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Credit: Matthew Kapust / Sanford Underground Research Facility Most of the matter in the universe is missing. Scientists believe around 85% of the matter in the cosmos is made of invisible dark matter, which has only been detected indirectly by its gravitational effects on its surroundings. My colleagues and I—a team of some 250 scientists…
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Severe drought in the American Southwest and Mexico and more severe wet years in the Northeast are the modern norm in North America, according to new research—and the analysis suggests these seasonal patterns will be more extreme in the future. The middle of the United States, meanwhile, can expect bigger swings…
Diagram of the proposed Venus mesospheric water cycle mechanism to sustain the observed HDO and H2O VMR and HDO/H2O ratio increase with altitude. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401638121 Thanks to observations by the Solar Occultation in the Infrared (SOIR) instrument on the Venus Express space probe of the European…
Schematic diagram illustrating underlying mechanisms of interdecadal shifts in the ENSO–SCAP relationship. Credit: npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41612-024-00742-x Central Asia, encompassing Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, is one of the world’s largest semi-arid to arid regions. Known for its continental climate, the region has a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive…
The first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. Credit: EHT Collaboration The origins of aptly named supermassive black holes—which…
This artist’s rendition shows NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the sun. Credit: Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA Our sun drives a constant outward flow of plasma, or ionized gas, called the solar wind, which envelops our solar system. Outside of Earth’s protective magnetosphere, the fastest solar wind rushes by at speeds of over 310 miles (500…
Illustration of an exoplanet. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has discovered a small planet that displays peculiar orbital motion. The shimmying planet, located 455 light-years from Earth, shows that planetary systems can be considerably more complex than researchers have previously thought. The newly discovered planet TOI-1408c has a…
The relationship between the risk to water security in each hydrological basin and the governance and environmental conditions in the regions upwind. The relationship between governance (y axis), environmental performance (x axis), the level of risk to water security of each hydrological basin relative to the 379 basins used in the study (color gradient) and…
The results of the study reveal the clear-sky downwelling longwave radiation from the atmosphere and the resulting surface albedo feedback due to the melting of ice as the dominant factors for abnormal temperatures of Greenland. Credit: Professor Kyung-Ja Ha from Pusan National University, South Korea Global warming, driven by human activities, has led to rising…
Halo of the Andromeda galaxy (Illustration). Credit: NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime. However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history…