Articles

Chemical abundances derived from infrared nebular lines reveal strongly depressed metallicities in interacting galaxies, suggesting that in luminous infrared galaxies chemical enrichment and stellar-mass growth take place through mergers, which drive these galaxies out of equilibrium.

Nuclear experiments become the latest ‘messenger’ to help with unravelling the mysteries of neutron stars. Combining information from astronomical observations and laboratory experiments reveals how nucleons interact in both nuclei and stars.

Researchers have detected the elusive dark matter component of cosmic filaments near the Coma galaxy cluster using gravitational lensing. This supports the idea that galaxy clusters grow at the intersection of cosmic filaments, shedding light on the structure of our universe.

A hyperactive fast radio burst source has been observed for thousands of hours using relatively small telescopes. The energy distribution of the brightest bursts detected suggests a possible link between repeating and apparently non-repeating burst sources.

The dark surface of Mercury can be explained by <1 wt% of microcrystalline graphite and similar amounts of Fe⁰. Low-reflectance materials may be secondary crust and carbon was not completely drained from the mantle during early differentiation.

When stars like our Sun die, they expel their outer layers in a dramatic stellar wind. This study of an unusual chemical signature in one particular stellar wind reveals that the signature is due to the presence of a binary system whose components had a close approach around 200 years ago.

An information-theory-inspired re-analysis of Cassini mass spectrometry data reveals the presence of HCN and partially oxidized organics within the plume of Enceladus. Ongoing redox chemistry may create a habitable environment.

A reanalysis of Kepler and Hubble data with Bayesian inference and a photodynamical model shows that the two exomoon candidates around Kepler-1625 b and Kepler-1708 b have a substantially lower probability to be actual detections than previous analyses suggest.

Iron nitride (Fe₄N) is detected on magnetite particles within the Ryugu sample returned by Hayabusa2. It is probably the product of impacts of nitrogen-rich dust from the outer Solar System on the surface of Ryugu, indicative of a flux of N-rich dust in the inner Solar System.

ALMA observations show the streams of molecular gas blown from the centre of a galaxy by the energy released by an active supermassive black hole are falling back onto the black hole, making sure it stays active.

The observation by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory of high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic plane indicates that the Milky Way is deficient in neutrinos, most probably because it has not hosted an active source for the past few tens of kiloyears.

The reported optical properties of organic hazes produced in water-rich exoplanet atmospheres differ from those in nitrogen-rich atmospheres. Such differences have a detectable effect on the spectra, impacting interpretation of JWST observations.

This work identifies a period structure in the radio emission of magnetars that can be observed in all classes of radio-emitting rotating neutron stars, regardless of their evolutionary history, their power source or their magnetic field strength.

This work finds a systematic offset of 5.5 ± 1.1 Myr between estimates of the ages of stars made with two popular techniques: isochronal fitting and dynamical traceback. This offset is proposed to represent the time a young star remains bound to its parental cloud before dispersing and could help to improve stellar evolutionary models.

Synchrotron and inverse-Compton emission provide evidence for a reverse-shock origin of the high-energy emission from a gamma-ray burst, GRB 180720B. The polarization of the optical emission originating from the reverse shock suggests a turbulent shock that is amplified by the magnetic field in the relativistic ejecta.

The Zhurong rover identified polygonal terrain at a depth of 35 m under Utopia Planitia on Mars. This finding suggests that the mid-latitudinal region experienced a cold and wet environment near the freezing point of water around the Hesperian–Amazonian transition, possibly induced by Mars’s high obliquity.

A supercomputer simulation shows that the strikingly varied distributions of different galaxy types across the Local Supercluster arise naturally in the standard models of cosmology and galaxy formation.

Prolonged radio emissions above a sunspot, akin to those auroral emissions previously seen in the polar regions of planets and certain stars, have been detected using the Very Large Array. This detection could potentially provide support for an alternative mechanism for the origin of some stellar radio bursts.

Juno’s global infrared mapping of Jupiter’s moon Io determined the distribution as well as the energy output of its volcanoes. Spatial differences emerge, with the equator more active than the polar zones and more heat flow at the north pole than at the south, indicative of an uneven lithosphere.

Extremely low-mass stars, much less massive than the Sun, lack radiative cores—something that could affect their magnetic dynamos. This study reveals that these stars can have magnetic fields that are up to 30% stronger than those of Sun-like stars, implying fundamental differences in their internal magnetic structures.