Volume 2 Issue 6, June 2018

Upcoming telescopes might be able to detect signatures of complex life on other worlds, but we need to involve physical, chemical and life scientists at the planning stage in order to interpret the findings when the time comes.

Arguably, no mission changed X-ray astronomy in as short a time as did Hitomi. The planned X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission, XARM, will carry its legacy forward.

Supermassive binary black holes are thought to lie at the centres of merging galaxies. The blazar OJ 287 is the poster child of such systems, showing strong and periodic variability across the electromagnetic spectrum. A new study questions the physical origin of this variability.

Recently, large integral-field spectroscopic studies of galaxies have greatly increased our knowledge of their structure and evolution. A new analysis of such data reveals a relationship between the age and the intrinsic — three-dimensional — shape of galaxies.

Are we alone in the Universe? Is life unique to Earth or a common phenomenon? These fundamental questions represent major puzzles of contemporary science, and were inspiration for a NASA conference on the prebiotic conditions of the early Solar System.

With the ever-growing list of exoplanets fuelling hope for finding life beyond the Solar System, the recent Breakthrough Discuss meeting redirected attention back to our own neighbourhood.

Iron has been ramp compressed to the pressures it would experience in the core of a 3–4 Earth-mass terrestrial exoplanet, providing experimental constraints on the mass–radius relationship for a hypothetical pure iron planet.

The hypothesis of an ocean under the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa is strengthened by in-situ evidence of a plume, inferred by Galileo’s magnetic field and plasma density measurements obtained during the spacecraft’s closest flyby to the moon.

Aided by an optical ring-shaped structure visible in the recombination lines of neon and oxygen, a neutron star (the central compact object) has been identified in X-ray data of the supernova remnant 1E 0102.2–7219.

Interferometric observations of 3C84 reveal a broad cylindrical jet a few hundred gravitational radii from the black hole, implying that the jet either undergoes a rapid lateral expansion on even smaller scales or is launched from the accretion disk.

In Galactic star-forming region W43-MM1 the core mass function (CMF), describing the mass distribution of the birthplaces of stars, is very different from the initial mass function (IMF), the mass distribution of newborn stars. Previously, the IMF was thought to reflect the CMF.

Α combined study of spatially resolved stellar kinematics and global stellar populations with the SAMI Galaxy Survey finds a strong correlation between the characteristic stellar population age of a galaxy and its intrinsic ellipticity.

How does Titan’s thick brownish haze chemically evolve as it is transported from the upper atmosphere observed by Cassini to the lower regions sampled by Huygens? Laboratory vacuum ultraviolet experiments may explain the observed changes in nitrogen chemistry.

Titan's detached haze, a distinct layer on top of the main haze that provides a measure of the seasonal activity in the mesosphere, disappeared from 2012–2016, after equinox. Studying this transition will help us understand the dynamical and microphysical processes at work.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft will soon rendezvous with asteroid Ryugu in order to study its composition using remote sensing, a lander, rovers and sample return, explains Elizabeth Tasker.