For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting.

This result reveals regions around 74 stars spanning a wide range of ages—from those recently formed to others billions of years old—showing how comets play a role in the formation of stars and planetary systems. The study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

To find evidence for comets outside our solar system (called “exocomets”), astronomers turned to two facilities that detect particular bands of radio waves. Because of the size of the dust and rocks in these belts, this type of light is particularly good at finding and imaging these structures.

MIT physicists report the unexpected discovery of electrons forming crystalline structures in a material only billionths of a meter thick. The work adds to a gold mine of discoveries originating from the material, which the same team discovered only about three years ago.

In a paper published Jan. 22 in Nature, the team describes how electrons in devices made, in part, of the new material can become solid, or form crystals, by changing the voltage applied to the devices when they are kept at a temperature similar to that of outer space. Under the same conditions, they also showed the emergence of two new electronic states that add to work they reported last year showing that electrons can split into fractions of themselves.

The physicists were able to make the discoveries thanks to new custom-made filters for better insulation of the equipment involved in the work. These allowed them to cool their devices to a temperature an order of magnitude colder than they achieved for the earlier results.

An international team has confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of a nearby sun-like star. The planet was originally detected two years ago by Oxford University scientist Dr. Michael Cretignier. This result, drawing on more than two decades of observations, opens a window to future studies of Earth-like exoplanets that may have conditions suitable for life.

The new planet, named HD 20,794D, has a mass six times that of Earth and orbits a star similar to our sun, located just 20 light years away. Its orbit places it within the habitable zone of the system, meaning it is at the right distance from its star to sustain liquid water on its surface, a key ingredient for life as we know it. The paper is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Dr. Cretignier first identified a candidate exoplanet signal in 2022, while analyzing archived data recorded by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. This data analyzes the light absorbed and emitted by objects.