Planets, like those in our solar system, form in a bottom-up process where small bits of rock and ice clump together and grow larger over time. But the heftier the planet, the harder it is to explain its formation that way.
Supermassive black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in the universe. They typically weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun and sit at the centers of most large galaxies. At the heart of the Milky Way lies Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, with a mass of about four million suns. But these black holes do not emit light, so astronomers can only detect them indirectly through their effects on nearby stars and gas.
Dark matter is believed to make up a large fraction of the matter in the universe, yet its true nature remains unknown. Most past experiments have focused on heavier dark matter candidates, while much lighter dark matter, with masses closer to the mass of a neutrino, has been difficult to detect directly because its scattering signals are extremely weak.
In quantum physics, objects can exist in multiple states at the same time—a phenomenon known as quantum superposition, where a particle does not have a single definite value of position or momentum until it is measured. A major open question is whether gravity, one of the fundamental forces, also follows the quantum rule. One way to examine this is through gravity-induced entanglement, in which two objects that interact only via gravity become quantum mechanically linked.
Picture this: your brain is a high-performance engine. Over decades, it doesn’t just wear down, it also starts to run hot. Tiny “fires” of inflammation smolder deep within the brain’s memory center, creating a persistent brain fog that makes it harder to think, form new memories or even adapt to new environments, all the while increasing the risk to disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.
Most clocks, from wristwatches to the systems that run GPS and the internet, work by tracking regular, repeating motions.
New research suggests that relic black holes from before the big bang may still shape galaxies today. These black holes could explain dark matter, one of the biggest unsolved questions in cosmology.
Venus, often called Earth’s twin, is in fact a planet of extremes. Beneath its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere are crushing surface temperatures and dense clouds of sulfuric acid. While the planet’s main cloud layer sits between 47 and 70 kilometers above the surface, scientists have long been puzzled by a mysterious layer of particles below 47 kilometers, known as the “lower haze.” First detected by spacecraft in the 1970s, the origin of this haze remained unexplained for more than half a century.
What do bats do at night when they’re not hunting? Using tiny GPS trackers, Leiden researchers discovered that pond bats spend a substantial portion of the night resting—often outdoors. This surprising insight could change the way we protect them. “To rest or to roam: Functional habitat use of an insectivorous bat species during active and resting behavior” is published in Biological Conservation.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray space telescope, astronomers have performed high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic observations of a bright low-mass X-ray binary known as GX 340+0. Results of the observational campaign, published April 3 on the arXiv pre-print server, shed more light on the composition of interstellar medium (ISM) in this system.
The IBeA group of the EHU-University of the Basque Country is proposing new measures to safeguard the purity of extraterrestrial samples. Several contaminants, including traces of ink, originating in the preparation of subsamples, have been identified in Martian meteorites by the EHU’s research group. The finding highlights the importance of stricter protocols to prevent misinterpretations of the composition of these rocks and to ensure the reliability of future studies and Mars sample-return missions. The research is published in the journal Applied Geochemistry.
For the first time, new theoretical models, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, connect the magnetism at the surface of long-dead stellar remnants (white dwarfs) with recent evidence of magnetism at the cores of their dying progenitors (red giants). The team, led by astrophysicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), argues that these magnetic fields might originate early in the stars’ lives, and survive their entire evolution, emerging as “fossil fields” at the surfaces of older remnants. A better understanding of these processes can also help to better understand our own sun’s future.
At this point in NASA’s human spaceflight story, researchers have a substantial amount of material—documents, artifacts and images—with which to tell the stories of past flights to space. But with NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon now in the books, we’re getting a refreshed look at space.
The center of our galaxy is an extreme place. Surrounding the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, stars are packed densely into a region where gravity, radiation, and dark matter all interact in complex ways. It is a natural laboratory for testing some of the deepest ideas about astrophysics.
The moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, a rocky celestial body that orbits our planet at an average distance of about 384,000 kilometers. The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the moon’s origin is the “giant impact,” a high-energy collision between a Mars-sized proto-planet named Theia with the young “proto-Earth” about 4.5 billion years ago. As the newly formed moon cooled down from a hot magma ocean, layers with varying iron-content and mineral compositions crystallized to form the moon’s structure that we know today.
The most realistic picture yet of how galaxies formed and then evolved from the beginning of time has been revealed in a suite of new and unique audiovisual simulations. These data, accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, show that the standard cosmological model can successfully explain the observed growth of galaxies, from the first billion years after the Big Bang to the present day, when key physics is included.
Across Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.
Decomposition of dead leaves in Veluwe forests has declined by tens of percent since the turn of the century. Meteorologists from Wageningen University & Research discovered this in an analysis of long-term measurements. The cause appears to lie in soil acidity. This is noteworthy because nitrogen deposition in the area has actually decreased over the same period. The effects of nitrogen entering the ecosystem in the past may still be lingering.
A new study led by researchers at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) reveals why a particular boron-rich molecule, called o-FESAN, behaves in an unusually helpful way, remaining intercalated into DNA even though it was thought it should be repelled by it. The paper is published in the journal Aggregate and builds on research published in 2024 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B.
Physicists in China have simulated the effect of “false vacuum decay”: a phenomenon believed to play out constantly in the seemingly empty expanses of space, and which one theory even suggests could bring an abrupt end to the entire universe. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Yu-Xin Chao and colleagues at Tsinghua University, Beijing, mimicked the effect using a simple tabletop experiment.
