EurekAlert! News by Subject: Space & Planetary - News by Subject: Space & Planetary

Space & Planetary

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Dec-2025 02:11 ET (22-Dec-2025 07:11 GMT/UTC)

9-Dec-2025

Astronomers find first direct evidence of “Monster Stars” from the cosmic dawn

University of Portsmouth
Peer-Reviewed Publication

* Scientists have found compelling observational evidence of supermassive "first stars" in a galaxy called GS 3073 that blazed in the early universe.

* The data confirms a key prediction about how the first quasars – extraordinarily bright, actively-feeding black holes – were formed.

* This marks the first time scientists have found compelling evidence for such massive stars in the fossil record of the universe.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters

9-Dec-2025

SwRI-led study provides insight into oscillations in solar flares

Southwest Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOULDER, COLO. — December 9, 2025 — A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) links quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar flares to dynamic oscillations in magnetic reconnection, a phenomenon that can drive space weather and affect technology on Earth. This research could help refine traditional solar flare models and provide new insights into the mechanisms driving them.

Journal: Nature Astronomy

9-Dec-2025

Helical pulses – flying electromagnetic conches – were observed

Light Publishing Center, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics And Physics, CAS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Helical pulses, shaped like flying electromagnetic conches, long predicted but never directly observed, have now been experimentally realized in both optical and microwave bands. The work shows that light can twist through space and time within a single cycle, forming truly space time nonseparable wave packets. This breakthrough confirms a decades old theoretical prediction and opens new paths for ultrafast communication, topological field control, and advanced imaging.

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province, Aeronautical Science Foundation of China, European Research Council, Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) AcRF Tier 1, Singapore Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR) MTC Individual Research Grants, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation

9-Dec-2025

Flaring black hole whips up ultra-fast winds

European Space Agency
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Leading X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and XRISM have spotted a never-seen-before blast from a supermassive black hole. In a matter of hours, the gravitational monster whipped up powerful winds, flinging material out into space at eye-watering speeds of 60 000 km per second.

Journal: Astronomy and Astrophysics

9-Dec-2025

Metallic glass discovery using AI-guided graph learning from Wikipedia data

Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team from the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory has developed an AI-guided "Recommendation System" to discover new metallic glasses (MG). By combining element embeddings learned from Wikipedia by a language model with graph neural networks analyzing hidden material relationships. This approach addresses longstanding challenges related to the vast chemical space and limited experimental datasets, opening new horizons for materials design and accelerating the development of next-generation MGs.

8-Dec-2025

AI advances robot navigation on the International Space Station

Stanford University
Reports and Proceedings

Stanford researchers have become the first to demonstrate that machine-learning control can safely guide a robot aboard the ISS, laying the groundwork for more autonomous space missions.

Meeting: 2025 International Conference on Space Robotics (iSpaRo)

8-Dec-2025

Conclusive tests for the RISTRETTO exoplanet explorer

Université de Genève
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The RISTRETTO project, dedicated to observing Proxima b –the closest exoplanet to the Solar System — is reaching a new milestone: several key components of this high-precision spectrograph have been prototyped and successfully tested by the workshops of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Geneva (UNIGE). In addition, comprehensive simulations of the instrument indicate that RISTRETTO will be able to detect Proxima b, along with potential signs of oxygen or water in its atmosphere — a planet similar in size and temperature to Earth. These findings are detailed in two studies published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Journal: Astronomy and Astrophysics