Astronomy and planetary science articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Comment |

    Computing is central to the enterprise of physics but few undergraduate physics courses include it in their curricula. Here we discuss why and how to integrate computing into physics education.

    • Marcos D. Caballero
    •  & Tor Ole B. Odden

  • Comment |

    Injustices and oppression are pervasive in society, including education. An intersectional, equity-oriented approach can help remove systemic obstacles and improve the experience of marginalized people in physics education through decolonial and critical race lenses.

    • Geraldine L. Cochran
    • , Simone Hyater-Adams
    •  & Ramón S. Barthelemy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The transition from a metastable state to the ground state in classical many-body systems is mediated by bubble nucleation. This transition has now been experimentally observed in a quantum setting using coupled atomic superfluids.

    • A. Zenesini
    • , A. Berti
    •  & G. Ferrari

  • News & Views |

    Determining the melting temperature and electrical conductivity of ammonia under the internal conditions of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune is helping us to understand the structure and magnetic field formation of these planets.

    • Kenji Ohta

  • News & Views |

    Tides not only affect ocean dynamics but also influence the Earth’s magnetosphere. Satellite observations have now revealed evidence of tidal effects in the Earth’s plasmasphere correlated with Moon phases.

    • Balázs Heilig

  • News & Views |

    Particles in space can be accelerated to high energy, the distribution of which follows a power law. This has now been reproduced in laboratory experiments mimicking astrophysical scenarios, which helps to understand the underlying mechanisms.

    • Giovanni Lapenta

  • News & Views |

    Numerical simulations and spacecraft observations elucidate how ultralow-frequency waves transmit through collisionless shocks, which could not only advance our understanding of shocks but also have implications for space weather modelling.

    • Hui Zhang
    •  & Terry Z. Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Earth’s bow shock results from the interaction of the solar wind with the terrestrial magnetic field. With global numerical simulations and spacecraft observations, the transmission of fast magnetosonic waves through the bow shock is revealed.

    • L. Turc
    • , O. W. Roberts
    •  & U. Ganse

  • News & Views |

    A potential observation of low-energy antihelium-3 nuclei would have profound impacts on our understanding of the Galaxy. Experiments at particle colliders help us understand how cosmic antimatter travels over long distances before reaching Earth.

    • Aihong Tang

  • News & Views |

    Lorentz symmetry violations might produce anomalies in the propagation of particles travelling through the Universe. The IceCube Collaboration performed the most precise search for such an effect with neutrinos, finding no sign of anomalous behaviour.

    • Giulia Gubitosi

  • News & Views |

    The atmospheres of most planets in our Solar System have a single large cyclonic vortex at each of their poles. Jupiter with its polygonal cyclones surrounding a single one, however, falls out of line, owing to an energy transfer to larger scales.

    • Agustín Sánchez-Lavega

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Infrared images of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft reveal an energy transfer driven by moist convection. This mechanism is expected to enhance heat transfer, which might also be relevant to Earth’s atmosphere.

    • Lia Siegelman
    • , Patrice Klein
    •  & Giuseppe Sindoni

  • News & Views |

    At high pressure and temperature, water forms two crystalline phases, known as hot ‘black’ ices due to their partial opaqueness. A detailed characterization of these phases may explain magnetic field formation in giant icy planets like Neptune.

    • Simone Anzellini

  • Article |

    Measurements of the phase diagram of water reveal first-order phase transitions to face- and body-centred cubic superionic ice phases. The former is suggested to be present in the interior of ice giant planets.

    • Vitali B. Prakapenka
    • , Nicholas Holtgrewe
    •  & Alexander F. Goncharov

  • Research Highlight |

    • Stefanie Reichert

  • Article |

    Superionic water is believed to exist in the interior of ice giant planets. By combining machine learning and free-energy methods, the phase behaviours of water at the extreme pressures and temperatures prevalent in such planets are predicted.

    • Bingqing Cheng
    • , Mandy Bethkenhagen
    •  & Sebastien Hamel

  • Measure for Measure |

    Initially used to measure the brightness of radio sources, the jansky has spread to other areas of astronomy, as Natasha Hurley-Walker recounts.

    • Natasha Hurley-Walker

  • Letter |

    The solar wind affects the magnetosphere, but whether this holds true for solar flares was unclear. By combining geospace modelling with observations, solar flares are shown to influence the dynamics of the magnetosphere and its ionosphere coupling.

    • Jing Liu
    • , Wenbin Wang
    •  & Frederick Wilder

  • Editorial |

    The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 has been awarded to Roger Penrose for his work on black hole formation, and to Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for their observation of a supermassive compact object at the Galactic Centre.

  • Research Highlight |

    • Stefanie Reichert

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Within the Physics Beyond Collider programme, complementary methods to high-energy frontier particle colliders to investigate the physics of elementary particles and their interactions are studied.

    • Joerg Jaeckel
    • , Mike Lamont
    •  & Claude Vallée

  • Letter |

    Magnetic reconnection in the near-Earth magnetotail is observed to power a space storm, although suppression of magnetic reconnection caused by the Earth’s magnetic dipole was expected close to Earth.

    • Vassilis Angelopoulos
    • , Anton Artemyev
    •  & Yukinaga Miyashita

  • News & Views |

    Planets are assembled from the ground up, beginning with millimetre-sized interstellar dust grains. Microgravity experiments suggest that centimetre-sized dust aggregates form from these smaller grains via collisional charging.

    • Katherine Follette

  • Article |

    In our understanding of planetary formation, it is still unclear how millimetre-sized dust grains grow into centimetre-sized aggregates. Microgravity experiments now show that electrical charging of the grains leads to the formation of larger clumps.

    • Tobias Steinpilz
    • , Kolja Joeris
    •  & Gerhard Wurm

  • Measure for Measure |

    Tell Bartolo Luque and Fernando Ballesteros how far the Sun is from the Earth, and they will tell you the size of the Universe.

    • Bartolo Luque
    •  & Fernando J. Ballesteros

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