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JWST and Keck II spectral observations of Saturn’s moon Titan reveal methyl (CH₃) as well as non-local thermodynamic equilibrium emission bands of CO and CO₂. Imaging shows clouds in Titan’s northern hemisphere at several epochs, with some appearing to evolve in altitude.

An extreme flare has been seen from a supermassive black hole at redshift z = 2.6. First detected in 2018, it is 30 times brighter than similar events. The most likely cause is the shredding of a star of 30 solar masses or more.

Observations of optical flares from AT2022tsd (the ‘Tasmanian Devil’) show that they have durations on the timescale of minutes, occur over a period of months, are highly energetic, are probably nonthermal and have supernova luminosities.

The authors show not only that planetary bodies around white dwarfs can survive but also that more than half of white dwarfs might have Jovian planetary companions.

An Earth-mass planet is found to have a white dwarf host—the final evolutionary stage of Sun-like stars. This system suggests that terrestrial planets in Earth-like orbits may avoid being engulfed during the red-giant phases of their host stars.

The Einstein Probe has discovered a fast X-ray transient, EP240414a, associated with a broad-lined type Ic supernova. Its unusually soft spectrum and weak jet add to the diversity of stellar deaths and suggest a previously unknown Wolf–Rayet star explosion mechanism.

A very uncommon detached binary system with a 20.5-min orbital period has been discovered to harbour a carbon–oxygen white dwarf star and a low-mass subdwarf B star with a seven-Earth radius that traces the theoretical limit of binary evolution predicted 20 years ago.

A 51-minute-orbital-period, fully eclipsing binary system consisting of a star with a comparable temperature to that of the Sun but a 100 times greater density, accreting onto a white dwarf is reported.

Observations of a 3-million-year-old pre-main-sequence star with a misaligned disk reveal a giant orbiting planet; the system is ideal for studying the early formation and migration of planets.

Type II supernova explosions are common, but our understanding of such events is not complete. Such an event was observed just three hours after the explosion started, providing important information about the early stages.

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

Radio images reveal distant black hole jets of cosmological length, suggesting that the environmental impact of supermassive black holes extends further in space and time than previously thought.

Analysis of a set of 1,863 bursts from the repeating source FRB 20201124A provides evidence of a complicated magnetized site within about an astronomical unit from the source in a barred galaxy.

Genome-wide association analyses using data from 19 biobanks identify variants influencing risk of thyroid diseases and yield polygenic risk scores associated with features of aggressive thyroid cancer.

Analysis of the somatic and transcriptomic profile of 123 acral melanoma samples from Mexican patients helps understand tumour origins and prognosis, and highlights the importance of including samples from diverse ancestries in cancer genomics studies.

The giant planet 8 Ursae Minoris b seems to have avoided engulfment by its giant host star through a stellar merger that either affected the evolution of the host star or produced 8 Ursae Minoris b as a second-generation planet.

This study uses single-nucleus RNA sequencing to analyze lung tissue from 141 individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Distinct patterns of spatially resolved changes in cell composition and cell states that correlate with clinical features are highlighted.

The early stages of a lensed supernova at redshift 3 are found in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with observations beginning from around 5.8 hours after the explosion.

A deep map of the diffuse gas surrounding a nearby galaxy reveals changes in the physical conditions: a mark of the boundary between the edge of the galaxy and the onset of the circumgalactic medium, the dominant reservoir of normal matter.

S. R. Kulkarni and colleagues report the discovery of a mysterious optical transient called M85 OT2006-1 in the outskirts of the lenticular galaxy Messier 85 in the Virgo Cluster. Brighter than novae and fainter than supernovae, it is unlikely to be a giant eruption from a luminous blue variable star because no such star is known to be there, but a possible origin is a stellar merger.

A spatial and single-cell transcriptomics study across multiple mammalian species identifies epidermal BMP signalling as a functional requirement for rete ridge formation, providing insight into mechanisms underlying hair density loss and wound healing.

A rare case of a quasar acting as a gravitational lens allows a precise determination of the mass of the quasar’s host galaxy and offers a new path to studying the connections between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.

Observations of the super-massive Neptune-sized transiting planet TOI-1853 b show a mass almost twice that of any other Neptune-sized planet known so far and a bulk density implying that heavy elements dominate its mass.

The visible–near-infrared spectrum of the dark spot that appeared on Neptune in 2018 indicates the presence of material that makes the aerosol layer at 5 bar darker at visible wavelengths. Such material can come from deeper layers via upwelling or by sublimation of H₂S ice that reveals the darker condensation nuclei.

A comprehensive study of the Kepler-138 system reveals the twin nature of Kepler-138 c and d and the presence of a fourth planet. Remarkably, the warm-temperate planet Kepler-138 d is probably composed of 50% volatiles by volume, indicative of a water world, rather than a rocky world, despite its small ~1.5 R_⊕ size.

Magnetic toroidal invariance generates transverse electromagnetic effects in materials with broken symmetries. Now a distinct magnetic response is shown to emerge in ferro-rotational systems in which both inversion and time-reversal symmetries are preserved.

The ZFTA–RELA fusion, an oncogene for ependymomas, promotes the production of itaconate, and its dependence on this metabolite represents a new therapeutic target for this cancer.

Application of multiancestry and ensemble-based approaches yields improved polygenic risk prediction models for breast cancer and its subtypes among women of African ancestry.

Transition disks are natural laboratories for the study of planet formation, with inner clearings explained by the influence of accreting planets, but attempts to observe directly accretion onto protoplanets have proven unsuccessful so far; here the authors detect infrared emission from multiple companions of the LkCa 15 system and Ha emission from the innermost (LkCa 15 b), showing hot (~10,000 K) gas falling deep into the potential well of an accreting protoplanet.

A soliton microcomb as an astronomical spectrograph calibrator is presented. It can ultimately have a footprint of a few cubic centimetres, and reduced weight and power consumption, attractive for precision radial velocity measurement.

The contribution of ether lipid species in cancer cell fate has not been fully understood yet. Here the authors show that malignant cancer cells employ ether lipids to modulate membrane biophysical properties, enhancing iron endocytosis and ferroptosis susceptibility.

Extremely massive stars with initial masses of more than 140 solar masses end their lives when pressure-supporting photons turn into electron–positron pairs, leading to a violent contraction that triggers a nuclear explosion, unbinding the star in a pair-instability supernova. Here, the mass of the exploding core of supernova SN 2007bi is estimated at around 100 solar masses, in which case theory unambiguously predicts a pair-instability supernova. Further observations are well fitted by models of pair-instability supernovae.

Vassy, Dornisch and colleagues developed a genomics-based prostate cancer risk model to support a randomized clinical trial of precision screening in a national healthcare system.

The Zwicky Transient Facility has observed a transitioning white dwarf with two faces, with one side of its atmosphere dominated by hydrogen and the other by helium.

Conventional ammonia synthesis is energy intensive. Here the authors explore the mechanism of light-driven ammonia synthesis through in situ spectroscopy and modelling, and demonstrate that certain AuRu plasmonic alloys are promising catalysts for this potentially more sustainable process.

The authors find that the insulin receptor forms dynamic clusters during insulin signaling and that these clusters become dysfunctional in insulin resistance. This dysfunction is partially rescued by metformin, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes.

Observations of SN 2021yfj reveal that its progenitor is a massive star stripped down to its O/Si/S core, which remarkably continued to expel vast quantities of silicon-, sulfur-, and argon-rich material before the explosion, informing us that current theories for how stars evolve are too narrow.

Analysis of the black hole low-mass X-ray binary V404 Cygni shows that it is part of a wide hierarchical triple whose configuration provides evidence that some black holes form with nearly no natal kick.  

A nine-year transit-timing campaign has measured the extremely low masses and densities of four large planets orbiting the young star V1298 Tau, which are now predicted to contract and form a typical compact super-Earth and sub-Neptune system.

A faint galaxy has been detected in the very early Universe thanks to deep observations and a massive cluster gravitationally magnifying its emission. One out of only five such galaxies known, this detection constrains how the Universe was reionized.

Massive clusters of galaxies have been found as early as 3.9 billion years after the Big Bang. Cosmological simulations predict that these systems should descend from 'protoclusters' — early overdensities of massive galaxies that merge hierarchically to form a cluster. Observational evidence for this picture, however, is sparse because high-redshift protoclusters are rare and difficult to observe. Here, a protocluster region 1 billion years (z = 5.3) after the Big Bang is reported. This cluster extends over >13 megaparsecs, contains a luminous quasar as well as a system rich in molecular gas. A lower limit of >4 × 10¹¹ solar masses of dark and luminous matter in this region is placed, consistent with that expected from cosmological simulations.

A possible kilonova associated with a nearby, long-duration gamma-ray burst suggests that gamma-ray bursts with long and complex light curves can be spawned from the merger of two compact objects, contrary to the established gamma-ray burst paradigm.

Disease heterogeneity complicates precision medicine, which focuses on single conditions and ignores shared mechanisms. Here the authors introduce ‘pan-disease’ analysis using a deep learning model on multi-organ data, identifying 11 AI-derived biomarkers that reveal new therapeutic targets and pathways, enhancing patient stratification for disease risk monitoring and drug discovery.

JWST has detected \({{\rm{H}}}_{3}^{+}\) and auroral emissions at Neptune—the only giant planet in the Solar System for which they had proved to be elusive up to now. The observations reveal a factor-of-two cooling of Neptune’s upper atmosphere compared with Voyager 2 data, indicative of energy balance processes acting on a shorter timescale than solar forcing.