Category Astronomy/Space

The hunt for potentially habitable rocky planets in our galaxy has been the holy grail of exoplanet studies for decades. While the discovery of more than 5,900 exoplanets in more than 4,400 planetary systems has been a remarkable achievement, only a small fraction (217) have been confirmed as terrestrial—aka rocky or “Earth-like.” Furthermore, obtaining accurate information on a rocky exoplanet’s atmosphere is very difficult, since potentially habitable rocky planets are much smaller and tend to orbit closer to their stars.

Thanks to next-generation instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), exoplanet studies are transitioning from discovery to characterization...

For the first time, international researchers have pinpointed the moment when planets began to form around a star beyond the sun. Using the ALMA telescope, in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, and the James Webb Space Telescope, they have observed the creation of the first specks of planet-forming material—hot minerals just beginning to solidify. This finding marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation and opens a window to the past of our own solar system.

“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our sun,” says Melissa McClure, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study, publishe...

Earth and our entire Milky Way galaxy may sit inside a mysterious giant hole which makes the cosmos expand faster here than in neighbouring regions of the universe, astronomers say.

Their theory is a potential solution to the ‘Hubble tension’ and could help confirm the true age of our universe, which is estimated to be around 13.8 billion years old.

The latest research – shared at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) in Durham – shows that sound waves from the early universe, &...

For decades, scientists have looked to light as a way to speed up computing. Photonic neural networks—systems that use light instead of electricity to process information—promise faster speeds and lower energy use than traditional electronics.

But despite their potential, these systems have struggled to match the accuracy of digital neural networks. A key reason: most photonic systems still mimic the structure and training methods of digital models, introducing errors when translating from software to hardware.

Now, a research team from Northwestern Polytechnical University and Southeast University in China has developed a new kind of photonic neural network tha...