The research team now believes that Aguas Zarcas is strong because it avoided collisions in space and did not have the cracks that weaken many meteorites. In the Pinball World of Asteroids, a Mudball Meteorite Avoided Collisions March 31, 2025, Mountain View, CA — In April 2019, rare primitive meteorites fell near the town of Aguas Zarcas in northern Costa Rica. In an article published online in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, an international team of researchers describe the…
As part of its commitment to unraveling the universe’s mysteries through sustained support of the astrophysics community, the Flatiron Institute is securing the future of MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics), an open-source software suite that has transformed how researchers model the evolution of stars. As MESA’s creator, Bill Paxton, steps down, the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) is stepping up to support MESA’s need for ongoing maintenance and continued development. CCA has hired Philip Mocz as…
Direct splitting: electrochemical process uses carbon dioxide to produce oxygen To mitigate global climate change, emissions of the primary culprit, carbon dioxide, must be drastically reduced. A newly developed process helps solve this problem: CO2 is directly split electrochemically into carbon and oxygen. As a Chinese research team reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie, oxygen could also be produced in this way under water or in space—without requiring stringent conditions such as pressure and temperature. Leafy plants are masters of…
The innovative team of engineers and scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and more than 40 other partner organizations across the country that created the Parker Solar Probe mission has been awarded the 2024 Robert J. Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA). This annual award recognizes the most exceptional achievement in aeronautics and astronautics in America with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles in the previous year….
The standard model of particle physics is our best theory of the elementary particles and forces that make up our world: particles and antiparticles, such as electrons and positrons, are described as quantum fields. They interact through other force-fields, such as the electromagnetic force that binds charged particles. To understand the behaviour of these quantum fields and with that our universe, researchers perform complex computer simulations of quantum field theories. Unfortunately, many of these calculations are too complicated for even…
A new study co-led by Dartmouth researchers shows how radiation from black holes could have a nurturing effect on life. At the center of most large galaxies, including our own Milky Way, sits a supermassive black hole. Interstellar gas periodically falls into the orbit of these bottomless pits, switching the black hole into active galactic nucleus (AGN)-mode, blasting high-energy radiation across the galaxy. It’s not an environment you’d expect a plant or animal to thrive in. But in a surprising…
A new analysis of data collected over three years by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration provides even stronger evidence than the group’s previous datasets that dark energy, long thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be evolving over time in unexpected ways. Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, professor of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, is co-chair of the DESI working group that interprets cosmological survey data gathered by the international collaboration, which includes more than 900 researchers…
A study published in JCAP places new limits on quantum gravity using data from the underwater detector KM3NeT Quantum gravity is the missing link between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the yet-to-be-discovered key to a unified theory capable of explaining both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. The solution to this puzzle might lie in the humble neutrino, an elementary particle with no electric charge and almost invisible, as it rarely interacts with matter, passing through everything on our…
Knowing from what debris field in the asteroid belt our meteorites originate is important for planetary defense efforts against Near Earth Asteroids. Where do meteorites of different type come from? In a review paper in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, published online this week, astronomers trace the impact orbit of observed meteorite falls to several previously unidentified source regions in the asteroid belt. “This has been a decade-long detective story, with each recorded meteorite fall providing a new clue,”…
Placing two layers of special 2D materials together and turning them at large angles creates artificial atoms with intriguing optical properties By taking two flakes of special materials that are just one atom thick and twisting them at high angles, researchers at the University of Rochester have unlocked unique optical properties that could be used in quantum computers and other quantum technologies. In a new study published in Nano Letters, the researchers show that precisely layering nano-thin materials creates excitons—essentially, artificial atoms—that can act…
For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock. This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229…
Researchers at Heriot-Watt University have made a ground-breaking discovery paving the way for a transformative era in photonic technology. For decades, scientists have theorised the possibility of manipulating the optical properties of light by adding a new dimension—time. This once-elusive concept has now become a reality thanks to nanophotonics experts from the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences in Edinburgh, Scotland. The team’s breakthrough emerged from experiments with nanomaterials known as transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) – a special glass capable…
A team of researchers from the University of Ottawa has made significant strides in understanding the ionization of atoms and molecules, a fundamental process in physics that has implications for various fields including x-ray generation and plasma physics. Think about atoms – the building blocks of everything around us. Sometimes, they lose their electrons and become charged particles (that’s ionization). It happens in lightning, in plasma TVs, and even in the northern lights. Until now, scientists thought they could only…
Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder to characterize Moon’s mantle Just hours after touching down on the surface of the Moon on March 2 aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander, the Southwest Research Institute-led Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) was activated and deployed its five sensors to study the Moon’s interior by measuring electric and magnetic fields. The LMS instrument is the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics. “For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of…
Advancing the search for weird life on weird planets Scientists have identified a promising new way to detect life on faraway planets, hinging on worlds that look nothing like Earth and gases rarely considered in the search for extraterrestrials. In a new Astrophysical Journal Letters paper, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, describe these gases, which could be detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — with the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST….
Gemini North’s MAROON-X instrument finds evidence for four mini-Earth exoplanets around our famous cosmic neighbor Barnard’s Star For a century, astronomers have been studying Barnard’s Star in the hope of finding planets around it. First discovered by E. E. Barnard at Yerkes Observatory in 1916, it is the nearest single star system to Earth [1]. Barnard’s Star is classified as a red dwarf — low-mass stars that often host closely-packed planetary systems, often with multiple rocky planets. Red dwarfs are extremely numerous in the Universe, so scientists…
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