Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
A four-arm spiral pattern in the accretion disk around an accreting high-mass protostar has been resolved using VLBI observations of methanol masers. These observations provide evidence for a link between disk accretion, disk instability and episodic growth of a protostar.
Near-infrared observations of large dark asteroids in the main belt reveal that they have spectral characteristics similar to those of the dwarf planet Ceres. Thermal evolution models suggest that these asteroids accreted at large orbital distances and may have been implanted into the main belt by the dynamic instability of the giant planets.
The large, low-albedo asteroids in the main belt between 3.0 au and 3.4 au share spectral characteristics and history with Ceres. Accreted in different parts of the outer Solar System, they might have been implanted into the main belt by the dynamic upheaval created by the giant planets’ instability.
Mapping the 158 μm line of ionized carbon within the Cygnus region with the SOFIA observatory provides evidence for dynamic interactions between molecular clouds and their atomic envelopes, which trace out the assembly process of cloud complexes.
Hydrocarbons containing five-membered rings have recently been detected in the cold Taurus Molecular Cloud. Here the authors show that the reaction involving ortho-benzyne and the methyl radical plays a critical role in the bottom-up formation of these complex hydrocarbons.
Forty-year monitoring of Jupiter reveals long-term oscillations and teleconnections across the north–south hemispheres and upper–lower atmospheres. This discovery has important implications for the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs.
A study of the emission variability of roughly 5,000 of the brightest quasars supports the presence of an optically thick yet geometrically thin accretion disk, and may provide a means of measuring the size and inclination of the disk.
A state-of-the-art machine-learning method combs a 480-h-long dataset of 820 nearby stars from the SETI Breakthrough Listen project, reducing the number of interesting signals by two orders of magnitude. Further visual inspection identifies eight promising signals of interest from different stars that warrant further observations.
The transformations of energy that accompany solar magnetic activity have far-reaching ramifications beyond heliophysics. Understanding the dynamical chain is fundamental to assess habitability and the capacity for life elsewhere.
A few missing photons in Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope observations lead to robust neutron star mass measurements in eclipsing millisecond pulsar binaries, ruling out an ultra-massive pulsar in the original Black Widow system.
The launch of ChatGPT late last year has school teachers, conference organizers, Google and others worried, for different reasons. Where should we draw the line when it comes to artificial intelligence?
Using JWST, the molecules seen in planetary atmospheres can be traced back to their cold origins in ices formed in dense interstellar clouds, before the onset of star formation, revealing that chemical diversity and complexity is achieved early.
Analysis of a large galaxy sample shows that black hole activity is greater in galaxies in which the stellar and gas kinematics are misaligned. This observation suggests that the misalignment, driven by external gas accretion, fuels the central supermassive black holes.