☆ Space Press Releases

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 10:00 GMT / 6:00 ET MONDAY 16 MARCH 2026 A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published today (16 March) in Nature Astronomy. The exoplanet (a planet that orbits a star outside the Solar System), known as L 98-59 d, orbits a small red star about 35 light-years from Earth. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers have uncovered evidence for our Sun joining a mass migration of similar “twins” leaving the core regions of our galaxy, 4 to 6 billion years ago. The team created and studied an unprecedentedly accurate catalogue of stars and their properties using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Their discovery sheds light on the evolution of our galaxy, particularly the development of the rotating bar-like structure at its center.   While archaeology on Earth studies the human past, galactic archaeology traces the vast journey of stars and galaxies. For example, scientists know that our Sun was born around ...

Astronomers have for the first time seen the birth of a magnetar — a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star — and confirmed that it’s the power source behind some of the brightest exploding stars in the cosmos. The finding corroborates a theory proposed by a UC Berkeley physicist 16 years ago and establishes a new phenomenon in exploding stars: supernovae with a “chirp” in their light curve that is caused by general relativity. A paper describing the phenomenon was published today ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Photonic chips use light to process data instead of electricity, enabling faster communication speeds and greater bandwidth. Most of that light typically stays on the chip, trapped in optical wires, and is difficult to transmit to the outside world in an efficient manner. If a lot of light could be rapidly and precisely beamed off the chip, free from the confines of the wiring, it could open the door to higher-resolution displays, smaller Lidar systems, more precise 3D printers, or larger-scale quantum computers. Now, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new class ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — For decades, astronomers have used distant supernovae as cosmic lighthouses to test fundamental physics and to measure the universe. For Joseph Farah, a fifth-year graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, one particular supernova began to signal something never seen before: a “chirp.” In a groundbreaking paper accepted to the journal Nature, Farah and a team of international researchers, including his advisor Andy Howell, who leads the supernova group at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), announce the discovery of a superluminous supernova (SN 2024afav) whose erratic behavior has confirmed a long-standing theory ...

Embargoed copy of the research paper available on request Scientists have uncovered the first robust evidence of a black hole and neutron star crashing together but orbiting in an oval path rather than a perfect circle just before they merged. This discovery challenges long-standing assumptions about how these cosmic pairs form and evolve. Researchers from the University of Birmingham, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics published their findings today (11 Mar) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Most neutron star-black hole pairs are expected to adopt circular orbits ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known as GRB 230906A, was likely caused by the collision of two neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago and is now shedding light on how the universe creates some of its heaviest elements.   The signal, first detected by the NASA Fermi satellite in September 2023, belonged to a peculiar class of short gamma-ray bursts, explosions ...

Climate change since the 1950s has doubled the amount of time per year that millions of people around the world must endure heat so extreme that everyday physical activities cannot be done safely, a new study concludes. “Most heat studies focus on how hot it feels. This one asks a different question: What can a human body safely do in that heat?” said co-author Jennifer Vanos, an associate professor at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability. An important goal of the research is to identify vulnerable populations ...

As the U.S. plans to return to the moon with the upcoming Artemis II mission, a question endures: What will future lunar explorers eat? According to new research from The University of Texas at Austin the answer might be chickpeas.  Scientists have successfully grown and harvested chickpeas using simulated “moon dirt,” the first instance of this crop produced in this medium. The research, which was conducted in collaboration with Texas A&M University, is described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.   Sara Santos, the principal investigator of the project, said that the work ...

The international network of gravitational wave detectors LIGO in the United States, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan (LVK) announced the publication of an updated catalogue of all gravitational events observed to date, called Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue-4.0 (GWTC-4). The results are the fruit of in-depth analyses conducted over more than two years by scientists from the LVK Collaboration on the new signals observed, with the aim of confirming their validity and studying their most important astrophysical and cosmological implications. Although some of these have already been announced in recent months, the publication of the new catalogue offers a unique perspective ...

When the densest objects in the universe collide and merge, the violence sets off ripples, in the form of gravitational waves, that reverberate across space and time, over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. By the time they pass through Earth, such cosmic ripples are barely discernible.  And yet, scientists are able to detect them, thanks to a global network of gravitational-wave observatories: the U.S.-based National Science Foundation Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (NSF LIGO), ...

The Tibet ASγ Experiment has successfully, for the first time, measured magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence on scales below one parsec (approximately 3.3 light-years) within the gamma-ray halo surrounding the Geminga pulsar wind nebula (PWN). This observation extends to the highest energies, above 100 tera-electron volts (TeV), providing new insights into the behavior of cosmic rays and magnetic fields within the Milky Way. The findings were published in Science Advances on March 4. The study was conducted by the Tibet ASγ Experiment, including the Institute of High ...

Just a few days in simulated microgravity can subtly change the way women’s blood clots, sparking bigger questions about health monitoring protocols for astronauts who can spend six months or more in orbit, say Simon Fraser University researchers.  First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut’s jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically ...

Astronomers with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), have used data from the project to make the largest, most accurate 3D map yet of the light emitted by excited hydrogen in the early universe, 9 billion to 11 billion years ago. This specific form of light, called Lyman alpha, is emitted in large quantities when hydrogen atoms are exposed to a star’s energy. That makes it a great tool for finding bright galaxies in this far-off time, which experienced a rash of star creation. However, the locations of fainter galaxies and gas, which also emit Lyman alpha, have remained largely unknown. “Observing ...

Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets – including Earth – and survive, a new Johns Hopkins University study finds. The work demonstrates that a certain hardy bacterium easily withstands extreme pressure comparable to an ejection from Mars after an asteroid hit, as well as the inhospitable conditions it would face during the ensuing interplanetary journey. The study, published today in PNAS Nexus, suggests that microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life. The work ...

The extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans can survive the pressures developed during ejection from Mars as a result of massive asteroid impact. Craters on the Moon and Mars show how frequently bodies in our solar system are hit by incoming material, and impacts are an important process in planetary history. Lily Zhao, K. T. Ramesh, and colleagues simulated the conditions under which a microbe might be hurled into space by the force of an impact, subjecting Deinococcus radiodurans to pressures of up to 3 GPa (30,000 times atmospheric pressure) by putting the ...

In 1873, Ernst Abbe proposed the famous diffraction limit theory, stating that the resolution of an optical system is limited by the light wavelength and numerical aperture. For a long time, the resolution of imaging systems has been constrained by the Abbe-Rayleigh diffraction limit. This means that to obtain higher spatial resolution, optical systems often have to rely on huge physical apertures, just as astronomical telescopes must possess huge mirrors to “see clearly.” Although superresolution fluorescence microscopy, awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, successfully broke this limit, existing methods still ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:00 GMT THURSDAY 26 FEBRUARY (19:00 ET WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY) 2026 Researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, have resolved a long-standing debate about the strength of the Moon’s magnetic field. For decades, scientists have argued whether the Moon had a strong or weak magnetic field during its early history (3.5 - 4 billion years ago). Now a new analysis – published today (26 February) in Nature Geoscience – shows that both sides of the debate are effectively ...

We have known for several decades that the universe is expanding. Scientists use multiple techniques to measure the present-day expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. These methods are internally consistent and based on the same physics, so all observed values of the Hubble constant should agree. But those that come from early-universe datasets disagree with those that come from late-universe datasets. This problem is known as the Hubble tension and is considered to be one of the most significant open questions in cosmology.  Now a team of astrophysicists, cosmologists, and physicists at The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ...

To keep up with today’s computing needs, researchers mine the quantum realm to find better ways to handle massive data demands. A new field known as “orbitronics” is the newest of these efforts. Orbitronics uses the path of an electron around a nucleus, a property known as orbital angular momentum, to store and process more information, much more efficiently. Typically, controlling an electron’s orbit requires using magnetic materials, like iron, that are heavy, expensive and burdensome for practical orbitronics devices. In a new study, researchers developed the most streamlined system yet for generating orbital angular ...

Munich astronomers image and model extremely rare gravitationally lensed supernova Measuring the expansion of the universe with cosmic fireworks An image that could solve a long lasting cosmic mystery Unprecedented chance to measure the growth of the universe Collaboration between TUM, LMU and Max Planck Institutes That the universe is expanding has been known for almost a hundred years now, but how fast? The exact rate of that expansion remains hotly debated, even challenging the standard model ...

Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. Far beyond the violent, chaotic asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter lies what’s known as the Kuiper Belt. There, past Neptune, you’ll find icy, untouched building blocks from the dawn of the solar system, known as planetesimals. About one in 10 of these objects are contact binaries, planetesimals that are shaped like two connected spheres, much like ...

SAN ANTONIO — February 19, 2026 — New research by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF-NCAR) has developed a new tool providing a first step toward the ability to forecast space weather weeks in advance, instead of just hours. This advance warning could allow agencies and industries to mitigate impacts to GPS, power grids, astronaut safety and more. “Understanding where and when large, flare-producing active regions ...

Scientists have produced the first global map and analysis of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the moon, a characteristic geological feature of tectonic activity. Published in The Planetary Science Journal Dec. 24, 2025, the analysis performed by scientists at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and colleagues reveals for the first time that SMRs are geologically young and are widespread across the lunar maria—the vast, dark plains on the moon’s surface. ...

Astronomers have watched a dying star fail to explode as a supernova, instead collapsing into a black hole. The remarkable sighting is the most complete observational record ever made of a star’s transformation into a black hole, allowing astronomers to construct a comprehensive physical picture of the process. Combining recent observations of the star with over a decade of archival data, the astronomers confirmed and refined theoretical models of how such massive stars turn into black holes. The team found that the star failed to explode as a supernova at the end of its life; instead, the star’s core ...