Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have found a rare disc of debris around a dead star that provides a glimpse of what may happen to our Solar System. Unlike in similar systems previously found, the debris — the leftovers of planets that once orbited the star — is organised in a double disc, the two parts separated by a clear gap. The disc appears to be shaped by two planetary bodies, one possibly as big as Pluto, that have survived the violent death of the star.

Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Rhino Range Expansion and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance mark 18 months of partnership that has helped turn an ambitious concept into action, expanding habitat for rhinos while creating opportunities for communities, conservation and tourism

Molecules are never still. Driven by thermal energy, they are constantly moving through space, while their individual parts also rotate relative to one another. Scientists at IOCB Prague have now shown that random motion within a molecule can be dramatically suppressed. Using light, they can slow down the relative rotation of two different parts of a single molecule by up to five orders of magnitude, paving the way for more complex molecular machines.

Two-dimensional materials can exhibit properties that do not occur in their three-dimensional parent systems, making them particularly interesting for applications in electronics, for example. So far, the search mainly concentrated on crystals that were already composed of loosely bonded layers. For the first time, a team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and TU Dresden has now developed an efficient computational method that predicts separable atomic layers in any type of crystal. By analyzing more than 24,000 known crystal structures, they identified 2,531 particularly promising candidates. The findings have been published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-76806-8).

 

New analysis of James Webb Space Telescope observations points to a reflective cloudy sky on TOI-561 b.

A Southwest Research Institute-led study used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine ice grains streaming from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, just the third object from beyond our solar system ever identified. The observations point to tiny aggregates of water ice and dust, about a micron or smaller. The grains’ spectral characteristics differ from those of ice grains in most previously studied comets but resemble the spectra of some icy worlds beyond Neptune. The results suggest that the icy building blocks of planets around other stars may share a common range of physical properties with those in our own solar system, with tiny grains ranging in composition from relatively pure ice to ice mixed with dust.