New Research Reveals That Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Formed in a System Far Colder Than Our Own

The interplanetary comet 3I/ATLAS is remarkably rich in a specific type of water that contains deuterium, meaning it came from somewhere colder and with lower levels of radiation than our early Solar System.

This Bathtub Ring of Minerals is More Evidence for an Ancient Warm, Wet Mars

NASA's MSL Curiosity rover found a bathtub ring-like deposit of zinc, manganese, and iron in Gale Crater. These metals precipitate out of water in the right conditions, and there's not really any other way they could've become concentrated here. Adding to the excitement, these deposits also form in lakes on Earth, where the concentrated metals are food for some types of bacteria.

The Most Energetic Neutrino Ever Detected Could Be Primordial

Neutrinos are very difficult to detect. And when they are detected, pinpointing their sources is likewise difficult. New research shows that the most energetic neutrino ever detected must have had an extraordinarly energetic source. It could even be primordial.

The Stars Feeding our Galaxy’s Monster

At the heart of our Galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of our Sun. For decades, astronomers have watched mysterious gas clouds drifting towards it on almost identical paths, wondering where they came from and why. Now, a team of researchers think they have finally cracked the puzzle and the answer involves two massive stars locked in a violent embrace!

Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and the Forbidden Gap

An international team led by Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes—objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. But some are completely destroyed in pair-instability supernova explosions. This can explain the so-named "Forbidden Gap" in black hole masses.

MSL Curiosity Found New Organic Chemicals On Mars, Proof That The Planet Can Preserve Ancient Biosignatures

MSL Curiosity found 7 new organic molecules preserved in Martian sandstone. While they aren't proof that life existed on Mars, they are important. They show that the planet is capable of protecting ancient biosignatures from radiation and preserving them in rock.

Mars Didn't Have Bathtubs, It Had Shelves

Scientists have been debating for decades whether Mars once held a vast ocean covering a large part of its northern face. To prove the idea, they’ve been looking for a “bathtub ring” - a distinct, level shoreline that shows where water once stood. But, despite years of looking, they’ve only been able to find a very distorted potential shoreline whose height deviates by several kilometers - not exactly great evidence of a stable water level. But, according to a new paper in Nature from Abdallah Zaki and Michael Lamb of CalTech, what scientists should have been looking for wasn’t a bathtub ring, but a continental shelf.