Reviews & Analysis

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  • Cosmic dust contains all the elements needed for life but has previously been considered too rare to have acted as a ‘fertilizer’ for prebiotic chemistry. Now, using a combination of astrophysical and geological models, it is revealed that cosmic dust could have gently accumulated on the surface of early Earth in sufficient quantities to promote the chemical reactions that led to first life.

    Research Briefing
  • Kepler-1625b-I and Kepler-1708b-I are the most noteworthy exomoon candidates to date. A new analysis of the available data comes to a different conclusion.

    • Sascha Grziwa
    News & Views
  • Binary neutron star mergers are complex to understand astrophysically. A small piece of the puzzle may now have been solved using a computationally intensive simulation to explain how short gamma-ray bursts can be launched by a magnetar engine.

    • Philipp Mösta
    News & Views
  • In October 2023, astronomers, planetary scientists and biologists gathered in Kyiv for Ukraine’s first international astrobiology meeting, advancing science and crossing disciplinary borders in wartime.

    • Charles S. Cockell
    • Natalia O. Kozyrovska
    • Ganna V. Zubova
    Meeting Report
  • The observed ‘radius valley’ — a dip in the distribution of exoplanet radii, which separates rocky super-Earths from larger sub-Neptunes — is at odds with current theories of planetary formation. New simulations that couple planet formation and evolution, and account for the orbital migration of planets that are largely composed of steam, are able to reproduce the valley feature.

    Research Briefing
  • The Lyman-α emission line of hydrogen should be absorbed and thus not seen from galaxies in the early Universe — and yet it is observed. Now detailed images from JWST coupled with magnetohydrodynamical simulations show that interactions between galaxies are facilitating the escape of this radiation.

    Research Briefing
  • High-mass stars in the Milky Way often exist in systems of two or more stars, but how this multiplicity arises is not clear and so far there have been no unequivocal observations of protostellar systems that could solve the issue. Now, systems of five, four and three stars, and several binaries, have been resolved in a star-forming region, and point to core fragmentation as the likely origin of multiplicity.

    Research Briefing
  • The size distribution of solid grains in dense clouds is a key parameter to constrain in order to understand grain growth, which influences the nature and timescale of the formation of protoplanets. A JWST study has quantified the grain size distribution by modelling the spectral absorptions arising from ice components of grains before protostellar collapse.

    • Burcu Günay
    News & Views
  • On Earth, technological advances required open-air combustion, which needs an oxygen partial pressure of about 18%. This threshold can help guide searches for detectable technospheres on other planets.

    • Amedeo Balbi
    • Adam Frank
    Perspective
  • The habitability of a planet is defined at a fixed time. A bigger challenge is to understand how that habitability is sustained over geological timescales, and how the underlying processes compare across different planetary bodies.

    • Charles S. Cockell
    • Mark Simons
    • Steven D. Vance
    Perspective
  • A model investigating the build-up of the atmosphere of Venus shows that it could have originated from a vigorous phase akin to plate tectonics during the first billion years of its evolution.

    • Cedric Gillmann
    News & Views
  • Measurements of Jupiter’s gravity by the Juno mission have established that the winds extend 3,500 kilometres below the surface. Cylindrically oriented zonal flows provide the best match in a new model using gravity harmonics up to degree 40.

    • Chris A. Jones
    News & Views
  • Periodic sub-structure in radio emission from magnetars provides an observational link not only between magnetars and fast radio bursts, but across all classes of radio-emitting rotating neutron stars. The correlation between sub-structure periodicity and neutron-star rotational period can be used to determine an underlying period for fast radio bursts.

    Research Briefing
  • The optical properties of the organic hazes that form in water-rich exoplanet atmospheres differ from those that form in nitrogen-rich atmospheres. This difference in optical properties can have an observable effect on spectral observations of exoplanets and could impact the interpretation of current and upcoming JWST observations.

    Research Briefing