SPHEREx is scanning the entire sky in 102 infrared colors, beaming weekly data to a public archive so scientists and citizen stargazers alike can trace water, organics, and the universe’s first moments while NASA’s open-science philosophy turbo-charges discovery. NASA’s newest space telescope, SPHE
Category: space – Page 7
A mysterious mineral in asteroid Ryugu may rewrite planetary history
Serendipitous discovery of djerfisherite in Ryugu grain challenges current paradigm of the nature of primitive asteroids. A surprising discovery from a tiny grain of asteroid Ryugu has rocked scientists’ understanding of how our Solar System evolved. Researchers found djerfisherite—a mineral typically born in scorching, chemically reduced conditions and never before seen in Ryugu-like meteorites—inside a sample returned by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. Its presence suggests either Ryugu once experienced unexpectedly high temperatures or that exotic materials from other parts of the solar system somehow made their way into its formation. Like discovering a palm tree fossil in Arctic ice, this rare find challenges everything we thought we knew about primitive asteroids and the early mixing of planetary ingredients.
The pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa2 mission on December 6, 2020, have been vital to improving our understanding of primitive asteroids and the formation of the Solar System. The C-type asteroid Ryugu is composed of rocks similar to meteorites called CI chondrites, which contain relatively high amounts of carbon, and have undergone extensive aqueous alteration in their past.
A research team at Hiroshima University discovered the presence of the mineral djerfisherite, a potassium-containing iron-nickel sulfide, in a Ryugu grain. The presence of this mineral is wholly unexpected, as djerfisherite does not form under the conditions Ryugu is believed to have been exposed to over its existence. The findings were published on May 28, 2025, in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
Parker Solar Probe uncovers direct evidence of the sun’s ‘helicity barrier’
New research utilizing data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has provided the first direct evidence of a phenomenon known as the “helicity barrier” in the solar wind. This discovery, published in Physical Review X by Queen Mary University of London researchers, offers a significant step toward understanding two long-standing mysteries: how the sun’s atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees and how the supersonic solar wind is generated.
The solar atmosphere, or corona, is far hotter than the sun’s surface, a paradox that has puzzled scientists for decades. Furthermore, the constant outflow of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun, known as the solar wind, is accelerated to incredible speeds.
Turbulent dissipation —the process by which mechanical energy is converted into heat—is believed to play a crucial role in both these phenomena. However, in the near-sun environment, where plasma is largely collisionless, the exact mechanisms of this dissipation have remained elusive.
AI reveals astrocytes play a ‘starring’ role in dynamic brain function
Long overlooked and underestimated, glial cells—non-neuronal cells that support, protect and communicate with neurons—are finally stepping into the neuroscience spotlight. A new Florida Atlantic University study highlights the surprising influence of a particular glial cell, revealing that it plays a much more active and dynamic role in brain function than previously thought.
Using sophisticated computational modeling and machine learning, researchers discovered how astrocytes, a “star” shaped glial cell, subtly—but significantly—modulate communication between neurons, especially during highly coordinated, synchronous brain activity.
“Clearly, glial cells are significantly implicated in several brain functions, making identifying their presence among neurons an appealing and important problem,” said Rodrigo Pena, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor of biological sciences within FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science on the John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter, and a member of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.
Ice in Space Could Do Something We Thought Was Impossible
Water frozen in the darkness of space doesn’t appear to behave the way we thought.
A new research effort using computer simulations and experiments to explore the most common form water takes in the Universe has found that it is not as structureless as scientists had thought. Rather, repeating patterns – otherwise known as crystals – just a few nanometers across are likely embedded in an otherwise frozen jumble of molecules.
Since scientists had thought space too cold for ice crystals to have the energy to form, this discovery comes as a big surprise.
Meteorite challenges the timeline of the early solar system
A small, inconspicuous meteorite may be about to change our understanding of how and when our solar system formed. Tiny shavings from the meteorite Northwest Africa 12264 are challenging the long-held belief that planets near the sun formed earlier than those beyond the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.
Detecting Ice Structures from Space
Depending on the temperature and pressure, ice adopts one of 20 different crystalline phases. Researchers can typically tell one ice phase from the other using x rays or neutron beams, but such techniques are impractical for studying ice on distant celestial bodies. Thomas Loerting from the University of Innsbruck in Austria and his colleagues have now shown that infrared spectroscopy can discriminate between two types of high-pressure ice [1]. The results suggest that astronomical observatories in the infrared could probe ice-covered planets or moons, revealing information about their geological evolution and potential habitability.
The ice in your freezer is hexagonal ice, but at lower temperatures, higher pressures, or both, other forms can exist. Ice phases are distinguished by the ordering of oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms. For example, ice V has oxygens arranged in ring structures, while its hydrogens have random (disordered) positions. This phase, which is stable at pressures of 500 megapascals and temperatures of 253 K, is thought to form in the interior of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and other icy moons.
In the lab, Loerting’s colleague, Christina Tonauer, created ice V, along with a related, hydrogen-ordered version called ice XIII. The team performed near-infrared spectroscopy on both samples and identified several distinguishing features, including a structure-dependent “shoulder” around 1.6 µm, a wavelength associated with stretching modes. According to the team’s calculations, the features are strong enough that astronomical instruments, such as those on the JWST observatory and the Jupiter-visiting JUICE mission, could potentially observe them on a body like Ganymede. “The detection of high-pressure ice phases at or near the surface could point to internal processes such as tectonic activity, cryovolcanism, or convective transport from deeper layers,” Loerting says.
Super-resolution imaging reveals the first step of planet formation after star birth
Identifying the formation period of planetary systems, such as our solar system, could be the beginning of the journey to discover the origin of life. The key to this is the unique substructures found in protoplanetary disks—the sites of planet formation.
A protoplanetary disk is composed of low-temperature molecular gas and dust, surrounding a protostar. If a planet exists in the disk, its gravity will gather or eject materials within the disk, forming characteristic substructures such as rings or spirals. In other words, various disk substructures can be interpreted as “messages” from the forming planets. To study these substructures in detail, high-resolution radio observations with ALMA are required.
Numerous ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks (or circumstellar disks) have been conducted so far. In particular, two ALMA large programs, DSHARP and eDisk, have revealed the detailed distribution of dust in protoplanetary disks through high-resolution observations.
