https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A new study led by a Georgia State University astronomy graduate student is a major step forward in the search for stars that could host Earth-like planets that may prove to be good havens for life to develop. Sebastián Carrazco-Gaxiola shared the results at the January 2026 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix, Ariz. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-census-sun-neighbors-reveals-potential.html Astrobiology Tue, 06 Jan 2026 15:27:10 EST news686935513 Astronomers from Cardiff University, UK, have employed the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) to explore the nearby Andromeda galaxy. Results of the observational campaign, published December 27 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield important insights into the molecular cloud system of this galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-astronomers-molecular-cloud-atlas-nearby.html Astronomy Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:20:55 EST news686913576 Cosmic dust—the tiny particles that help form stars, planets and the chemical building blocks of life—might be much spongier and fluffier than long assumed, according to an international group of scientists. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-space-spongier-thought-scientists.html Astronomy Mon, 29 Sep 2025 11:17:04 EDT news678363422 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers from the University of Florida and elsewhere have performed infrared observations of a star-forming cloud known as Sagittarius B2. Results of the observational campaign, published September 15 on the arXiv preprint server, provide important insights into the properties of this cloud. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-star-cloud-sagittarius-b2-explored.html Astronomy Tue, 23 Sep 2025 08:00:03 EDT news677773829 Scientists created the most accurate three-dimensional map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope. This map will teach us more about these obscure cloudy areas, and the hot young stars that shape them. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-fly-gaia-3d-stellar-nurseries.html Astronomy Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:05:04 EDT news677239502 The size of our universe and the bodies within it is incomprehensible to us lowly humans. The sun has a mass that is more than 330,000 times that of our Earth, and yet there are stars in the universe that completely dwarf our sun. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-streams-gas-rapid-formation-high.html Astronomy Wed, 20 Aug 2025 16:30:01 EDT news674924108 For decades, astrochemists have been looking for sulfur atoms in space and finding surprisingly little of the element that is a key ingredient to life. A new study could point to where it has been hiding. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-chemists-mystery-space-sulfur.html Astrobiology Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:04:08 EDT news674139841 Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers led by Abubakar Fadul from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has discovered complex organic molecules—including the first tentative detection of ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile—in the protoplanetary disk of the outbursting protostar V883 Orionis. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-complex-molecules-young-star-disk.html Astrobiology Thu, 24 Jul 2025 11:00:03 EDT news672501253 A team of astronomers has uncovered an unexpectedly complex and dynamic filamentary network within a very-high-velocity cloud (VHVC) in the Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-astronomers-tangled-supersonic-filaments-distant.html Astronomy Thu, 17 Jul 2025 10:51:50 EDT news671968306 Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to peer into the early universe and uncover the building blocks of galaxies during their formative years. The CRISTAL survey—short for [CII] Resolved ISM in STar-forming galaxies with ALMA—reveals cold gas, dust, and clumpy star formation in galaxies observed as they appeared just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-alma-reveals-hidden-galaxies-universe.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:25:50 EDT news670667141 Using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), astronomers have performed large-scale radio observations of a star-forming region known as the Chamaeleon cloud complex. The observational campaign, which detected five young stars in Chamaeleon, may shed more light on the properties of this complex. The findings were detailed in a paper published June 19 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-astronomers-young-stars-chamaeleon-cloud.html Astronomy Mon, 30 Jun 2025 10:34:12 EDT news670498449 According to the latest studies led by Heidelberg University astronomers, low-mass stars quite often host Earth-like planets. Data collected as part of the CARMENES project were the basis of this finding. By analyzing the data, an international research team succeeded in identifying four new exoplanets and determining their properties. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-tiny-stars-earths-potentially-habitable.html Astronomy Fri, 27 Jun 2025 11:24:04 EDT news670242242 Understanding how the universe transitioned from darkness to light with the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key turning point in the universe's development, known as the Cosmic Dawn. However, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can't directly observe these earliest stars, so determining their properties is one of the biggest challenges in astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-radio-early-universe-clues-stars.html Astronomy Fri, 20 Jun 2025 05:00:01 EDT news669478126 A team led by astronomers at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia (U.S.) have, for the first time, robustly detected semi-heavy water ice around a young sunlike star. The results strengthen the case that some of the water in our solar system formed before our sun and the planets. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-semi-heavy-ice-young-sunlike.html Astronomy Mon, 16 Jun 2025 05:00:01 EDT news668855402 An international team of astronomers including researchers at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory has unveiled groundbreaking findings about the disks of gas and dust surrounding nearby young stars, using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-planet-disks-gas-faster-survey.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 13 Jun 2025 13:51:53 EDT news669041501 New research led by Dr. James De Buizer at the SETI Institute and Dr. Wanggi Lim at IPAC at Caltech revealed surprising results about the rate at which high-mass stars form in the galactic center of the Milky Way. The researchers based their study primarily on observations from NASA's now-retired SOFIA airborne observatory, focusing on three star-forming regions—Sgr B1, Sgr B2, and Sgr C—located at the heart of the galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-unusual-stellar-nurseries-galaxy-center.html Astronomy Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:17:34 EDT news668773043 Using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array, astronomers have revealed for the first time the huge flow of gas near a massive star in the making that allows its rapid growth. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-astronomers-mystery-massive-star-formation.html Astronomy Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:02 EDT news665743821 The universe doesn't come with an instruction manual—but if it did, University of Missouri Assistant Professor Charles Steinhardt suspects a few pages are missing. Either the universe has been playing by different rules all along, or humanity has been reading the script wrong. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-astronomy-professor-theory-universe-star.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:56:42 EDT news663429399 Swirling through the Milky Way's central zone, in the turbulent region surrounding the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy, dust and gases constantly churn as energetic shock waves ripple throughout. An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have sharpened our view of this action by a factor of 100, discovering a surprising new filamentary structure in this mysterious region of space. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-astronomers-space-tornadoes-milky-core.html Astronomy Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:33:04 EDT news661599182 In the ALMAGAL project, an international research team will analyze observations of more than a thousand "star factories" to better understand the origin and formation of new stars. Most previous studies have focused on the specific star formation in certain regions. The data from the ALMAGAL project allows researchers to analyze the full diversity of processes underlying star formation. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-star-regions-stellar-birth.html Astronomy Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:26:03 EDT news660921961 Look, all somewhat positive climate news has to be placed in the context of the ongoing global climate crisis, but this week, researchers did report a new simulation suggesting that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is unlikely to shut down within this century. Engineers developed a new flat telescope lens that captures color while detecting light from distant stars, minimizing some of the tradeoffs inherent to traditional lenses. And as a person who lives in a hurricane-prone region of the U.S., I was personally alarmed by the mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, but this is ultimately going to impact everyone. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-saturday-citations-thar-scientists-capture.html Other Sat, 01 Mar 2025 09:00:01 EST news659964776 An international research team led by the University of Vienna has discovered that the solar system traversed the Orion star-forming complex, a component of the Radcliffe Wave galactic structure, approximately 14 million years ago. This journey through a dense region of space could have compressed the heliosphere, the protective bubble surrounding our solar system, and increased the influx of interstellar dust, potentially influencing Earth's climate and leaving traces in geological records. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-solar-journey-orion-complex-million.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Feb 2025 12:50:34 EST news659710229 A bouquet of thousands of stars in bloom has arrived. This composite image contains the deepest X-ray image ever made of the spectacular star-forming region called 30 Doradus. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-nasa-telescopes-stellar-bouquet-valentine.html Astronomy Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:24:56 EST news658599892 For the first time, astronomers have traced a fast radio burst (FRB) to the outskirts of an ancient, dead, elliptical galaxy—an unprecedented home for a phenomenon previously associated with much younger galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-fast-radio-dead-elliptical-galaxy.html Astronomy Tue, 21 Jan 2025 11:00:05 EST news656585600 An international team led by astronomers at Leiden University has shown in laboratory experiments that sulfur can bind with ammonium under icy cosmic conditions and form a salt that sticks to dust and pebbles. The resulting sulfur salt not only helps to explain the mystery of the missing sulfur gas, but also a puzzling peak in data from the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI instrument and other telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-lost-sulfur-universe-reside-salt.html Astronomy Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:00:01 EST news656177161 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has detected a new grand-design spiral galaxy as part of the PANORAMIC survey. The newfound galaxy, named Zhúlóng, is extremely massive and appears to be the most distant spiral galaxy identified so far. The finding was detailed in a paper published December 17 on the pre-print server arXiv. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-astronomers-ultra-massive-grand-spiral.html Astronomy Sat, 28 Dec 2024 08:20:02 EST news654497686 Deep within the Orion Nebula, researchers are one step closer to understanding how Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs) form—a longstanding mystery in astrophysics https://phys.org/news/2024-11-jupiter-mass-binary-hidden-orion.html Astronomy Mon, 11 Nov 2024 13:22:35 EST news650553749 A new study led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and with contributions from Radboud University's Marijke Haverkorn, has unveiled significant insights into the Milky Way: a magnetized galactic halo. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-magnetic-halo-milky-discoveries-galactic.html Astronomy Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:28:26 EDT news646306095 An interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright "eyes" and the wide semicircular "smile." The region has been observed before in infrared by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005. However, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope displays it at much higher resolution. This image is a composite, combining observations from Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). https://phys.org/news/2024-09-webb-telescope-galactic-collisions.html Astronomy Wed, 18 Sep 2024 16:38:39 EDT news645896311 Astronomers have directed NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.) https://phys.org/news/2024-09-webb-peers-extreme-outer-galaxy.html Astronomy Thu, 12 Sep 2024 13:44:20 EDT news645367456