Beijing wants WTO intervention on US chip curbs: China has called on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to scrutinize Washington’s attempts to prevent it importing chip technology, Reuters reports. The Biden administration had imposed restrictions last year on the export of equipment required to manufacture semiconductors to China and had rallied several of its allies to introduce similar restrictions. The moves are designed to loosen China’s grip on the global chip industry, but China maintains these restrictions are in violation of “the fairness and transparency principles of WTO.”

A planet the size of Earth is emitting radio signals strong enough to be picked up from Earth, astronomers reported in research published in the Nature Astronomy journal this week. The planet has been named YZ Ceti b, after the YZ Ceti star it orbits. The rocky exoplanet — meaning it’s located outside our solar system — is the first instance where astronomers pick up radio waves from a body that is relatively small. Previously, only radio signals from large planets the size of Jupiter could be captured by scientists, as smaller planets are invisible.

Why is this discovery important? The existence of radio signals has tremendous repercussions. Simply, this means that the planet in question is equipped, so to speak, with a magnetic field — an absolutely necessary condition to sustaining life. Without a magnetic field, which can be likened to a sort of cosmic shield, the planet cannot protect itself from the constant shelling it receives from star particles, and is therefore incapable of supporting the existence of an atmosphere.

What’s next? Astronomers are now looking to develop — hopefully within the coming 10 years — radio telescopes that can advance the search for, and detection of, magnetic fields in space. “The search for potentially habitable or life-bearing worlds in other solar systems depends in part on being able to determine if rocky, Earth-like exoplanets actually have magnetic fields,” National Radio Astronomy Observatory Director Joe Pesce was quoted as saying by the BBC.

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