Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa.

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon.

Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa...

A recent study provides new insight into the relat...

Researchers have determined how to build reliable machine learning models that can understand complex equations in real-world situations while using far less training data than is normally expected.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Cornell University, found that for partial differential equations—a class of physics equations that describe how things in the natural world evolve in space and time—machine learning models can produce reliable results even when they are provided with limited data.

Their results, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be useful for constructing more t...

Life on a faraway planet—if it’s out there—might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe’s pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. A team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has exploited those limitations to write a cookbook of hundreds of chemical recipes with the potential to give rise to life.

Their ingredient list could focus the search for life elsewhere in the universe by pointing out the most likely conditions—planetary versions of mixing techniques, oven tem...