Astronomers Directly Image the Youngest Exoplanet Ever

Most exoplanets we find have been around a long time. They’ve cleared out their orbital path (one of the requirements of planethood, as fans of Pluto well know), have their own gravitational pull, and in many cases shine with their own infrared light. But it takes a long time to get to that point - finding “young” planets is much harder. But a new paper available in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by a research team led by Andrea Bernardi of Diego Portales University in Chile describes a new paper that definitely takes the prize as the youngest exoplanet we’ve yet found.

How Diffractive Solar Sails Could Stop a Killer Asteroid at 100 km/s

Asteroids don’t come with a warning label that they might one day hit Earth. While we don’t know of any currently on course to do so, we are finding thousands of new ones each year, and there’s always a potential that one could. We proved a viable technique for dealing with that eventuality - the DART mission successfully moved a small asteroid using a “kinetic impactor” - basically a big rod designed to push the asteroid off its trajectory. But DART had one big flaw - it was traveling in the same direction as the asteroid, and approached it from behind, eventually hitting it with an impactor launched while in orbit around it. That technique might work if we have enough warning, but would require years of orbital mechanical maneuvering to pull off. An alternative, proposed by researchers at Beihang University, is to use a new type of solar sail to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid by hitting it head on.

SKA May Detect Magnetic Fields on Distant Exoplanets

Studying exoplanets has provided astronomers with a plethora of insights regarding what characteristics need to be searched to find life beyond Earth. For the longest time, astronomers merely thought an exoplanet in a star’s habitable zone was a sufficient criterion for an Earth-like world. However, astronomers have learned that certain stars are more active than our Sun, resulting in exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone being blasted with far more radiation than Earth could handle. In recent years, astronomers have recognized that a planet’s magnetic field, which shields the Earth from harmful radiation, could be a prime characteristic for identifying Earth-like worlds.

First Diagnostic X-Rays in Space Mark New Era for Astronaut Health

A team of researchers acquired the first diagnostic X-ray images during a commercial spaceflight, demonstrating that X-ray medicine can be performed in space.

3I/ATLAS Has An Extreme Taste For Heavy Water

More and more details about 3I/ATLAS are filtering through the scientific process as time goes on. Our third known interstellar visitor attracted the attention of some of the most powerful observatories in the world when it was discovered in July 2025, and some of those telescopes found something peculiar - the isotopes it contained appeared different. A new paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters (and available in pre-print on arXiv) by Kenji Furuya of the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute in Japan and his co-authors, shows how that isotopic discrepancy is likely due to the “low-metallicity” of the stellar nursery 3I/ATLAS was born in.

Space Rocks Carry Hundreds of Thousands of Complex Organic Molecules—and We Just Photographed Them

Scientists have known for a while that meteorites contain the “building blocks” of life - complex organic molecules such as amino acids, simple sugars, or even the chemical rungs of DNA. But anyone who has taken an organic chemistry class knows there are plenty of other carbon-based molecules out there, and a new study from Joseph W. Frye-Jones of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Florida State, which was published in The Planetary Science Journal, found tens of thousands of types of previously unseen organic compounds in two of the world’s most famous meteorites.

A Rare, Distant Clump of Early Galaxies Reveals Ancient Cosmic Secrets

The discovery of a very early and rare proto-supercluster of infant galaxies may help give clues to the formation of such clusters and their connection to the Cosmic Web.