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

Space & Planetary

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 6-May-2025 23:09 ET (7-May-2025 03:09 GMT/UTC)

Astronomers find the smallest main-belt asteroids ever detected

University of Liège
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In a paper appearing in the journal Nature, an international team including University of Liège astronomers report the detection of 138 new decameter rocky bodies in the main asteroid belt. The space rocks range in size from that of a bus to a few hundred meters wide, and are the smallest asteroids within the main belt that have been detected to date. This discovery was made possible by an innovative analysis of archival infrared images initially devoted to the study of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanetary system collected by the world’s most powerful observatory — the NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This discovery has important implications for the understanding of the asteroid population of the main belt and the Earth planetary defense against dangerous asteroids.

Journal: Nature

MIT astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT astronomers have found a way to spot the smallest, “decameter,” asteroids within the main asteroid belt. They used their approach to detect more than 100 new asteroids, ranging from the size of a bus to several stadiums wide, which are the smallest asteroids within the main belt detected to date.

Journal: Nature
Funder: Heising-Simons Foundation, Czech Science Foundation, NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program

Mars’ infamous dust storms can engulf the entire planet. A new study examines how

University of Colorado at Boulder
Reports and Proceedings

Dust storms on Mars could one day pose dangers to human astronauts, damaging equipment and burying solar panels. New research gets closer to predicting when extreme weather might erupt on the Red Planet.

Meeting: AGU Annual Meeting 2024

Webb telescope’s largest study of universe expansion confirms challenge to cosmic theory

Johns Hopkins University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe—not a flaw in telescope measurements—may be behind the decadelong mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal

Space-time crystals, an important step toward new optical materials

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Photonic space-time crystals are materials that could increase the performance and efficiency of wireless communication or laser technologies. They feature a periodic arrangement of special materials in three dimensions as well as in time, which enables precise control of the properties of light. Working with partners from Aalto University, the University of Eastern Finland and Harbin Engineering University in China, scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have shown how such four-dimensional materials can be used in practical applications. They published their results in Nature Photonics (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-024-01563-3).

Journal: Nature Photonics

Falsifying anthropics

Sissa Medialab
Peer-Reviewed Publication

“We live in a universe that is just right for us.” A new paper in JCAP proposes a test for this idea.

The Anthropic Principle—stating that the universe we live in is fine-tuned to host life—was first proposed by Brandon Carter in 1973. Since then, it has sparked significant debate. Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP), authored by Nemanja Kaloper, a physicist from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis, and Alexander Westphal, a professor at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), describes for the first time a way to experimentally test this assumption.

Journal: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

Into the light

Weizmann Institute of Science

In photosynthesis, harnessing the power of the Sun is made possible by the flow of electrons from one protein to another inside an organelle called the chloroplast. This organelle contains a complex system of membranes, some of which are densely stacked, and others that are organized into more expansive assemblies. Until now, the scientific consensus was that this spatial structure forces the electrons to cover large distances between proteins, slowing down the process of photosynthesis. But in a paper recently published in Nature Plants, a research team led by staff scientist Dr. Reinat Nevo from Reich’s lab revealed that the membranes change their organization in space during the transition from darkness to light, enabling the proteins to come closer to one another and thus shortening the distance the electrons must cross.

Journal: Nature Plants

65
66
67
68
69