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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s almost become expected that many space telescopes and probes can have “extended missions.” Both Voyagers are still sending data back 40+ years after their five-year primary mission ended. But figuring out what to do with those spacecraft after their primary mission takes some negotiation. One such craft that will reach its end-of-mission in 2030 is Euclid, which is currently on a mission to map the “dark universe” of dark energy and dark matter. According to a new paper from Luigi “Rolly” Bedin of the Astronomical Institute of Padua, which is available on the arXiv preprint server, for its second act we could turn Euclid into the most powerful astrometric telescope ever made.