New theoretical models, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, connect, for the first time, the magnetism at the surface of long-dead stellar remnants (white dwarfs) with recent evidence of magnetism at the cores of their dying progenitors (red giants). The team, led by astrophysicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), argues that these magnetic fields might originate early in the stars’ lives, and survive their entire evolution, emerging as ‘fossil fields’ at the surfaces of older remnants.  A better understanding of these processes can also help to better understand our own Sun’s future.

A mysterious layer of particles that occupies the lower regions of Venus’s atmosphere has long puzzled astronomers. However, a research team has finally solved the mystery of the “lower haze,” discovering that the haze comes from cosmic dust left by shooting stars that constantly rain down on Venus.

When NASA’s Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean April 10, completing a successful Artemis II mission milestone, a critical piece of the spacecraft’s safe return traced back to research at Rice University.

Rice University researchers recreate Mercury rocks in the lab and find that sulphur plays a structural role inhabited by oxygen on Earth

As humanity's exploration of the Earth's internal structure deepens, Earth's free oscillations, serving as crucial "fingerprints" for revealing the large-scale structure and dynamic processes within the Earth, have always been a core subject in geophysics. Ground-based station observations are currently the mainstream method for measuring Earth's free oscillations. With the advancement of space technology, high-precision inter-satellite distance measurement holds the potential to become a novel method for detecting these oscillations.

In a recent paper published in Space: Science & Technology, a research team from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Sun Yat-sen University, in collaboration with the TianQin Research Center for Gravitational Physics, proposed a novel detection and analysis method for Earth's free oscillations utilizing the "TianQin" space-borne gravitational wave detector. The study constructed a theoretical response model for Earth's free oscillations within the TianQin detector and derived their analytical waveform for high-orbit satellite laser interferometric measurements. Through numerical simulation and Bayesian parameter estimation, the research team demonstrated that for a major seismic event like the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, TianQin could achieve a clear detection with a signal-to-noise ratio as high as 73 and independently distinguish at least nine different free oscillation modes.

This research not only methodologically demonstrates for the first time the feasibility of directly detecting Earth's free oscillations using high-orbit gravitational wave detectors, but also pioneers a new interdisciplinary pathway integrating space-based gravity measurement with geophysical research. By leveraging the frequency splitting effect introduced by satellite orbital motion, this method can circumvent calibration errors inherent in traditional multi-station observations, enabling more independent and precise probing of Earth's internal structure. This work significantly expands the interdisciplinary application scope for China's autonomous space science mission—the TianQin project—and provides novel theoretical tools and technical reserves for future space-based exploration of Earth's internal structure and seismic mechanisms.