The Moon’s near and far sides exhibit striking asymmetry — from topography and crustal thickness to volcanic activity — yet the origins of these differences long puzzled scientists. China’s Chang’e-6 mission, launched on May 3, 2024, changed this by returning 1,935.3 grams of material from the lunar farside’s South Pole-AitkenContinue Reading
Thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun’s poles from outside the ecliptic plane. Solar Orbiter’s unique viewing angle will change our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycle and the workings ofContinue Reading
The ability to conduct heat is one of the most fundamental properties of matter, crucial for engineering applications. Scientists know well how conventional materials, such as metals and insulators, conduct heat. However, things are not as straightforward under extreme conditions such as temperatures close to absolute zero combined with strongContinue Reading
Astronomers have developed a groundbreaking computer simulation to explore, in unprecedented detail, magnetism and turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) — the vast ocean of gas and charged particles that lies between stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Described in a new study published today in Nature Astronomy, the modelContinue Reading
Where did the moon’s magnetism go? Scientists have puzzled over this question for decades, ever since orbiting spacecraft picked up signs of a high magnetic field in lunar surface rocks. The moon itself has no inherent magnetism today. Now, MIT scientists may have solved the mystery. They propose that aContinue Reading
New research led by a Southwest Research Institute scientist identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the solar corona. These new resultsContinue Reading
A team of physicists at the University of Cambridge has unveiled a breakthrough in quantum sensing by demonstrating the use of spin defects in Hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) as powerful, room-temperature sensors capable of detecting vectorial magnetic field at the nanoscale. The findings, published in Nature Communications, mark a significantContinue Reading
