Today the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration announces the completion of the fourth observation campaign of the international network of gravitational wave detectors. Launched in May 2023, this is the longest and richest period of coordinated observations with some 250 new signals  detected:  over two-thirds of the approximately 350 gravitational signals detected to date by LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA. Some of the most significant results of this latest observational cycle have already been announced and published, contributing to a further deepening of our understanding of  certain fundamental physical processes in the universe.

Microgravity experienced during spaceflight poses potential health risks to astronauts’ cardiovascular systems. Determining how to mitigate these health risks is challenging, as countermeasures are tested in Earth’s gravity. But what if there was a way to perform research in microgravity, without leaving the atmosphere? Researchers from Texas A&M University are participating in parabolic flights operated by Novespace in Bordeaux, France. These flights create brief periods of microgravity through a series of parabolic climb and descent maneuvers.

A new study uncovered fresh chemical evidence of life in rocks more than 3.3 billion years old, along with molecular traces showing that oxygen-producing photosynthesis emerged nearly a billion years earlier than previously thought. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, not only deepens understanding of Earth’s earliest biosphere but also has implications for the search for life beyond Earth. The same approach could be used to analyze samples from Mars or other planetary bodies to detect whether they once harbored living organisms.

Pairing cutting-edge chemistry with artificial intelligence, a multidisciplinary team of scientists today published fresh chemical evidence of Earth’s earliest life – concealed in 3.3-billion-year-old rocks – and molecular evidence that oxygen-producing photosynthesis was occurring over 800 million years earlier than previously documented.