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Space

Scientists reveal warped protoplanetary discs, reshaping ideas about how planets form

The textbook picture of how planets form – serene, flat discs of cosmic dust – has just received a significant cosmic twist. New research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is set to reshape this long-held view. An international team of scientists, wielding the formidable power of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), has found compelling evidence that many protoplanetary discs, the very birthplaces of planets, are in fact subtly warped. These slight bends and twists in the disc plane, often just a few ...

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Space

Cosmic butterfly reveals clues to Earth's creation

Clues about how worlds like Earth may have formed have been found buried at the heart of a spectacular 'cosmic butterfly'. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers say they have made a big leap forward in our understanding of how the raw material of rocky planets comes together. This cosmic dust – tiny particles of minerals and organic material which include ingredients linked to the origins of life – was studied at the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, which is located about ...

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Space

Scientists discovered hopfion crystals – which are flying in spacetime

An internationally joint research group between Singapore and Japan has unveiled a blueprint for arranging exotic, knot-like patterns of light into repeatable crystals that extend across both space and time. The work lays out how to build and control “hopfion” lattices using structured beams at two different colors, pointing to future systems for dense, robust information processing in photonics. Hopfions are three-dimensional topological textures whose internal “spin” patterns weave into closed, interlinked loops. They have been observed ...

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Space

A growing baby planet photographed for first time in a ring of darkness

A team of astronomers has detected for the first time a growing planet outside our solar system, embedded in a cleared gap of a multi-ringed disk of dust and gas. The team, led by University of Arizona astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered the unique exoplanet using the University of Arizona's MagAO-X extreme adaptive optics system at the Magellan Telescope in Chile, the U of A's Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. ...

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Space

Planetary scientist decodes clues in Bennu’s surface composition to make sense of far-flung asteroids

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — New results from OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, reveals why some gray asteroids reflect light at different wavelengths, like red or blue, more strongly. How these asteroids reflect light at red and blue wavelengths can give deeper insights into the evolution of rocky bodies in the solar system. It also enables future research. By having a better understanding and comparing what telemetry and telescope data say about an asteroid with what its actual surface particles ...

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Space

Astronomers make unexpected discovery of planet in formation around a young star

An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet. Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter. The study, which was led by Leiden University, University of Galway and University of Arizona, has been published in the international journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The ground-breaking discovery was made using ...

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Space

Satellite insights into eutrophication trends on the Qinghai–Tibet plateau

This research investigates chlorophyll-a (Chla) variations in lakes across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), a region facing rapid warming. Using Landsat satellite data from 1986 to 2023, the study explores how climate change and human activities, such as grazing and fertilizer use, affect lake water quality. The analysis of 1,069 lakes reveals significant changes in Chla concentrations, indicating increasing eutrophication, particularly in smaller and shallower lakes. The study forecasts future Chla trends until 2100, offering valuable insights for ...

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Space

Asteroid Bennu is a time capsule of materials bearing witness to its origin and transformation over billions of years

Asteroid Bennu — the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, led by the University of Arizona — is a mixture of materials from throughout, and even beyond, our solar system. Over the past few billion years, its unique and varied contents have been transformed by interactions with water and the harsh space environment. These details come from a trio of newly published papers based on analysis of Bennu samples delivered to Earth by OSIRIS-REx in 2023. The OSIRIS-REx sample analysis campaign is coordinated by the U of A's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) and involves scientists from around the world. ...

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Space

Astronomers detect the brightest fast radio burst of all time

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A fast radio burst is an immense flash of radio emission that lasts for just a few milliseconds, during which it can momentarily outshine every other radio source in its galaxy. These flares can be so bright that their light can be seen from halfway across the universe, several billion light years away. The sources of these brief and dazzling signals are unknown. But scientists now have a chance to study a fast radio burst (FRB) in unprecedented detail. An international team of scientists including physicists at MIT have detected a near and ultrabright fast ...

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Space

If aliens explore space like us, we should look for their calls to other planets

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — If an extraterrestrial intelligence were looking for signs of human communications, when and where should they look? In a new study, researchers at Penn State and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California analyzed when and where human deep space transmissions would be most detectable by an observer outside our solar system and suggest that the patterns they see could be used to guide our own search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). “Humans are predominantly communicating with the spacecraft and probes we have ...

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Space

Ozone will warm planet more than first thought

The world will warm more than expected due to future changes in ozone, which protects Earth from harmful sun rays but also traps heat as it is a greenhouse gas. While banning ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs has helped the ozone layer to recover, when combined with increased air pollution the impact of ozone could warm the planet 40% more than originally thought. A new study led by the University of Reading found that from 2015 to 2050, ozone is expected to cause 0.27 watts ...

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Space

First-of-its-kind supernova reveals innerworkings of a dying star

An international team of scientists, led by Northwestern University astrophysicists, has detected a never-before-seen type of exploding star, or supernova, that is rich with silicon, sulfur and argon. When massive stars explode, astrophysicists typically find strong signatures of light elements, such as hydrogen and helium. But the newly discovered supernova, dubbed SN2021yfj, displayed a startling different chemical signature. Astronomers long have theorized that massive stars have a layered structure, similar to an onion. The outermost layers predominantly comprise the lightest elements. As the layers move inward, the elements become heavier and heavier until reaching ...

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Space

SwRI-led Webb Telescope survey discovers new moon orbiting Uranus

SAN ANTONIO — August 19, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute led a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) survey, discovering a previously unknown tiny moon orbiting Uranus. A team led by SwRI’s Dr. Maryame El Moutamid discovered the small object in a series of images taken on Feb. 2, 2025, bringing Uranus’ total moon count to 29. “As part of JWST’s guest observer program, we found a previously unknown satellite of the ice giant, which has been provisionally designated S/2025 U 1,” said El Moutamid, a lead scientist in SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado. “This object, by far the smallest ...

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Space

Supernovae: How to spot them at record speed

Supernovae appear to our eyes—and to astronomical instruments—as brilliant flashes that flare up in the sky without warning, in places where nothing was visible just moments before. The flash is caused by the colossal explosion of a star. Because supernovae are sudden and unpredictable, they have long been difficult to study, but today, thanks to extensive, continuous, high-cadence sky surveys, astronomers can discover new ones almost daily. It is crucial, however, to develop protocols and methods that detect them promptly; ...

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Space

Stapokibart for severe uncontrolled chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps

About The Study: Among patients with severe chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps treated with a daily intranasal corticosteroid, stapokibart, a novel monoclonal antibody, reduced polyp size and severity of nasal symptoms at 24 weeks. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Luo Zhang, MD, (dr.luozhang@139.com) and Chengshuo Wang, MD, (wangcs830@126.com). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.12515) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

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Space

SwRI study supports theory that asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are part of the Polana family

SAN ANTONIO — August 18, 2025 — A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) review of data collected from near-Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu supports the hypothesis that they were originally part of the Polana collisional family in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The study compared spectroscopy data from Polana with spacecraft and laboratory data from Bennu and Ryugu samples, discovering similarities in their near-infrared spectrum sufficient to support the theory that they originate ...

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Space

SwRI develops orbital debris detection system for spacecraft

SAN ANTONIO — August 18, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has developed and tested a micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) detection and characterization system designed for satellites and spacecraft to monitor impacts from space debris. The system provides critical post-impact data, ensuring awareness of an impact even when damage is not immediately apparent. Space debris around Earth is a growing problem, a result of commercial satellites exploding, anti-satellite missile tests and accidents that contribute to a growing junk field. Depending ...

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Space

Students’ image tool offers sharper signs, earlier detection in the lab or from space

A group of UBC Okanagan students has helped create technology that could improve how doctors and scientists detect everything from tumours to wildfires. Working under the guidance of Associate Professor Xiaoping Shi from UBCO’s Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, the students designed and tested a system called an adaptive multiple change point energy-based model segmentation (MEBS). This method uses advanced mathematics to pick out important details in complex or noisy images, the kind that often confuse ...

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Space

Space mice babies

Kyoto, Japan -- As space programs evolve and we continue to mistreat our own planet, human dreams of space tourism and planetary colonization seem increasingly common. However, features of spaceflight such as gravitational changes and circadian rhythm disruption -- not to mention radiation -- take a toll on the body, including muscle wasting and decreased bone density. These may even affect our ability to produce healthy offspring. Studying the impact of spaceflight on germ cells -- egg and sperm precursor cells -- is particularly important because they ...

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Space

Intergalactic experiment: Researchers hunt for mysterious dark matter particle with clever new trick

Physicists from the University of Copenhagen have begun using the gigantic magnetic fields of galaxy clusters to observe distant black holes in their search for an elusive particle that has stumped scientists for decades. It is a story of extremes that are hard to fathom. The heaviest structures in the universe, clusters of galaxies, are a quadrillion times more massive than the Sun. And axions, mysterious theoretical particles, are much, much lighter than even the lightest atom. The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle ...

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Space

Gaia’s variable stars: a new map of the stellar life cycle

One of the best places to study stars is inside “open clusters”, which are groups of stars that formed together from the same material and are bound together through gravity. Open clusters act as laboratories, showing how stars of different masses and ages behave. At the same time, some stars known as “variable stars”, regularly change in brightness, and their flickers and pulses help scientists learn about the physics inside stars and about the wider galaxy. Until now, astronomers studied clusters and variable stars separately, and ...

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Space

Studying terrestrial rocks to prepare techniques for Mars

WASHINGTON, August 12, 2025 – In 2024, NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance collected an unusual rock sample. The rock, named Sapphire Canyon, features white, leopardlike spots with black borders within a red mudstone and might hold clues about sources of organic molecules within Mars. Here on Earth, in Review of Scientific Instruments, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology used a technique called optical photothermal infrared spectroscopy (O-PTIR) to study a visually similar rock. They wanted to ...

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Space

Planets without water could still produce certain liquids, a new study finds

Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption. But what makes some planets habitable might have very little to do with water. In fact, an entirely different type of liquid could conceivably support life in worlds where water can barely exist. That’s a possibility that MIT scientists raise in a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From lab experiments, the researchers found that a type of fluid known as an ionic liquid can readily ...

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Space

Muscle’s master regulator moonlights as gene silencer

For more than 30 years, scientists have studied how the myogenic determination gene number 1 (MYOD) protein binds DNA to modify the gene expression of muscle stem cells. Similar to the instant kung fu education Keanu Reeves downloaded in “The Matrix,” MYOD plugs into muscle stem cell DNA and reprograms the cells to build muscle. MYOD also comes to the rescue when muscle tissue needs to be repaired after injury or to restore minor damage that occurs with athletic training or other physical activity. The transcription factor rallies nearby muscle stem cells to expand in number and become muscle ...

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Space

An interstellar mission to a black hole? Astrophysicist thinks it’s possible.

It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics. But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched. Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality. If successful, this century-long mission could return data from nearby ...

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