Researchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme planet where they suspect it rains iron. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.

“One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron,” says David Ehrenreich, a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He led a study, published today in the journal Nature, of this exotic exoplanet. Known as WASP-76b, it is located some 640 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces.

This strange phenomenon happens because the ‘iron rain’ plane...

Work on similar viruses is giving researchers clues to develop drugs against the disease. As the new coronavirus makes its way around the world, doctors and researchers are searching for drugs to treat the ill and stop the spread of the disease, which has already killed more than 3,800 people since its introduction in Wuhan, China, in December.

The culprit virus is in the same family as the coronaviruses that caused two other outbreaks, severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome...

Scientists from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research and RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science have succeeded, in collaboration with international partners, in creating an ultrathin organic solar cell that is both highly efficient and durable. Using a simple post-annealing process, they created a flexible organic cell that degrades by less than 5 percent over 3,000 hours in atmospheric conditions and that simultaneously has an energy conversion ratio – a key indicator of solar cell performance – of 13 percent.

Organic photovoltaics are considered to be a promising alternative to silicon-based conventional films, being more environmentally friendly and cheap to produce...

The problem-solving prowess of a simple slime mold has been harnessed to trace the large-scale structure of the universe. A computational approach inspired by the growth patterns of a bright yellow slime mold has enabled a team of astronomers and computer scientists at UC Santa Cruz to trace the filaments of the cosmic web that connects galaxies throughout the universe.

Their results, publishe...