calling it "our next major model." On Aug. 1, the ChatGPT-maker revealed that "an internal version of Astra" solved 10 major open math problems, some of which have been unresolved for decades. Then, on Aug. 7, OpenAI announced that Astra had developed such advanced cyber capabilities that new security controls were necessary and that some internal development work would be paused.

"These results, in addition to expert assessments, have led us to conclude last night that we cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities under our Preparedness Framework."

OpenAI's Preparedness Framework is the company's "approach to tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities" that could be dangerous. It tracks risk levels in three categories: biological and chemical, cybersecurity, and AI self-improvement.

Previously, GPT-5.6-Sol was evaluated as a "high" risk in cybersecurity, and so Astra could be the first OpenAI model to be classified as a "critical" risk.

"Under our Preparedness Framework, a model reaches the Critical cybersecurity threshold if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits of all severity levels in many hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or can devise and execute end-to-end novel strategies for cyberattacks against hardened targets given only a high level desired goal," OpenAI's blog post states.

OpenAI's testing now shows enough progress on agentic coding and developing zero-day exploits (previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in software or hardware) that the company is stepping back to strengthen security around Astra. To do this, the company is tightening sandboxes that keep the model contained and monitoring its Chain of Thought to "interrupt high risk activity."

OpenAI also said that it's committed to working with "relevant government agencies and select AI safety organizations to test the capabilities for this model."

Frontier AI models have progressed rapidly in the cybersecurity domain this year. Some zero-day bug bounty. programs have been forced to shut down due to the deluge of AI-discovered bugs, as Mashable has reported.

Until recently, the prospect of swarms of AI agents conducting relatively autonomous cyber attacks on critical infrastructure was mostly hypothetical. That risk seems much more real thanks to unreleased models like Claude Mythos and OpenAI Astra.

Our big Guessing Game is back! Enter now for a chance to win an Apple Watch.

What else do we know about OpenAI Astra?

Precious little, to be honest. Prior to the most recent announcement, OpenAI had released few concrete details, besides its internal name, Astra, and the fact that it was in testing to become OpenAI's next major model.

Bleeping Computer recently described Astra as "a powerful model that allows AI agents to collaborate on different parts of a larger problem." That suggests it's designed for agentic work and can "tackle complex, long-running tasks," also per Bleeping Computer.

At this point, it's unclear if Astra will eventually be released as GPT-5.7, the beginning of GPT-6, or something else entirely. If it truly has critical cybersecurity capabilities, it may never be fully released to the public, as with Anthropic's Claude Mythos.

However, let's look again at how OpenAI initially described Astra: "The results were achieved by an internal version of Astra, our next major model."(Emphasis added by Mashable.) That certainly suggested that OpenAI was preparing Astra for release sooner rather than later. However, in its Aug. 7 blog post, OpenAI's language had shifted, describing Astra as "one of our upcoming models." (Emphasis added by Mashable.)

The company has also so far declined to answer our questions about Astra, but we'll update this story if we receive more information.

However, we can make some additional deductions. Based on OpenAI's original blog post about Astra, "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science," it's safe to say that the new Astra model has made significant advances in science and mathematics, as well as in cybersecurity.

So, we talked to a mathematician about what Astra means for the future of AI and science — and what it doesn't mean.

New Anthropic and OpenAI models are really good at coding and math Credit: Photographed by Joseph Maldonado / Mashable Composite by Rene Ramos

Earlier this year, Anthropic announced that its unreleased Mythos model was so good at hacking that it was too dangerous to release to the public. At the time, we questioned this narrative, as the company's warnings effectively doubled as PR for itself. However, we can't deny that the latest frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI have gotten remarkably good at cybersecurity, agentic coding, and discovering zero-day bugs.

More recently, OpenAI and Anthropic have shown progress on research-level mathematics as well.

First, OpenAI released a disproof of the Erdős unit distance conjecture in May. Then, an Anthropic-linked mathematician casually announced that he used Fable 5 to disprove the Jacobian Conjecture, one of the infamous Smale's problems in mathematics. Now, OpenAI has announced that Astra solved 10 more open problems in mathematics.

It's a potentially paradigm-shifting moment, though this is hardly proof that artificial general intelligence or the singularity is nigh.

First, most of these math accomplishments take the form of disproofs and counterexamples, which aren't as impressive as positive proofs that greatly expand our understanding of the universe, like, say, Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Theorem.

When Fable 5 disproved the Jacobian Conjecture, I spoke to Columbia professor Andrew Blumberg, who is also on the board of directors of the First Proof project, which tested the capabilities of frontier large language models in solving research-level mathematics.

At the time, he told me that Fable 5's feat "did not cause me to update my priors about what AI can and can't do." Blumberg added, "This is exactly the kind of thing I would expect AI to be able to do. If there was a counterexample that was concise and easy to state that people haven't found because it's a pain to search through all this stuff, AI will find it."

Ultimately, Blumberg said that Fable 5's counterexample to the Jacobian Conjecture didn't necessarily teach us anything new or exciting about the world, even though it was very impressive.

I went back to Blumberg to ask about OpenAI and Astra's latest work, and he said his priors still haven't changed — AI is a very useful tool for advanced science, but Astra's math results don't suggest AI is ready to replace human scientists and mathematicians.

"If you look at what these are, they're pretty short. They are either counterexamples or they are small, extremely clever constructions that build on known things, and it's super cool, right? I want to be clear: If a person had done many of these things, that person would be justly lauded for their achievement, and so [this work is] great, but they don't change my priors."

And, as many people have pointed out (including, most recently, data scientist Nate Silver), we have to put these results in perspective. While OpenAI was keen to point out that these problems were solved with just $2,000 worth of tokens, that doesn't account for the trillions spent on AI technology in recent years.

"When you hear about the amount of money that's being poured into these machines, and you think about what it would be like if we spent a trillion dollars on hiring and training mathematicians and paying the best mathematicians football players' salaries to do nothing but solve these problems, I think we'd see a shitload of progress," Blumberg told Mashable.

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At the same time, the prospect of Astra-level models being in the hands of every scientist, physicist, and mathematician on Earth is truly exciting. Likewise, the prospect of Astra-like tools being available to hackers and other bad actors is truly concerning.

When will GPT Astra be released?

Previously, we speculated that GPT-Astra would be released by the end of the year, but now that OpenAI is delaying development for security reasons, it's much harder to say. As we mentioned earlier, it may never be fully released.

There are other factors that could delay its release as well.

First, the White House is reportedly close to finalizing a voluntary AI framework for testing new frontier models before they're released publicly. OpenAI has now publicly committed to working with relevant government agencies before releasing Astra. And if Astra is deemed to have "critical" capabilities, then additional time would be required to develop a safe-for-public-consumption version of the model.

There is reason to believe that Astra is far along in its development cycle, however. The Information recently reported that OpenAI is actively previewing Astra in Washington, D.C., and if Astra is already generating major results in math, it's likely fairly far along in testing.

Major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have been releasing major updates to their models every few months, with entirely new model families coming out every one to two years. GPT-5 was introduced in August of 2025, which means we're due for GPT-6 any time now.

So far, OpenAI hasn't said anything about a release timeline.

Its most recent blog post about Astra concludes: "We’re committed to working alongside governments, safety institutes, and civil society to ensure that the frontier capabilities of models like Astra, and those that follow, are deployed responsibly and broadly for the benefit of all humanity."

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Lenovo does something no other tech brand does — make a tablet specifically for gaming. A continuation of its Legion computers, the Lenovo Legion Tab puts gaming content into a smaller, more portable package.

Previous generations of the Lenovo Legion Tab have been impressive tablets, so my expectations were high for the recently released Gen 5 model. And here's the thing about the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 — while it's built for gaming, I think it's a great everyday tablet.

Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 at a glance The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 is one of the only tablets designed for gaming. Credit: Samantha Mangino / Mashable

The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 is a tablet designed for gaming. With a 12-hour battery life and a Snapdragon processor that keeps it on par with MacBooks, it packs a lot of power within its 8.8-inch screen. It handles livestreams with ease, but its touchscreen is occasionally unresponsive. It costs $679.99, a big price hike between generations, but not a surprise considering the current memory crisis.

Here's a full rundown of its specs:

• Display: 8.8-inch 3K PureSight screen with 800 nits brightness

• Processor: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

• Operating System: Android 16

• Memory: 12GB

• Storage: 256GB

• Battery life: 12 hours and 24 minutes

• Geekbench 6 scores: 3,655 single-core score and 10,758 multi-core score

A tablet that can compete with a MacBook thanks to a Snapdragon chip I was shocked at just how well the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 scored on the Geekbench 6. Credit: Samantha Mangino / Mashable

Presumably, a gaming tablet needs super-sized power to process high-demand tasks. Luckily, it lives up to its potential, gaining a real power boost over previous generations.

On Geekbench 6, the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 has single-core and multi-core scores of 3,655 and 10,758, respectively. That puts it way above the Apple iPad, which has a 6,233 multi-core score, and into the leagues of a MacBook.

The Legion Tab Gen 5's power likely comes from its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform Processor. When I conferred with my colleague and laptop expert Haley Henschel, she noted that the Windows laptops she's recently tested that have competed with MacBooks all had Snapdragon chips. It seems Qualcomm is onto something, and Lenovo is taking advantage of it with the Legion Tab Gen 5.

Plus, it has battery life to match. In our tests, it had 12 hours and 24 minutes of battery life. That's extensive considering a gaming laptop often has just a few hours of battery life.

But how does all that power work in action?

It's reliable for live streaming

I spent a lot of time streaming on the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5. It handled my everyday streaming without issue. The video loaded quickly, with clear displays, and the next episodes loaded easily — perfect for when I'm trying to catch up on Love Island.

As a bigger test, I wanted to see how it could handle a livestream of a WNBA game. Once again, there were no issues with the livestream. The tablet didn't slow down, processing high-resolution video without stuttering, so I didn't miss any crucial minutes. This bodes well for gamers, too, who stream or play live with other players.

In terms of sound quality, it wasn't the best I've ever heard and did feel a bit tinny. If you're an audiophile, headphones will solve the sound quality issue.

A perfectly designed tablet? Almost. The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 has not just one but two USB-C ports, a rarity for a tablet. Credit: Samantha Mangino / Mashable

The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 is smaller than the standard 11-inch iPad. It has an 8.8-inch screen, which feels practical, especially for handheld gaming. Between generations its maintained my favorite design component: two USB-C ports. These days, we're getting fewer and fewer ports on devices, so two USB-C ports seem like a luxury. It's a huge boost for gamers who want to plug in a controller or headphones while simultaneously charging the tablet.

One thing I'm not a fan of? The case that comes with the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5. Credit: Samantha Mangino / Mashable

One thing that's not so great about the tablet? Its case. I'm certainly pleased that Lenovo includes a case when that's such a rarity on devices; however, this one is just OK. It's a lightweight, unassuming black case with a fully removable screen cover. That screen cover also doubles as a stand, but it's incredibly finicky and wobbly. It doesn't adjust to sit at multiple angles either, so you're stuck at just one tilt. Plus, I found that folding it over is a pain when you're using it handheld. It can be completely removed, but that also makes it easy to lose track of.

My one worry? The touchscreen response.

I'm not the biggest gamer, but I love a mobile phone game. The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 offers access to the Lenovo Game Hub, which features an expansive selection of games, including Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, and Call of Duty. For those, you will need to connect a controller to the device.

For the more casual gamers, I tried a variety of mobile games on the device. As I was leaping across subway cars in Subway Surfer and working through puzzles, I noticed some occasional lag on the screen. Toward the center of the screen, the device was occasionally unresponsive. After closing the app and restarting, the issue seemed to resolve itself. Still, because it occurred across multiple apps, it appears to be a device issue rather than an application issue.

Price increase — not surprising considering the state of things

The last Lenovo Legion Tab I tested was the Gen 3, which had a very nice price of $549.99. Unfortunately, the Gen 5 costs more, now $679.99. The price hike isn't entirely unsurprising, considering the state of tech and the current memory crisis, which is affecting nearly every tech manufacturer. $679.99 is a pretty steep price for a tablet, but considering it's nearly as powerful as the iPad Air, which just increased to $749, it's still cheaper than other similarly powerful models.

But it is more expensive than Lenovo's Yoga Tab, which is the best Android tablet we've tested and only costs $419.99.

Is the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 worth it? Looking for a gaming tablet? The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 is worth it. Credit: Samantha Mangino / Mashable

Lenovo has cornered the market on gaming tablets. The Legion Tab Gen 5, the brand's latest iteration, is the most powerful model yet with impressive processing speeds and extended battery life. If you don't need a gaming-specific tablet, I suggest going for the Lenovo Yoga Tab, which isn't nearly as powerful but comes at a more affordable price point.

Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 $679.99 at Lenovo
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Samsung just announced a bunch of fancy new phones, but don't relax just yet. Google has a big product launch just around the corner too, and we're keeping a close eye on the latest Pixel 11 leaks, rumors, and official teasers.

The Android maker has already confirmed that it will announce the next batch of Pixel phones at a Made By Google event on Aug. 12, and it recently announced that comedian Trevor Noah will be hosting, with special guests like Stephen Curry and Alex Cooper. Google has also started dropping teasers on YouTube for the Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro Fold, and Pixel Watch 5. The follow-up to the Pixel 10 lineup will be unveiled in just a few days, so you'd better get prepared in the meantime.

Here is everything we know about the Google Pixel 11 lineup right now.

SEE ALSO: Samsung unpacked: New foldable phones, watches and more Google Pixel 11: Release date and price

The first part of this is easy because Google isn't keeping the Pixel 11 launch window a secret. At 6 p.m. ET on Aug. 12 in New York City, Google is holding a Made By Google event where the Pixel 11 lineup will be shown off for the first time, and Mashable will be there reporting live.

Last year's event was hosted by Jimmy Fallon, for some reason, and we expect lots of surprises and celebrity guests at this year's event. You can watch Made By Google live on YouTube, or follow the news as it happens on Mashable. The phones should be on store shelves or in your hands less than a month after that.

As with last year, we expect to see four phones: the base Pixel 11, a Pro and Pro XL model, and a Pro Fold model.

Regarding price, we live in a RAMageddon world, so it sounds like there may be some mild price increases in the works. We don't know the official figures yet, but a recent Amazon leak, as well as some reported specs and prices courtesy of Android Headlines, gave us these figures:

• Google Pixel 11: $899

• Google Pixel 11 Pro: $1,099

• Google Pixel 11 Pro XL: $1,299

• Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold: $1,899

Unfortunately, all of those are increases year over year compared to the Pixel 10. The Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, and Pro XL are all $100 more to start than they were a year ago. Meanwhile, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, if this leak is to be believed, will cost $400 more than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Ouch.

Google Pixel 11: What's up with Pixel Glow HiLight?

Before we get into detailed (and unconfirmed) specs for each device, there's basically one noteworthy design change that we expect to see across all four devices this year. According to both leaks and the official imagery on Google's own pre-order page, Google is going all-in on something called HiLight with the Pixel 11 series, as reported by 9to5Google.

In terms of design, that means the horizontal camera bar seen on previous Pixel phones will change slightly to accommodate a new multicolored LED light module. This module will use lights of different shades to notify you of things like incoming messages, presumably while your phone is turned over and you don't feel like looking at a screen.

Google actually gave everyone an official sneak peek at HiLight a couple of weeks before the event. In a brief teaser video showing part of the Pixel 11 Pro, you can see a small, multicolored light in the camera bar. While the video is very brief and vague, it's clear from the video that we are looking at HiLight.

Google Pixel 11: Base model rumored specs This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The aforementioned Amazon leak included since-removed store pages for each device in the Pixel 11 family, with colors and specs galore. Let's start with the base Pixel 11, whose color options have been reported under different names but basically come down to black, gray, pink, and green. The Android Headlines report also seems to be the most complete set of specs we've seen yet.

Based on both of these leaks, these could be the specs for the base Pixel 11:

• 6.3-inch OLED display with 2424x1080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate

• Google Tensor G6 processor

• 12/16GB RAM

• 4,985mAh battery

• 48MP main camera

• 13MP selfie camera

There's a notable cut hiding in the base-model rumors, too: the telephoto lens is reportedly gone, leaving the standard Pixel 11 with only a main and a selfie camera. Battery capacity also dips slightly to 4,985mAh, which is said to bring the phone's weight down a touch, from 204 grams to 197 grams.

None of the above is horribly surprising or all that different from the Pixel 10, either, save for the telephoto lens thing. We'll see if that's actually true soon enough.

Google Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL: Rumored specs

Google is also reportedly planning on two Pro variants, as in previous years. The color options here are reportedly called Olive, Obsidian, Canyon, and Fog. Here is what both Android Headlines had to say about the regular Pixel 11 Pro:

• 6.3-inch OLED display with 2856x1280 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate

• Google Tensor G6 processor

• 12/16GB RAM

• 4,850mAh battery

• 50MP wide

• 48MP ultrawide

• 48MP telephoto

• 42MP selfie camera

And here are the reported specs for Pixel 11 Pro XL. The XL is usually just a bigger, slightly improved version of the Pro:

• 6.8-inch OLED display with 2992x1344 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate

• Google Tensor G6 Processor

• 12/16GB RAM

• 5,115mAh battery

• 50MP wide

• 48MP ultrawide

• 48MP telephoto

• 42MP selfie camera

The main attraction here, at least as it relates to year-over-year changes, is that Google seems to be offering a new 12GB RAM variant of the Pro devices. Prior to this year, they just came with 16GB RAM. Perhaps models with less storage capacity will only come with 12GB this year as a way to save money on the manufacturing end of things.

Finally, we've heard rumors that the previous 100x digital zoom will be upgraded all the way to 120x for the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL. This would certainly be a big leap, but as AI technology progresses, it's certainly possible.

Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold: Rumored specs

Lastly, Google is making another foldable this year, if every leak is to be believed. Here are the reported specs for the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which could have color variants called Obsidian and Olive:

• 6.5-inch outer display

• 8-inch inner display

• Google Tensor G6 processor

• 12/16GB RAM

• 256/512GB/1TB storage

• 4,806mAh battery

• 48MP wide

• 10.5MP ultrawide

• 10.8MP telephoto

• 10MP selfie camera

Remember: Mashable will be reporting live from the Made By Google event, so keep checking back for the latest Pixel 11 news, leaks, and rumors.

Pluto's famous heart is bleeding, according to new research, hinting that the distant world is more alive than it looks.

That bright, heart-shaped glacier has been a fan favorite ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past the cold outer world in 2015. Scientists now say the heart isn't just the dwarf planet's special cutie mark, it may be slowly leaking liquid — yes, liquid — onto the surface. 

Researchers say dark streaks along the heart's rim are actually stains left by liquid nitrogen that recently seeped through cracks, flowed, and refroze. The new evidence makes a compelling case that Pluto isn't a frozen, dead world — it may have working "plumbing" under its ice.

"Pluto never stops surprising us," said Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, in a statement. "In addition to suggesting that liquids have recently expressed themselves on Pluto's surface, it also suggests a new kind of time-variable feature on Pluto."

SEE ALSO: One lucky orbiter caught the SpaceX rocket crash site on moon

"Recently" here means roughly within the last million years, not last Tuesday. Still, by geological standards, that could mean this activity is ongoing today. 

Despite the fact that the New Horizons flyby happened a decade ago, scientists are still unpacking the enormous, once-in-a-generation dataset that came from it. Early work tackled some of the big-picture questions, like what is Pluto made of. Now teams are undertaking more complicated investigations, like what's really happening at the base of the heart-shaped glacier. 

A closeup view of the northern part of the leftmost lobe of Pluto's heart glacier, Sputnik Planitia, reveals dark streaks and patches. Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / SwRI

Their surprising findings, the result of many years of study, are published in The Planetary Science Journal. 

The heart is a region called Sputnik Planitia, a deep basin filled with frozen nitrogen. Nitrogen is the same gas that makes up most of Earth's air, but on Pluto's frigid surface, it behaves like rock. The basin is larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined and sits lower than the surrounding highlands.

"Pluto has many unique terrains seen nowhere else in the solar system, and this area of Sputnik Planitia is one of them," said Kelsi Singer, one of the study's co-authors, who works with Stern at Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute. "Exploring that allows us to better understand how materials behave in environments that are difficult to produce on Earth."

New Horizons revealed that this ice plain is strangely smooth and almost crater-free, which means it must be getting resurfaced in relatively short periods of time. The surface is divided into broad, city-sized cells that look like a very slow boiling pot. Scientists think the nitrogen ice rises in the middle of each cell and sinks at the edges, constantly churning, through the convection process.

So Pluto's heart already looked young and restless. The new work suggests it also bleeds.

The thin dark streaks and more diffuse dark patches have been visible in the images for years, but their origin was unclear. Some early ideas involved ice flowing around buried bumps or patterns carved by winds and frost.

In the new study, scientists compared those Pluto markings with satellite images of glaciers on Earth. Similar dark lines appear, for example, when meltwater trickles across a glacier and leaves wet trails. That raised an obvious question: If the patterns resemble damp ice, what could be "wetting" it?

If you were thinking rain, Pluto is far too cold and thin‑aired for any sort of precipitation, even nitrogen. So if something is wetting the surface, it's not falling from the sky — it's coming from beneath.

At close range, Sputnik Planitia is covered with city-size 'cells' that turn over nitrogen ice through convection. Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

To explore that idea, the team modeled what happens at the bottom of Pluto's heart. Computer simulations suggest the nitrogen ice at the base of the thick glacier can slowly melt into liquid nitrogen, a bit like how ice melts at the base of some glaciers on Earth. That liquid can rise through cracks like slow-motion lava, pushing its way up through cracks and tubes.

In that way, Pluto's heart is a-pumpin'.

Researchers say the new work has implications beyond Pluto. Similar processes could help explain geysers seen on Neptune's moon Triton and features on distant dwarf planets like Eris, which also shows signs of nitrogen ice.

For a world many people still root for to be reinstated as a "real" planet, the research is another point for Pluto: a far more scientifically interesting place than once thought.

TL;DR: Get the iPhone 17 for free from T-Mobile when you trade in your eligible phone on an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan. Power users can get the Apple iPhone 17 Pro for free when they switch to T-Mobile and bring their number to an Experience Beyond plan (no trade-in needed).

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple T-Mobile: Free iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro   Get Deal

Fresh from Samsung's impressive Unpacked event, where they announced three new foldable smartphones, two smartwatches, and smart glasses, it's almost Google's time to shine. We're expecting news on the latest Pixel phones in next week's Made by Google, but until then, we've got something for the Apple devotees out there.

We all know that Apple prices are rising due to RAMageddon, but somebody needs to tell T-Mobile. This mobile carrier continues to drop free deals on the latest iPhones:

• iPhone 17 — free when signing up for 24 months of an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan and trading in an eligible phone

• iPhone 17 Pro — free when you switch to T-Mobile and bring your number on an Experience Beyond plan (no trade-in needed).

You will be charged taxes and a one-time connection fee with these free deals, but that's a small price to pay for the latest iPhone.

Is this a good time to pick up the iPhone 17? Anytime you can get the latest handset for free is a good time to sign up, but the iPhone 18 is not too far away. We're expecting the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max to arrive in fall 2026. However, the iPhone 18, iPhone 18e, and the next-gen iPhone Air are rumored to be coming in March 2027. That's a long wait and might provide another push toward the highly capable iPhone 17.

Get the Apple iPhone 17 for free this weekend with T-Mobile.