Volume 2 Issue 8, August 2018

The Origins Space Telescope, one of four large Mission Concept Studies sponsored by NASA for review in the 2020 US Astrophysics Decadal Survey, will open unprecedented discovery space in the infrared, unveiling our cosmic origins.

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) is a conceptual space-based 4-m telescope with the means to image and characterize potentially habitable planets orbiting Sun-like stars, and with ultraviolet to near-infrared imaging and spectroscopic capabilities suited to general observatory science.

LUVOIR is a concept for a powerful, flexible space observatory to enable the first survey for exoplanets most similar to the Earth, search for signs of life in our Solar System and beyond, and revolutionize astrophysics in the twenty-first century.

The next-generation observatory Lynx will provide an unprecedented X-ray view of the otherwise invisible Universe, directly observing the dawn of supermassive black holes, revealing the drivers of galaxy formation, tracing stellar activity including effects on planet habitability, and transforming our knowledge of the endpoints of stellar evolution.

Dark matter is deemed essential for describing galaxy dynamics. A prominent alternative theory can make the same predictions without dark matter, by introducing a universal acceleration constant. Recent high-quality observations of galaxies are used to investigate whether this constant is really a constant.

A new model predicts locations on the surface of radiation-blasted Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter, where biochemical signatures of life emergent from the subsurface ocean might survive long enough for detection on the moon’s changing surface.

The biennial Harvard Sackler conference this year focused on gravitational-wave astrophysics, with a comprehensive programme that reviewed recent discoveries and discussed prospects for a bright future.

A magnetic reconnection event within Saturn’s magnetosphere, captured by Cassini at an unexpected site, may reshape our views on how internally produced plasma is circulated in giant planet magnetospheres.

Recent polarization measurements of the stellar-mass black hole in Cygnus X-1 reveal an extended corona in the inner parts of the accretion flow and open the path for a new era in high-energy astrophysics.

Fifty-one years after Lyman-alpha lines were predicted (and 20 years after this author got involved in searching for Lyman-alpha galaxies), it was a pleasure to see so much progress in this field in the Spring Cosmic Lyman-Alpha Workshop at Tokyo University.

We study the situation of women astronomers in Spain, based on statistical data and in-depth interviews with teaching staff and researchers at all career stages. Our results are presented as a motivation for further similar or expanded studies.

There is not enough CO₂ in the Martian system that could be mobilized — with present-day or near-future technologies — to provide enough greenhouse warming that could lead to the terraforming of the planet.

Cassini magnetic field and plasma observations find evidence of magnetic reconnection on the dayside of Saturn’s magnetosphere, which can explain local auroral pulsations and play a role in the transport of energetic particles within rapidly rotating magnetospheres.

Evidence for the earliest phase of planet formation, dust grain growth, has been seen in the very young and massive circumstellar disk around low-mass protostar TMC1A. Such systems, still rich in gas, are responsible for the high-mass end of the exoplanet mass distribution.

The X-ray polarization properties of the black hole binary Cygnus X-1 in its hard state, combined with spectral and timing data, reveals that the accretion disk corona is either an extended structure or located far from the black hole.

A bright X-ray outburst from a massive star cluster 12.5 kpc from a galactic centre fits the profile of a tidal disruption event (TDE), indicating the likely presence of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). TDEs could be the most effective way of identifying IMBHs.

The presence of nanodiamonds in protoplanetary disks correlates strongly with the detection of anomalous microwave emission from the same disks, implying that spinning nanodiamonds rather than polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are the source of this puzzling ~30 GHz emission feature.

By studying the properties of almost 200 disk galaxies, it is shown that modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), or MOND-like alternative theories of gravity based on the existence of a fundamental acceleration scale, are ruled out as fundamental theories for galaxies at more than 10σ.

A model reconstructs the radiation dose from both protons and electrons on Europa’s surface. Using laboratory data on irradiated amino acids, it shows that organics can be preserved at detectable levels at depths of just a few centimetres at mid-to-high latitudes and in young (<10-Myr-old) terrains.

Reconstructing matter density from the velocities of local galaxies in a linear manner is standard practice. Averaging over the density fields of an ensemble of nonlinear simulations reveals a stronger galaxy ‘bias’ than in the linear regime, providing insights into the distribution of dark matter and the formation of galaxies.