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An uncharacteristically long stellar disruption from a supermassive black hole has been unravelling over the last decade. Spectral information implies very efficient accretion but recent observations hint at a transition to a less extreme accretion mode.

Using a radio telescope with no moving parts, the dark energy speeding up the expansion of the Universe can be probed in unprecedented detail, says Keith Vanderlinde, on behalf of the CHIME collaboration.

Measurements now show that the distribution of meteorite compositions arriving to Earth was significantly different in the past and that the flux changes on short timescales.

The discovery of groups of dwarf galaxies in extremely isolated environments provides direct observational evidence of hierarchical assembly at small galactic scales.

As scientists, the terminology we choose influences our thinking as it carries our messages to colleagues and the public. In the face of pressure to turn science into clickbait, maintaining precision in the language we use is critical to dispel misinformation and, more broadly, to enable scientific progress.

Exoplanetary science warns us against the use of improper terminology, which increases the risk of new discoveries being misinterpreted by researchers as well as the general public. Both the scientific community and journal editors can help to avoid this significant danger.

The motion of the Local Group is due to the gravitational pull of nearby concentrations of galaxies and clusters — superclusters — but the push from a giant underdense region may be just as important.

We have found many Earth-sized worlds but we have no way of determining if their surfaces are Earth-like. This makes it impossible to quantitatively compare habitability, and pretending we can risks damaging the field.

The authors present evidence that the lunar soil contains oxygen ions from Earth that escape our atmosphere and reach the Moon through the Earth’s magnetospheric wind. The lunar surface possibly contains clues about the history of Earth’s atmosphere.

The presence of a large underdensity, the dipole repeller, is predicted based on a study of the velocity field of our Local Group of galaxies. The combined effects of this super-void and the Shapley concentration control the local cosmic flow.

Isotopic analyses of stardust have yet to single out a specific stellar origin for it. A revision of the proton-capture rate of ¹⁷O has helped to identify intermediate mass stars (4–8 solar masses) as the source of a large fraction of meteoritic stardust.

The New Horizons spacecraft revealed a large dark reddish area along Pluto’s equatorial region, probably made up by organics. Here the authors show that it could be formed by the very same giant impact that created Pluto’s biggest satellite, Charon.