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Scientists are beyond concerned. We are angry about the cuts to fundamental research and the decline in scientific literacy among politicians. But protesting isn't everything — we also need to adapt to change and engage with the public.
We are at an interesting juncture in cosmology. Despite vast improvements in the measurement accuracy of the Hubble constant, a recent tension has arisen that is either signalling new physics or as-yet unrecognized uncertainties.
The combined power of a space telescope, a large ground-based telescope and a gravitational lens made catching a small galaxy — 1/100 the mass of the Milky Way — at the cosmic reionization epoch feasible.
The seabed of Ligeia Mare, a hydrocarbon sea at the north pole of Titan, may be a favourable place for the separation of nitrogen and the creation of bubbles that then buoyantly rise to the sea's surface.
Images from ESA's Rosetta mission show, in real time, the processes that sculpt the surface of a comet, which is revealed to have a pristine icy interior surrounded by an evolved surface.
The detection of gravitational waves is the culmination of many decades of persistent theoretical, observational and engineering work. While heralded as surprising, that the first detected wavescame from binary black holes was indeed theoretically expected.
Planetary nebulae, traditionally seen as an endpoint of single stars, exhibit a variety of morphologies that cannot be explained in a single-star scenario. It is becoming clearer that perhaps even the majority of planetary nebulae result from binary interactions.
A bright outburst of activity from the nucleus of comet 67P, observed by Rosetta in July 2015, is traced back to a cliff that partially collapsed at the same time as the outburst, establishing a link between the two events. The collapse has also exposed the fresh ice present under the surface.
Magnetic energy powers explosive flares on the Sun. Now, observations of unprecedented resolution identify the precursors of such flares in the lower solar atmosphere. These findings will help to constrain theoretical models of flare formation.
A faint galaxy has been detected in the very early Universe thanks to deep observations and a massive cluster gravitationally magnifying its emission. One out of only five such galaxies known, this detection constrains how the Universe was reionized.
Liquid methane lakes dot Titan’s polar regions. Numerical models reveal that the creation of buoyant bubbles through nitrogen exsolution near the bed of the Ligeia Mare lake can explain transient brightenings observed by Cassini on the lake’s surface.
The stacking of nearly three-quarters of a million spectra has unearthed a previously unknown component of the Galactic halo: a widely distributed, neutral, excited hydrogen layer that could harbour a sizeable proportion of the Milky Way’s baryons.
Cassini’s camera observed Titan from orbit at different angles (0–166°) and found that the planet looks brighter towards the night than at midday. This effect, linked to the scattering properties of Titanian haze, can also be present in exoplanets.
The authors put together measurements of ions and neutral atoms from Cassini and the two Voyagers and find that the heliosphere responds quickly (with a lag of 2–3 years) to the solar cycle and that it is bubble-shaped and not tail-shaped, as usually schematized.
Woken from the deep sleep of a hibernated spacecraft, NEOWISE now monitors the population of near-Earth objects for science and Earth protection purposes, explains Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer.