Science & Research
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Astronomers Trace a Mysterious Long-Period Radio Transient to an Accreting White Dwarf Binary, ASKAP J1745-5051
Researchers pinpointed a repeating radio signal to a white dwarf pulling matter from a red dwarf companion every 1.4 hours, a 'Rosetta stone' for the class.
EPFL Shrinks a Tabletop-Grade Ultrafast Laser Onto a Chip, Cracking a 20-Year 'Holy Grail' of Integrated Photonics
A Mamyshev oscillator on an erbium-doped silicon nitride chip delivers 1.05 nJ pulses as short as 147 fs, matching tabletop femtosecond lasers.
Astronomers Directly Observe the Rotation of a Planet-Forming Disk for the First Time, Tracking AB Aurigae Over Four Years
A CNRS-led team used the VLT's SPHERE instrument to watch a protoplanetary disk spin, finding anomalies linked to forming giant planets.
Monash Builds First Single-Chip System That Generates, Routes, and Reads Light-Encoded 'Valley' Information at Room Temperature
A Monash University team reports in Nature Photonics the first integrated chip that can create, route, and read information carried in light's 'valley' degree of freedom.
Pyrenees Cave at 2,235 Meters Yields 23 Hearths and Burned Green Minerals, Reframing High Mountains as Sites of Prehistoric Industry
A cave high in the eastern Pyrenees held 23 hearths and over 170 burned green mineral fragments, suggesting repeated prehistoric visits tied to early copper processing rather than passing traffic.
Astronomers Report First Robust Measurement of Magnetism on Exoplanets, Inferred From Strange Winds on Seven Hot Jupiters
An ESO and Gemini North team found winds on seven hot Jupiters slow as the planets get hotter, a pattern best explained by planet-wide magnetic fields.
Silver 'Mecon' Nanoparticles Let Brown and Michigan Stabilize a Long-Predicted Crystal Phase With Room-Temperature Light-Matter Coupling
Researchers self-assembled custom 14-sided silver nanoparticles into superlattices that freeze a transitional phase between FCC and BCC metal structures, and report deep-strong light-matter coupling at room temperature.
JWST Solves Saturn's Decades-Long Rotation Mystery, Revealing a Self-Sustaining Auroral Heat Pump in the Upper Atmosphere
James Webb observations show Saturn's apparent spin change is driven by a feedback loop in which its aurora heats the atmosphere, generating winds and currents that sustain the aurora.
Arctic Ocean Crossed a Nutrient Tipping Point Around 2009, Threatening the Polar Food Chain
Sea ice loss has triggered irreversible nitrate depletion in the Arctic Ocean since 2009, undermining the plankton foundation of the polar food web.
Webb Observes a Hot Jupiter's Daily Weather Cycle for the First Time, Revealing Rock Clouds That Form Every Morning and Dissolve by Nightfall
JWST has tracked the first complete daily cloud cycle on an exoplanet, finding that WASP-94Ab grows magnesium silicate clouds each morning and clears them each evening, while correcting a decade of skewed atmospheric measurements from Hubble.
400,000-Year-Old Tooth Proteins Link Homo Erectus to Denisovans and Leave a Trace in Modern Humans
A Nature study extracts 11 proteins from six Homo erectus teeth found in China, revealing a shared amino acid variant with Denisovans now present in some Southeast Asian and Oceanian populations.
JWST Peers at a Rocky Super-Earth's Surface for the First Time, Finding a Dark, Airless World That Looks Like Mercury
Astronomers used JWST's MIRI to directly study the surface geology of LHS 3844 b, a super-Earth 48.5 light-years away, revealing a basaltic, atmosphere-free world resembling Mercury — a first for exoplanet science.