New research utilising data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has provided the first direct evidence of a phenomenon known as the “helicity barrier” in the solar wind. This discovery, published in Physical Review X by Queen Mary University of London researchers, offers a significant step towards understanding two long-standing mysteries: how the Sun’s atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees and how the supersonic solar wind is generated.

Radar systems used by civilian airports and military operations are inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced alien civilisations, new research shows. The study explored how hidden electromagnetic leakage might look to extraterrestrials up to 200 light-years from Earth, if they had state-of-the-art radio telescopes like our own. Theoretically, it also suggests this is how far we would be able to look to spot aliens who have evolved to use a similar level of technology. Preliminary results revealed at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2025 in Durham show how worldwide aviation hubs such as Heathrow, Gatwick and New York’s JFK International Airport give off clues to our existence.

Earth and our entire Milky Way galaxy may sit inside a mysterious giant hole which makes the cosmos expand faster here than in neighbouring regions of the universe, astronomers say. Their theory is a potential solution to the 'Hubble tension' and could help confirm the true age of our universe, which is estimated to be around 13.8 billion years old. The latest research – shared at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) in Durham – shows that sound waves from the early universe, "essentially the sound of the Big Bang", support this idea.

University of Maryland astronomers discovered that an unexpected blast of space rocks ejected during DART mission carried three times more momentum than the spacecraft itself, leading to new insights for future planetary defense missions.

Thanks to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University have observed four additional Wolf-Rayet systems. Each has several visible dust shells around it, similar to the one found around Wolf-Rayet star WR-140.