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Low stellar ultraviolet (UV) radiation leads to low ozone abundances, therefore, less planetary UV protection. Here, the authors show that planets in the habitable zones of metal-poor stars, despite their higher UV radiation than metal-rich stars, are the best targets for search for life.

Transition metals can form extremely short bonds with very high bond orders. Bimetallic chromium complexes are the best-known examples, and quintuple bonds have been reported. This Review covers recent developments in the synthesis and theoretical description of quintuply bonded transition metal coordination compounds.

The authors demonstrate that the band structure of graphene nanoribbons is modulated by cove edges, brightening the luminescence 4-fold via emission from otherwise dark twilight states. High spectral resolution of the optical response reveals strong vibron-electron coupling

Light-induced ultrafast switching between the molecular isomers norbornadiene and quadricyclane can reversibly store and release a substantial amount of chemical energy. Two competing pathways have now been identified by which electronically excited quadricyclane molecules relax to the electronic ground state, facilitating interconversion between the two isomers on different timescales.

Zhang et al. perform high-precision zinc (Zn) isotopic analysis on lavas from St. Helena Island in the Atlantic, and Cook-Austral Islands in the Pacific, and confirm that ancient superficial carbonates were transported into the deep mantle billions of years ago.

Precursors for the release of phosphorus mononitride in solution under mild conditions have remained elusive. Now, an explosive anthracene-stabilized azidophosphine has shown PN transfer reactivity in the synthesis of an Fe–NP complex. The PN ligand is N-bonded, as the Fe–N interaction shows significant covalent character and a less unfavourable Pauli repulsion than its Fe–P counterpart.

Spatially resolved JWST spectroscopy of a massive, quiescent galaxy at a redshift of ~4 reveals that it formed its stars and quenched rapidly, despite being surrounded by an abundant gas reservoir and gravitationally bound to a star-bursting companion.

An (ultraviolet) dust attenuation feature at 2,175 Å, attributed to carbonaceous dust grains in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, also exists in galaxies up to a redshift of 7.

Weak laser light confined at the apex of a scanning tunnelling microscope tip can drive the tautomerization of a free-base phthalocyanine with atomic-scale precision. The combination of tip-enhanced photoluminescence spectroscopy and hyperspectral mapping paired with theoretical modelling then unravel an excited-state mediated reaction.

Conical intersections, a hallmark of polyatomic molecules, can be induced with light, leading to new reaction pathways. Here, the authors show that intense fields can create complex, beyond-conical intersections even in diatomics, resulting in an unexpected angular distribution of fragment ions.

A periodicity of roughly 16 days is detected for the fast radio burst 180916.J0158+65, suggesting that the burst arises from a periodically modulated mechanism instead of a cataclysmic or sporadic process.

A massive galaxy hosting an accreting supermassive black hole two billion years after the Big Bang shows fast neutral-gas outflows that are capable of stopping star formation by removing its fuel while the stars keep rotating in a disk.

Analysis of the cool brown dwarf Gliese 229 B suggests that it is actually a close binary of two less massive brown dwarfs, explaining its low luminosity and settling the conflict between theoretical predictions and measurements.

A four-arm spiral pattern in the accretion disk around an accreting high-mass protostar has been resolved using VLBI observations of methanol masers. These observations provide evidence for a link between disk accretion, disk instability and episodic growth of a protostar.

Spectroscopy from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey of a galaxy at redshift 13 shows a singular, bright emission line identified as Lyman-α, suggesting the onset of reionization only 330 Myr after the Big Bang.

The fast radio burst FRB 20200120E is shown to originate from a globular cluster in the galaxy M81, and may be a collapsed white dwarf or a merged compact binary star system.

Puzzarini and colleagues explore the computational characterization of medium-sized molecular systems using different spectroscopic techniques. The Primer provides essential information about the characteristics, accuracy and limitations of current computational approaches used for modelling spectroscopic phenomena with a focus on estimating error bars, limitations and coupling interpretability to accuracy.

The infrared view of JWST has opened up the early Universe to study. This Perspective summarizes the key developments in our understanding of the high-redshift Universe from the first 18 months of JWST observations.

We present James Webb Space Telescope observations that detect the 3.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon feature in a galaxy observed less than 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

A dormant supermassive black hole at high redshift that is substantially overmassive relative to its host galaxy has been detected, indicating a much larger population of dormant black holes around the epoch of reionization.

Only one repeating fast radio burst has been localized, to an irregular dwarf galaxy; now another is found to come from a star-forming region of a nearby spiral galaxy.

Measurements of an intense radio burst from a Galactic magnetar provide evidence that magnetars are the probable source of some fast radio bursts.

Analysis of the JWST/NIRSpec spectrum of the recently observed Lyman-break galaxy JADES-GS+53.15508-27.80178 revealed a redshift of z = 7.3, a Balmer break and a complete absence of nebular emission lines, indicating that quenching occurred only 700 million years after the Big Bang.

As part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), NIRSpec has spectroscopically confirmed four young and metal-poor galaxies at redshift 10.3–13.2, from an early epoch of galaxy formation.

The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey using NIRCam to find the earliest galaxies reveals the size and star formation rates of four extreme redshift (z > 10) galaxies of the distant Universe.

An extensive analysis of the JWST-NIRSpec spectrum of GN-z11 shows a supermassive black hole of a few million solar masses in a galaxy 440 million years after the Big Bang.

Observations of a stellar stream below the metallicity floor for a disrupted globular cluster are described.

Pulsar timing measurements show a mass ratio of about 0.8 for the double neutron-star system PSR J1913+1102, and population synthesis models indicate that such asymmetric systems represent 2–30% of merging binaries.

The interaction of light with matter probed with a scanning tunnelling microscope reveals dynamics at atomic space-time scales. This Review discusses experimental schemes by which light–matter interaction is explored, taking advantage of light coupled into or extracted from the tunnel junction.

Polarimetric observations of the repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102 suggest that the bursts may originate from a neutron star in the extreme magneto-ionic environment of an accreting massive black hole or supernova remnant.

About half of the satellites in the Andromeda galaxy (M 31), all with the same sense of rotation about their host, form a planar subgroup that is extremely wide but also very thin.

In hierarchical cosmological models, galaxies grow in mass through the continual accretion of smaller ones. The tidal disruption of these systems is expected to result in loosely bound and distant stars surrounding the galaxy. A panoramic survey of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) now reveals stars and coherent structures that are almost certainly remnants of dwarf galaxies destroyed by the tidal field of M31.

Observations of carbon monoxide and ionized carbon lines from the source SPT2349-56 show it to contain a cluster of at least fourteen gas-rich galaxies with redshifts of 4.31, in a highly dense core region.

Subarcsecond localization of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 shows that its source is co-located with a faint galaxy with a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus, or a previously unknown type of extragalactic source.

There are two distinct kinematic populations of globular clusters in Messier 31 (M31, the Andromeda galaxy) with rotation axes perpendicular to each other, suggesting that they arose from merger events separated by billions of years.

The galaxy NGC 1600 is found to contain an enormous black hole of 17 billion solar masses—the first black hole of such a size to be found in an environment outside the richest clusters of galaxies.

High-resolution radio imaging of the γ-ray-emitting nova V959 Mon, hosted by a white dwarf and its binary companion, shows that gaseous ejecta are expelled along the poles as a wind from the white dwarf, that denser material drifts out along the equatorial plane, propelled by orbital motion, and that γ-ray production occurs at the interface between these polar and equatorial regions.