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Space dust provides more than just awe-inspiring pictures like the Pillars of Creation. It can provide the necessary materials to build everything from planets to asteroids. But what it actually looks like, especially in terms of its “porosity” (i.e., how many holes it has) has been an area of debate for astrochemists for decades. A new paper from Alexey Potapov of Friedrich Schiller University Jena and his co-authors published in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review suggests that the dust that makes up so much of the universe might be “spongier” than originally thought.
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There are no confirmed exomoons, moons orbiting distant exoplanets in other solar systems. There are a few candidates, but none have passed the threshold and been accepted as confirmed. But they must exist. Moons are common in our solar system, so it would be extremely weird if they didn’t exist elsewhere.
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The interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS just flew past Mars, and China’s Tianwen-1 mission managed to snap some pics with its high-resolution camera. According to the China National Space Agency (CNSA), the orbiter’s high-resolution camera captured images of the comet from a distance of about 30 million km (18.6 million mi). This makes the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars for four years and eight months, one of the closest missions to observe the ISO since it was first detected (on May 7th, 2025).
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Before atomic elements came together, less than a second after the Big Bang, if particles condensed into halos of matter, these halos may then have collapsed, creating the first black holes, boson stars, and so-called cannibal stars. This is the conclusion of a new study just published in Physical Review D, conducted by a team of researchers from SISSA—Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, in collaboration with INFN, IFPU, and the University of Warsaw.
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Mechanical Engineering Professor Alan McGaughey of Carnegie Mellon University recently coordinated the Phonon Olympics, bringing together developers and expert users to benchmark three leading open-source thermal conductivity calculation packages.
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Increasing the surface area when plasma and water interact could help scale up a technology that destroys contaminants such as PFAS, detergents and microbial contaminants in drinking water, new research from the University of Michigan shows.
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Researchers from the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz Haber Institute have demonstrated the first magneto-optical trap of a stable “closed-shell” molecule: aluminum monofluoride (AlF). They were able to cool AlF with lasers and selectively trap it in three different rotational quantum levels—breaking new ground in ultracold physics.
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A suspect fled into a home after he was caught with a stolen pickup truck; Indian River County SWAT officers took the man into custody after he fell through the ceiling
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The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) celebrates 20 years of observing the sky. SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. It’s been steadily revealing new science knowledge, ranging from the discovery of planets outside our solar system to understanding the unusual physics around black holes. It’s also 20 years of doing science for society.
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Models help scientists understand everything from the particles that make up the universe to massive superstructures of galaxies at the beginning of time. But sometimes they model more mundane, though perhaps even more complex, features—including the course of human civilization. A new paper by Thomas Leppard of the International Archaeological Research Institute and his co-authors, all of whom are also archaeologists, proposes applying a model of how humans expanded to the different islands across the Pacific Ocean during their early migration to glean insights into how humanity should manage our colonization of space.
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During the 1240s, Richard Fishacre, a Dominican friar at Oxford University, used his knowledge of light and color to show that the stars and planets are made of the same elements found here on Earth. In so doing, he challenged the scientific orthodoxy of his day and preempted the methods and discoveries of the 21st-century James Webb space telescope.
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We know of three interstellar objects (ISO) that have visited our inner solar system. Oumuamua was the first one, and it came and went in 2017. 2l/Borisov, an interstellar comet, was next, appearing in 2019. And right now, the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is enjoying a visit to the sun-warmed inner solar system.
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Seven Albuquerque PD Academy instructors were removed from their positions after they punished a cadet who had connections with department leadership for lying
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Michael McMahon was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in “a campaign of transnational repression;” McMahon said he was “unwittingly used” by the Chinese government
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In 2023, astronomers detected a huge collision. Two unprecedentedly massive black holes had crashed an estimated 7 billion light-years away. The enormous masses and extreme spins of the black holes puzzled astronomers. Black holes like these were not supposed to exist.
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