Space science and discovery from Cosmic Herald — planetary science, cosmology, astrobiology, and the search for life beyond Earth.
Precise Gaia-based stellar ages suggest the Milky Way's disk collapsed fast early on, shrinking from over 1.26 kpc to about 0.5 kpc in roughly 2 billion years, and then thinned slowly. The result favours an upside-down origin for the thick disk.
Read the story →A team led by Brandt Gaches built the first fully 3D, high-resolution model of an Orion Bar analogue. It shows that shadows in clumpy gas reshape the chemistry, and it reproduces the overlapping fronts and filament-like arcs that ALMA and JWST have observed.
A new Planetary Science Journal study maps more than 10,000 young thrust faults in LRO images and puts a number on the Moon's slow contraction: about 45 meters of radius lost over hundreds of millions of years, with consequences for moonquakes and landslides near future landing sites.
New simulations of the colliding galaxy cluster El Gordo suggest it fits best if dark matter can scatter elastically and also get kicked into an excited state that drains energy. The result hinges on uncertain mass estimates.
Simulations of 195 massive stars show that even a small amount of neutrino flavor conversion can decide whether a dying star explodes as a supernova or collapses into a black hole. Stars of 16 to 30 solar masses are the most sensitive.
Sentinel-6 altimetry shows a Pacific ocean swollen by up to 1.3 feet in places, NOAA puts the odds of an El Niño stronger than any since 1950 at 83% for Oct–Dec, and the winter outlook points to a wetter US South.
ALMA's COMPASS survey has made the first interstellar detection of fully deuterated methanol around the protostar IRAS4A2 in Perseus. The molecule is about 100 times more abundant than chemical models predict.
An INAF-led Nature Astronomy study of 300 well-characterised multi-planet systems finds they split into two families: calm, compact systems around smaller stars, and massive systems around metal-rich stars that are about ten times more dynamically agitated.
A new model of warm early Mars traces where rain carried formaldehyde, a starting material for sugars and amino acids, to the ground, and finds the wet, mountainous Tharsis and Elysium regions got about ten times the global average.
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL left the ISS on Oct. 9 loaded with station trash and 12 University of Kentucky KREPE-3 capsules that will test experimental heat-shield materials, including a 3D-printed shield, during the cargo ship's destructive reentry.
NASA's SPHEREx measured 37 nearby brown dwarfs in 102 colors, finding water, CO2, CO and methane, and showing that leading atmosphere models still miss key features. Thousands more objects are already in the queue.
Solar Orbiter flew through a magnetic switchback and found oxygen and carbon that could only have formed in hot coronal loops. The result points to interchange reconnection as the source, with Alfvén waves taking over later.
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