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Super-Earths that retain their primordial atmospheres can have long-lasting temperate surfaces. If a layer of water can form on such a planet, it could be liquid for billions of years.
Recent advances in plasma turbulence theory have led to a new way of explaining the heating of the solar corona and many of the observed features of the solar wind.
As the population of Earth’s orbital environment and human exploration of space intensifies, it is critical to have a strong ethical framework in place so that mistakes of the past are learned from and not repeated.
The Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko found unexpectedly high concentrations of molecular oxygen in its atmosphere. New results show that these concentrations are enhanced by a cycle of trapping and releasing of molecular oxygen just below the comet’s surface.
It is unclear what energy sources were responsible for the reionization of hydrogen atoms in the intergalactic medium 13 billion years ago. Measuring the upper limit on the number of ionizing photons produced by quasars has revealed that the contribution of quasars to reionization is negligible, suggesting that galaxies are the major energy sources.
Galaxies and their dark-matter haloes have posed several challenges to the dark energy plus cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model. This Review discusses the most notable challenges to ΛCDM regarding dwarf galaxies and the insights provided by recent cosmological numerical simulations.
Accretion is the process that dictates the mass, and therefore final fate, of a forming star. Now, it seems that the number of stars forming in a system can affect and even induce accretion throughout the star-formation process.
It has been generally thought that small icy bodies in the outer Solar System were chemically inactive due to its coldness. Laboratory experiments change this view by showing that water–rock interactions occur even in ice–rock mixtures.
The Sun’s surface hosts varying magnetic activities and rotation rates (from equator to pole), and unique solar weather. Now, a combination of ground and space observations has unveiled a previously undetected magnetized plasma current.
This article reviews the properties of the dwarf galaxies of the Local Group from the point of view of their stellar dynamics and dark matter content and distribution, as inferred from the combination of observed data and dynamical models.
This Perspective summarizes the latest observational evidence for star formation feedback and the important role of external ionizing radiation for the smallest galaxies, showing how this feedback directly impacts their properties, including their dark matter distribution.
There is a growing need for data cleaning and source identification for gravitational-wave detectors in real time. A deep learning inference-as-a-service framework using off-the-shelf software and hardware can address these challenges in a scalable and reliable way.
A protoplanet seen forming at some distance from its star provides evidence for planet formation via gravitational instability, a mechanism previously invoked for being responsible for the fully formed gas giant planets at large separations seen by direct imaging.
An individual star at extremely high redshift is observed due to gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy cluster, magnifying it by a factor of over a thousand.
Many interplanetary dust particles collected in Earth’s stratosphere spent millions of years exposed to solar radiation during their journey from sources beyond Neptune, namely the distant Kuiper belt. These Kuiper belt particles are a previously unrecognized population contributing to the zodiacal cloud and to the mass of dust accreted annually by Earth.
Crowded with satellites and debris, the orbital space around the Earth should be formally recognized as an ecosystem—like the ocean and the atmosphere—to ensure sustainable development and protection from irreversible damage.
Venus is used as the paradigm of Earth-sized near tidally locked planets. The behaviour and dynamics of its atmosphere are used to gain insight into the climate of terrestrial exoplanets with similar orbital configurations.
RS Ophiuchi is the first nova to be detected in the very-high-energy range. Its gamma-ray emission provides evidence of proton acceleration following the thermonuclear outburst. These observations offer new insight into the origin of cosmic rays.
