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.
With six months behind us, we would like to thank everyone who has submitted a paper, written for us or refereed for us. We take this opportunity to clarify our policies and quell some enduring misconceptions.
Superdiffusive transport could have a crucial role in explaining the flat radio spectra of reaccelerated fossil electrons observed in clusters. Thus, a theory developed for heliospheric shocks can have a wide application in astrophysics.
A pioneer in the field of astrochemistry, Patrick Thaddeus discovered dozens of exotic molecules in space and helped revolutionize our view of the interstellar medium and star formation.
Charles Malcolm Walmsley passed away on 1 May 2017. He made numerous fundamental contributions to the physics and chemistry of star formation and the interstellar medium. He was an exceptional scientist, a highly esteemed colleague and a true gentleman.
US astronomy decadal surveys advise government on how to optimize the scientific return on national investments in astronomy research. The 2020 survey will guide our community into the future, but current strains in an otherwise world-leading astronomy programme may affect this collective exercise.
There is no single approach to the quantization of gravity. Rather, multiple models are based on various assumptions, and experimental tests of Planck-scale physics present a particular challenge.
High angular resolution ALMA observations appear to confirm jets as a solution to the classical angular momentum problem of star formation, but the jury is still out.
Analysis of Hubble Space Telescope observations shows that the well-known alignment between the central galaxy of a galaxy cluster and its host cluster has been in place for at least ten billion years.
Feedback from actively accreting supermassive black holes is thought to be important in the evolution of galaxies. Theoretical and observational results are reviewed with regard to the impact of this feedback on star formation in galaxies.
Using an innovative method, the mass of a pulsar can be constrained using the maximum ‘glitch’ in the star’s rotational frequency: the bigger the glitch, the lower the mass. This method is used to estimate the mass of all observed glitchers.
Oxygen isotope measurements from unequilibrated enstatite chondrites produce a steep slope on a three-isotope plot. This can be explained by the occurrence of silicate–SiO reactions in the early stages of the Solar System’s protoplanetary disk.
Ultrarelativistic photons and neutrinos from gamma-ray bursts offer a testbed for quantum gravity effects that would lead to an energy dependence of the travel times. A statistical analysis of astrophysical data shows that this behaviour may have been observed.
Coevolving millions of cold dark matter particles and neutrinos within one N-body simulation, TianNu, shows that regions of similar dark matter density can have different neutrino densities. These density variations may have an effect on the cosmic structure.
Using Si18O as a velocity tracer, evidence is reported for a rotating outflow driven by a magneto-centrifugal disk wind launched by a high-mass young stellar object. This rotation is a signature of the removal of angular momentum by an outflow.
Disk winds from the surfaces of protoplanetary disks remove angular momentum from radii outside ~10 au. Lee et al. show that residual angular momentum is removed at radii <10 au via highly collimated jets launched at the 0.05 au scale, enabling accretion.
The brightest galaxy in a cluster is known to align with its host filament in the local Universe. Here this correlation is extended to when the Universe was just a third of its current age. With this, the privileged history of brightest cluster galaxies is reinforced.
NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has just returned its early science results after spending a year orbiting the ‘King of the Solar System’. Principal Investigator Scott Bolton summarizes what we have learnt.