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  • Micrometeorite impacts are an important process in forming several Ti oxides, including rutile (TiO2) and new Ti minerals (trigonal Ti2O and triclinic Ti2O). These Ti oxides can alter the photocatalytic properties and reflectance spectra of regolith on the Moon and other airless planetary bodies in the Solar System.

    • Xiaojia Zeng
    • Yanxue Wu
    • Jianzhong Liu
    Article
  • Ten stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud exhibit very low elemental abundances, suggesting that they have experienced enrichment by the earliest generations of stars only. These stars provide a window into a distant region of the high-redshift universe.

    • Anirudh Chiti
    • Mohammad Mardini
    • Joshua D. Simon
    Article
  • JWST detections of Si, C and Fe absorption lines in a bright z = 9.31 galaxy with a two-component clump structure suggest that mergers contributed to the rapid build-up of mass and chemical enrichment soon after the Big Bang.

    • Kristan Boyett
    • Michele Trenti
    • Benedetta Vulcani
    Article
  • Water molecules in Europa’s icy surface are split into hydrogen and oxygen by charged particle bombardment. NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew near Europa and constrained the production of oxygen in Europa’s surface ice, thus providing only a narrow range to support habitability in its subsurface ocean.

    • J. R. Szalay
    • F. Allegrini
    • R. J. Wilson
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Numerical simulations of the DART impact on asteroid Didymos’s moon Dimorphos highlight its rubble-pile nature with a low bulk density and boulder volume fraction. These results indicate that Dimorphos formed from reaccumulated material shed from Didymos via rotation or impact.

    • S. D. Raducan
    • M. Jutzi
    • B. H. May
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The hydroxyl radical OH has been detected in a planet-forming disk exposed to ultraviolet radiation and in a rovibrationally excited state. These JWST observations, when coupled with quantum calculations, reveal the ongoing photodissociation of water and its reformation in the gas phase.

    • Marion Zannese
    • Benoît Tabone
    • Mark G. Wolfire
    Article
  • According to astrophysical and geological models, cosmic dust rich in bioessential elements could have accumulated on the surface of early Earth in arid environments (such as glaciers), potentially helping to foster the chemical origins of life.

    • Craig R. Walton
    • Jessica K. Rigley
    • Oliver Shorttle
    ArticleOpen Access
  • A black hole at the centre of a quasar at a redshift of z = 4 is accreting the mass of the Sun every day. The quasar’s extreme luminosity is equivalent to 50,000 times that of the Milky Way. Its broad-line region should be resolvable observationally and will provide an important test for broad-line region size–luminosity relationships.

    • Christian Wolf
    • Samuel Lai
    • Rachel L. Webster
    Article
  • The Eridania region of Mars bears various topographic and geomorphologic signatures of extensive volcanotectonic episodes and diverse volcanism that happened 3.5–4 billion years ago, indicative of vertical crustal recycling similar to Archaean Earth.

    • Joseph R. Michalski
    • A. Deanne Rogers
    • Long Xiao
    ArticleOpen Access
  • By day 1,041 after explosion, SN Ia-CSM 2018evt had produced an estimated 0.01 solar masses of dust in the cold, dense shell behind the supernova ejecta–circumstellar medium interaction, ranking it as one of the most prolific dust-producing supernovae ever recorded.

    • Lingzhi 灵芝 Wang王
    • Maokai Hu
    • Xinghan Zhang
    ArticleOpen Access
  • A very uncommon detached binary system with a 20.5-min orbital period has been discovered to harbour a carbon–oxygen white dwarf star and a low-mass subdwarf B star with a seven-Earth radius that traces the theoretical limit of binary evolution predicted 20 years ago.

    • Jie Lin
    • Chengyuan Wu
    • Wenxiong Li
    Article
  • A prominent under-density in the observed radius distribution separates small exoplanets in two categories. The study demonstrates, through planet formation and evolution simulations, that the larger planets, whose composition has been disputed, may be water-rich planets migrating towards the star, where they become steam worlds.

    • Remo Burn
    • Christoph Mordasini
    • Thomas Henning
    ArticleOpen Access
  • While turbulent dissipation is prevalent in astrophysics, the processes that convert turbulent energy into heat are often unclear. This study shows that plasma waves are fundamental to heating the solar wind and similar turbulent astrophysical systems.

    • Trevor A. Bowen
    • Stuart D. Bale
    • Jonathan Squire
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Chemical disequilibrium is a known biosignature, and it is important to determine the conditions for its remote detection. A thermodynamical model coupled with atmospheric retrieval shows that a disequilibrium can be inferred for a Proterozoic Earth-like exoplanet in reflected light at a high O2/CH4 abundance case and signal-to-noise ratio of 50.

    • Amber V. Young
    • Tyler D. Robinson
    • James D. Windsor
    ArticleOpen Access
  • A combination of JWST/NIRCam observations and magnetohydrodynamic simulations indicates that frequent mergers with close companions give rise to bursty star formation and hence the unexpectedly high Lyman-α emission detected from early galaxies.

    • Callum Witten
    • Nicolas Laporte
    • Charlotte Simmonds
    ArticleOpen Access