Antarctica’s pale expanses of ice keep water locked up and reflect heat from the planet — but the climate crisis is putting these safeguards at increasing risk. Antarctica is warming much faster than the global average, which could destroy its ecosystems and put other parts of the planet at risk by driving sea level rise and damaging food chains. Scientists modelling possible climate crisis outcomes for the Antarctica Peninsula show just how high the stakes are if we don’t act now.

Each molecule has its own unmistakable tone, but the voices of individual molecules are so faint that traditional infrared spectroscopy can only detect the collective chorus of millions or billions of molecules at once. Now researchers at UC San Diego, led by Shaowei Li, have found a way to hear a single molecule sing, using an approach they call infrared-integrated STM, or IRiSTM.

Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. Jackson Barnes, an MSU graduate student, has created the first simulation that reproduces the two-lobed shape naturally with gravitational collapse. His work is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.