Our galaxy’s most abundant type of planet could be rich in liquid water due to formative interactions between magma oceans and primitive atmospheres during their early years. New experimental work demonstrates that large quantities of water are created as a natural consequence of planet formation. It represents a major step forward in how we think about the search for distant worlds capable of hosting life.

AIP has awarded $25,000 to the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder for the team’s proposed project, “Electricity and Magnetism with PhET Interactive Simulations: A Professional Learning Course and Community for Teachers.” PhET Interactive Simulations is an open educational resource that allows students to simulate science experiments online and hosts more than 170 free interactive simulations in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and math.

Researchers from China present a new framework to simulate how black hole images change over time, focusing on rotating regular black holes with nonsingular cores. Using spatio-temporal random fields and efficient light ray tracing, the model captures realistic brightness fluctuations, turbulence, and light-travel effects around the black hole. The simulated results reproduce time-varying features like the shifting bright ring seen in M87*, offering a fast, physically grounded alternative to full GRMHD simulations and paving the way for future dynamic black hole imaging studies.