Crystalline Dust and Soot: JWST and ALMA Reveal Planet-Building Materials in the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302)
Stellar death as a window into planet formationThe stunning chaos at the core of the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) is givi...
Space
Mars’s Chunky Interior: Ancient Crustal Fragments Hidden in the Mantle
New seismic analysis reveals preserved crustal chunks deep beneath MarsA recent seismic study of Mars shows the planet's...
Petralona Skull Dated to at Least 277,000 Years — Evidence for a Distinct Middle Pleistocene Hominin
Discovery and contextThe Petralona skull, first recovered in 1960 from a sheltered chamber of Petralona Cave near Thessa...
Seismic Study Reveals Mars’ Mantle Preserves Chunky Ancient Crust from a Violent Youth
Mars' interior: a preserved, blocky record of early impactsAn international team of planetary scientists has used seismi...
World’s Largest Solar Telescope Captures Most Detailed Solar Flare Image Yet
Breakthrough High-Resolution Imaging of an X-Class Solar FlareThe Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii has...
Bennu's Stardust: Returned Samples Reveal Presolar Grains, Water-Altered Minerals and Rapid Space Weathering
Introduction — Bennu as a Time CapsuleThe OSIRIS-REx sample-return mission has begun to deliver on its promise: laborato...
Rare Troilite Dust Links Metal-Rich and Silicate Asteroids: Polarization Reveals Shared Ancestry
Ancient fragments and a surprising fingerprintThe solar system formed roughly 4.6 billion years ago from a rotating disk...
How SpaceX Came to Dominate U.S. Space Access: From Falcon 1 to Global Launch Leadership
Origins: a private challenge to an established launch monopolyElon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the explicit aim of ...
How Supercomputers and Numerical Relativity Could Reveal What Happened Before the Big Bang
Probing the pre-Big Bang frontier with supercomputersA new review by cosmologist Eugene Lim (King's College London) and ...
Uranus May Emit More Internal Heat Than Previously Believed, New Models Suggest
Uranus’ thermal mystery: a planet unlike the othersUranus stands out in the Solar System: it rolls on its side so each p...
James Webb Reveals Planet-Building Materials Survive in Extreme Ultraviolet Environments
JWST Detects a Planet-Forming Disk in a UV-Extreme Stellar NurseryUsing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and advanc...
Fifty Years On: Magnetic Field Maps Solve the PKS 1424+240 ‘Eye of Sauron’ Jet Mystery
Discovery and the enduring puzzlePKS 1424+240 is a blazar—an active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hol...
Mysterious Giant Signals Possible First Detection of a Black Hole Trinary in GW190814 Data
Unusual Acceleration in GW190814 Points to a Third Black HoleA new reanalysis of gravitational-wave data from the LIGO-V...
JWST Detects Candidate Gas Giant in the Habitable Zone of Alpha Centauri A
Nearby discovery: a possible habitable-zone world around our Sun’s twinObservations with the James Webb Space Telescope ...
Earliest Confirmed Supermassive Black Hole Illuminates Mysterious “Little Red Dots”
Discovery of the most distant confirmed black holeAstronomers have confirmed the most distant and earliest supermassive ...
Could a Dark Mirror Universe Explain Dark Matter? New Theories Connect Dark Baryons, Cosmic Horizons and Detectable Signals
Introduction: the dark matter puzzle and a surprising hypothesisDark matter remains one of the most persistent mysteries...
36 Billion Suns: New Measurement Suggests an Ultramassive Black Hole Near the Practical Mass Limit
Discovery: an ultramassive black hole in SDSS J1148+1930A galaxy located roughly 5 billion light-years from Earth, catal...
Scientists Recreate Primordial Chemical Reactions From the Dawn of the Universe
Rewinding Cosmic History: Reconstructing the Universe’s First ChemistryFor the first time, scientists have successfully ...
Revolutionizing Interstellar Travel: The Winning Generation Ship Concepts for Humanity’s Journey to the Stars
Introduction: The Next Frontier—Designing Generation Ships for Interstellar TravelAs humanity’s curiosity drives us ever...
Cosmic Rays Could Unlock Hidden Habitats for Life on Cold, Dark Worlds
Challenging the Boundaries of Life: Cosmic Rays as a Source of EnergyFor decades, scientists have believed that strong c...