Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
A Simon Fraser University cosmologist reports that new theoretical work on primordial magnetic fields could move researchers closer to resolving the longstanding Hubble tension, the mismatch in measurements of how fast the universe is expanding today. The Hubble tension arises because two precise approaches to determining the Hubble constant give significantly different results, despite dr

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
An international team has shown that natural electromagnetic chorus waves, long known in Earths magnetosphere, also occur in Mercurys much weaker magnetosphere with strikingly similar frequency behavior. The work uses coordinated observations from the BepiColombo Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter Mio during six Mercury flybys between 2021 and 2025, together with decades of data from Earths GEOTAIL

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
New experiments show that key molecular building blocks for life can form spontaneously on icy dust grains in deep space long before planets emerge from collapsing gas clouds. In a laboratory at Aarhus University and at the HUN-REN Atomki facility in Hungary, researchers Sergio Ioppolo and Alfred Thomas Hopkinson reproduced the extreme conditions in giant interstellar dust clouds, where te

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
Quantum mechanics describes a microscopic world in which particles exist in a superposition of states, being in multiple places and configurations at once, encoded in a mathematical object called a wavefunction. But this picture clashes with everyday experience, where objects appear in definite locations and configurations, never in superpositions. To account for this, standard quantum the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
The giant planet Jupiter has nearly 100 known moons, but none has captured scientific attention quite like Europa, which likely hides a global salty ocean beneath an icy crust that may contain twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans combined. A new modeling study led by Washington University in collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) suggests that, despite this ocean,

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
A new geophysics study proposes a mechanism that could move life-sustaining nutrients from the battered surface of Europa down into its buried global ocean, improving the odds that the Jovian moon could support microbial life. Europa, one of Jupiters largest moons, holds more liquid water beneath its frozen shell than all of Earths oceans combined, but the ocean is sealed away under thick

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
While Io, the most volcanically active moon in the solar system, appears completely dry and devoid of water ice, its neighbor Europa is thought to harbor a vast global ocean of liquid water beneath an icy crust. A new international study co-led by Aix-Marseille University and Southwest Research Institute finds that this stark contrast in water content was imprinted at birth as the moons formed a

Boston MA (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
Over the years, passing spacecraft have observed mystifying weather patterns at the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets host very different types of polar vortices, which are huge atmospheric whirlpools that rotate over a planet's polar region. On Saturn, a single massive polar vortex appears to cap the north pole in a curiously hexagonal shape, while on Jupiter, a central polar vortex

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jan 21, 2026
ExLabs has partnered with Japan's Chiba Institute of Technology and its Planetary Exploration Research Center to deliver university-led payloads to the surface of asteroid Apophis during its close approach to Earth in 2029. The ApophisExL mission is described as the world's first commercial deep-space rideshare and is supported through mission design and operations collaboration with NASA's Jet

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 20, 2026
A long-standing idea in planetary science proposes that water rich meteorites arriving late in Earth history delivered a major share of the planet's water inventory. A new study led by researchers at Universities Space Research Association and the University of New Mexico uses the Moon's surface record to impose strict limits on that scenario, concluding that impacts over the last 4 billion year