Month: January 2024

Enlarge (credit: Unity)

When Unity laid off 265 Weta Digital engineers in November, the company warned that more layoffs would be necessary in the near future as part of a plan to "refocus" on the company's core game engine business. A large chunk of those changes became real on Monday as the Unity Engine maker told the SEC that "it plans to reduce approximately 1,800 employee roles, or approximately 25% of its current workforce."

"This decision was not taken lightly, and we extend our deepest gratitude to those affected for their dedication and contributions," Unity Director of PR Kelly Ekins said in a statement to The Verge. Ekins added that the layoffs will be spread across "all teams," and a company spokesperson told Reuters that this round of layoffs will be complete by March, with additional internal changes coming thereafter.

The massive staffing cuts come after over 1,300 layoffs already implemented across the company in multiple waves since June 2022 (including those November Weta Digital cuts). Despite that, Unity's statement to the SEC says these further cuts are necessary "to position [the company] for long-term and profitable growth."

Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech)

What do we need to find if we want to discover another Earth? If an exoplanet is too far away for even the most powerful telescopes to search directly for water or certain biosignatures, is there something else that may tell us about the possibility of habitability? The answer could be carbon dioxide.

Led by Amaury Triaud and Julien de Wit, an international team of researchers is now proposing that the absence of CO₂ in a planet’s atmosphere potentially increases the chances of liquid water on its surface. Earth’s own atmosphere is depleted of CO₂. Unlike dry Mars and Venus, which have high concentrations of CO₂ in their atmospheres, oceans on our planet have taken immense amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere because the gas dissolves in water. CO₂ deficits in exoplanet atmospheres might mean the same.

Another molecule could be a sign of a habitable planet: ozone. Many organisms on Earth (especially plants) breathe carbon dioxide and release oxygen. This oxygen reacts with sunlight and becomes O₃, or ozone, which is easier to detect than atmospheric oxygen. The presence of ozone and absence of carbon dioxide could mean a habitable, and even inhabited, planet.