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Category: space

Cold fronts in nearby galaxy group may redistribute metals, Chandra and GMRT data reveal

Astronomers from South Africa and India have analyzed archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) regarding a nearby small galaxy group known as IC 1262. Results of the new study, presented April 14 on the preprint server arXiv, provide more insights into metal enrichment of IC 1,262, which could help us better understand the nature of this group.

IC 1,262 is a rich galaxy group located at a redshift of 0.032, named after its brightest cluster galaxy (BCG). It exhibits complex substructures in its hot gas that include ripples, prominent sharp discontinuities (cold fronts) extending in both the east and west directions, a large-scale radio jet, recurrent active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity, and X-ray cavities filled with radio emission.

Recently, a group of astronomers led by Satish Shripati Sonkamble of the North-West University in South Africa has explored the IC 1,262 group in detail, focusing on metal transport via radio jet, sloshing cold fronts, and shock front. In general, it is assumed that cold fronts, gas sloshing, and AGN activity are responsible for metal enrichment in the intracluster medium (ICM) and intragroup medium (IGrM).

Light-powered propulsion expands space exploration possibilities

Reaching the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, would take hundreds of thousands of years using current rocket propulsion technology. Researchers in the J. Mike Walker ‘66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University have demonstrated a new approach to light-driven motion, showing that lasers can be used to lift and steer objects in multiple directions without physical contact. This breakthrough may one day enable travel to Alpha Centauri within roughly 20 years.

Dr. Shoufeng Lan, assistant professor and director of the Lab for Advanced Nanophotonics, and his team published the work, “Optical propulsion and levitation of metajets,” in Newton. The study introduces micron-scale devices, termed “metajets,” that generate controlled motion when illuminated by laser light.

These metajets are composed of metasurfaces —ultrathin materials engineered with tiny patterns that enable scientists to control how light behaves, much like shaping a lens, but on a much smaller and more precise scale. By carefully designing these structures, the research team controlled how light transfers momentum to an object, enabling it to move.

New memory chip survives temperatures hotter than lava

The electronics inside your phone, your car, and every satellite currently orbiting Earth share one critical weakness: heat. Push them past about 200 degrees Celsius and they start to fail. For decades, that thermal ceiling has been one of the hardest walls in engineering. Now a team at the University of Southern California may have just found a way around it.

In a study published in Science, researchers led by Joshua Yang, Arthur B. Freeman Chair Professor at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC School of Advanced Computing, report a new type of electronic memory device that kept working reliably at 700 degrees Celsius, hotter than molten lava and far beyond anything previously achieved in its class. The device showed no signs of reaching its limit. Seven hundred degrees was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go.

“You may call it a revolution,” Yang said. “It is the best high-temperature memory ever demonstrated.”

Survival strategies of Rhinocladiella similis in perchlorate-rich Mars like environments

Fungi can live on mars face_with_colon_three

Dos Santos, A., Schultz, J., Souza, F.O. et al. Survival strategies of Rhinocladiella similis in perchlorate-rich Mars like environments. npj Microgravity 11, 18 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-025-00475-y.

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What a Neutron Star Is Really Made Of

What happens to matter when it’s crushed beyond the point where atoms can exist? Inside a neutron star, the densest visible object in the universe, matter is compressed into states so extreme that physicists still don’t fully understand what’s there.

In this calm long-form space documentary, we take a journey layer by layer through the interior of a neutron star — from the crystalline crust where exotic nuclei form structures unlike anything on Earth, through the bizarre \.

Two paths to scalable quantum computing: Optical links between fridges and higher-temperature qubits

Superconducting qubits—bits of quantum information—have been widely considered a promising technology for moving quantum computing forward. But there’s still much work to be done before they can be brought out of a near absolute zero temperature environment. The lab of Professor Hong Tang has recently published two studies that advance the technology.

To solve practical problems, quantum processors need a lot of qubits—up to thousands to millions. Such a large number of qubits requires significantly complex wiring and a way to store them at a temperature colder than deep space. This is complicated by the physical size of the cryogenic devices, known as dilution refrigerators, that maintain qubits at a temperature just above absolute zero. In a study published in Nature Photonics, Tang’s research team has found a way around this obstacle.

A flexible and cost-effective solution is to build a quantum network by connecting qubits inside separate refrigerators. Connecting qubits with standard coaxial cables, however, wouldn’t work if those cables were kept in a room temperature environment. And storing them all in one very cold room would be near impossible. Even under an optimistic assumption of 1,000 qubits per refrigerator, scaling to 1 million qubits would require linking 1,000 refrigerators—an arrangement that is physically impractical within a single room.

I’ve fired one of America’s most powerful lasers—here’s what a shot day looks like

If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you’ll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped building. What you won’t see is what’s underneath you. Two floors below ground, behind heavy double doors stamped with a logo that most students have never noticed, sits one of the most powerful lasers in the United States.

I was the lead laser scientist on the Texas Petawatt, or TPW as we called it, from 2020 to 2024. Texas Petawatt, which is currently closed due to funding cuts, was a government-funded research center where scientists from across the country applied for time to use specialized equipment. It was part of LaserNetUS, a Department of Energy network of high-power laser labs.

This type of laser takes a tiny pulse of light, stretches it out so it doesn’t blast optics to pieces, and amplifies it until, for a brief instant, it carries more power than the entire U.S. electrical grid. Then it compresses the pulse back to a trillionth of a second to create a star in a vacuum chamber.

Six new isolated millisecond pulsars discovered with FAST

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Chinese astronomers have inspected two nearby galactic globular clusters, namely NGC 6517 and NGC 7078. The study resulted in the discovery of six new millisecond pulsars in these clusters, which are isolated and faint. The finding was detailed in a paper published April 9 on the arXiv pre-print server.

What makes Mars’ magnetotail flap? Two spacecraft point to magnetic reconnection

The sun continuously blasts charged, magnetic field-carrying particles, or plasma, in all directions. This solar wind interacts with the magnetic fields and atmospheres of several of our solar system’s planets and other bodies, sculpting long magnetic tails of charged particles—magnetotails—that stretch into space behind them.

Magnetotails contain thin layers of electric current-carrying plasma sheets, which sometimes “flap” in an up-and-down waving motion. Spacecraft observations have revealed that flapping in Earth’s magnetotail can be driven by a process called magnetic reconnection, in which magnetic field lines rapidly break and then snap together in a new configuration, releasing stored energy. However, whether reconnection plays this same role beyond Earth has thus far been a mystery.

Yuanzheng Wen and colleagues report the first evidence that magnetic reconnection may also trigger magnetotail flapping at Mars. Their findings are published in the journal AGU Advances.

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