Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in solar physics by providing the first direct evidence of small-scale torsional Alfvén waves in the Sun's corona – elusive magnetic waves that scientists have been searching for since the 1940s.

MIT physicists developed a way to probe inside an atom’s nucleus, using the atom’s own electrons as “messengers” within a molecule. They plan to map the distribution of forces inside a radium nucleus, which could help to explain why we see more matter than antimatter in the universe.

The SETI Institute announced today that the California Academy of Sciences has awarded its highest honor, the Fellows Medal, to Dr. Jill Tarter, SETI Institute co-founder and Bernard M. Oliver Chair Emerita for SETI at the SETI Institute, recognizing her pioneering contributions to the scientific search for life beyond Earth. Medalists are nominated by Academy Fellows and confirmed by the Board of Trustees.

“The Cal Academy Fellows Medal is a great honor that I am now fortunate to share with a group of extraordinary previous Medalists,” said Tarter. “Over the years it has been extremely rewarding for the SETI Institute to work with a number of Academy teams to improve public understanding and engagement in the enterprise of science for all.”

The discovery of a possible “super-Earth” less than 20 light-years from our own planet is offering scientists new hope in the hunt for other worlds that could harbor life, according to an international team including researchers from Penn State. They dubbed the exoplanet, named GJ 251 c, a “super-Earth” as data suggest it is almost four times as massive as the Earth, and likely to be rocky planet.

New research from Rice University suggests that the giant planet Jupiter reshaped the early solar system in dramatic ways, carving out rings and gaps that ultimately explain one of the longest-standing puzzles in planetary science: why many primitive meteorites formed millions of years after the first solid bodies. The study, which combined hydrodynamic models of Jupiter’s growth with simulations of dust evolution and planet formation, was recently published in Science Advances.