Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak disturbances that quickly become more violent. This rapidly evolving process creates a ‘sky’ of raining plasma blobs that continue to fall even after the flare subsides.

A new study by researchers in Japan offers new insights into how protocells may have inherited and enriched genetic material before modern biology emerged. By exposing mixed phospholipid vesicles to repeated freezing and thawing, the team found that vesicles with more unsaturated lipids grew more efficiently and became selectively enriched. This membrane-level selection also increased the fraction of selectively neutral genetic material trapped inside.

The SETI Institute announced that alliant Global CEO, Dhaval Jadav, joined its Board of Directors. Dhaval brings a deep lifelong passion for space science, a strong commitment to STEM education, and a shared belief in the SETI Institute’s mission to explore one of humanity’s most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe?

This marks the beginning of a strategic partnership that gives the SETI Institute the ability to leverage alliant’s resources and AI capabilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.

“As a kid nothing got me more excited to learn about space than the thought of extraterrestrials being out there,” said Dhaval. “I think we’ve lost some of that sense of wonder, the curiosity that drives people to look beyond their screens and ask big questions about the universe. I wholeheartedly believe in the SETI Institute’s mission, and I hope alliant can help the SETI Institute be a beacon that rekindles that curiosity and inspires people to seek answers to life’s biggest mysteries.”

SAN ANTONIO — January 20, 2026 — Research conducted by an international team of astronomers from  Southwest Research Institute, Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in India and the Max Plank Institute in Germany could help predict upcoming solar cycle activity. To enable these predictions, the team devised a new way to look at historical data from the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KoSO), a field station of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bangalore, to reconstruct the Sun’s polar magnetic behavior over more than 100 years.