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The lunar samples brought back by the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission have an age of 2.030 ± 0.004 billion years, providing valuable new constraints on the cratering chronology used to date most Solar System surfaces. Here an updated chronology model is presented and compared with other models currently in use.
A cosmological simulation shows that low-mass galaxies can form with far less dark matter than expected, with results matching some observed characteristics. Roughly one-third of massive central galaxies may host at least one such dark-matter-deficient satellite.
Our understanding of the relatively newly recognized phenomenon of haloes of gamma-ray emission around Galactic pulsars is summarized, from observational and theoretical perspectives, together with their implication for the acceleration of cosmic rays.
John Hawley, a major pioneer in numerical astrophysics, passed away on 12 December 2021. Besides having been outstanding as a scientist, teacher and administrator, he will always be ‘the funniest man in astrophysics’ to many who knew him.
The presence of a scalar charge around a small compact object during its final inspiral into a supermassive black hole could be detected by LISA, providing a way to test deviations from general relativity and the existence of new fields in nature.
Using common interstellar chemical species (CO, C and NH3), the authors show that peptides can be experimentally synthesized on a solid surface under interstellar conditions. The formation route circumvents the creation of amino acids in the pathway towards proteins.
A young and low-energy radio jet has cleared a substantial amount of gas from the central region of galaxy B2 0258+35, demonstrating the effectiveness of kiloparsec-scale feedback from radio-loud active galactic nuclei and supporting the predictions of simulations.
Non-thermal, hard X-ray bremsstrahlung emission from auroral regions is detected at Jupiter by the NuSTAR instrument. Simultaneous in situ observations from the Juno spacecraft confirm the signatures of acceleration from non-thermal electrons and highlight the similarities with auroral processes on Earth.
The distribution of the slowly rotating, blue fraction of main-sequence stars in the colour–magnitude diagram of young star clusters, and their peculiar mass function, imply that they may originate from binary star mergers.
A method to measure the complexity of planetary signals from remote-sensing observations is presented. Tests using Earth observations point to a correlation between increasing complexity and the presence of an extensive biosphere, showing the potential of this agnostic method to identify promising targets for life.
Laboratory experiments show that the type of iron mineral is the dominant factor controlling the chlorate/perchlorate (ClO3−/ClO4−) generation ratio on Mars over oxidation methods or atmospheric composition. Chlorate yields are found to exceed perchlorate yields by orders of magnitude in the current desiccated Martian conditions.
The hydrogen isotopic composition of the oldest Solar System rocks demonstrates that a gaseous reservoir of terrestrial isotopic composition existed as early as the onset of Solar System formation and coexisted with the solar gas.
The rich transmission spectrum of exoplanet WASP-189 b reveals its dynamical atmosphere with a three-dimensional thermochemical stratification, requiring the unification of dynamical, thermal and chemical models for its study.
Supra-arcade downflows are dark finger-like structures associated with solar flares. Simulations now suggest that these plasma downflows form within a turbulent region that may control turbulent flows, electron currents and shockwaves.
To enable sub-arcsecond precision imaging of the radio sky, the Earth’s corrupting ionosphere must be corrected for. Here, the authors perform this challenging task, yielding a 6.6 deg2 field of view of the Lockman Hole field at sub-arcsecond resolution.