Is Earth Exceptional? The quest for cosmic life Mario Livio & Jack SzostakBasic Books: 2024. 336 pp. $32.00 An astrophysicist and a biochemist team up to answer two of the biggest questions facing humanity: how did life on Earth begin? And are we alone in the Milky Way? First, they explain how chemistry can become biology. Five chapters take us on the convoluted pathway from simple hydrocarbons to

Presented here is the Taurus star-forming region, with the background image showing the 100 μm emission as seen by the IRAS satellite, and the insets showing various young stars observed with SPHERE at 1.2–2.1 μm (J, H, K bands). Note that the scales of the insets are not consistent; they have been adjusted for visibility. The largest (AB Aur) spans 9 arcseconds. The 43 objects within the insets, which

While the early 2020s are seeing a resurgence in new space-based X-ray missions — including the NASA-led Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer — a stalwart of the field, Chandra, faces an uncertain future.

55 Cancri e (55 Cnc e) is a planet of extremes. A rocky body with a radius of approximately 1.8 Earth radii and a period of just 0.74 days, it can be as hot as 3,000 K on the dayside and more than 1,500 K colder on the nightside. 55 Cnc e also exhibits substantial but difficult-to-explain variations in the occultation depth that might hold clues to the elusive nature of its surface and putative atmosphere

Supernova remnants (SNRs), generated from the evolution of a star, are considered promising sites for the generation of high energy particles and cosmic rays. The magnetic field in SNRs plays a key role in setting the energy of the emitted particles. Recently Moeri Tao and colleagues analysed the magnetic field of supernova SN 1006 (including both northeast and southwest shells) using the radiation

The astroseismic behaviour of very-metal-poor stars (–3 < [Fe/H] < –2) is not well constrained due to the lack of suitable observations, and typically knowledge of their fundamental properties (such as age, or mass) is scaled from the Sun, using global oscillation parameters. Testing such scaling relations is important, not least because inconsistencies in and corrections to the scaling relationships

Subsurface magnetic reconnection, with its location changing with the depth of the plasma region in the chromosphere (from photosphere to corona), has been observed on the Sun. The authors explored the subsurface structure of active region AR 11504 by analysing the emission lines and their density and temperature dependence. The figures taken from the work of Deborah Baker and coauthors show the white

Relativistic electron–positron pairs may be generated around black holes or neutron stars. However, exploring properties of such pairs has been limited to theory and simulation studies up to now due to difficulties in laboratory experiments. Recently, Charles Arrowsmith and colleagues reported the generation of high-density, quasi-neutral, relativistic electron–positron pair beams from a relativistic

A recent addition to the astronomical taxonomy, courtesy of JWST, is a mysterious population of compact, dust-reddened galaxies at redshifts 3 < z < 9, termed ‘Little Red Dots’ (LRDs). Determining the true nature of LRDs could be an important piece of the puzzle of the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, and Tonima Ananna and colleagues analyse X-ray observations to investigate whether their

Exoplanetary science has been advancing in leaps and bounds since its beginnings almost 30 years ago. This issue of Nature Astronomy celebrates its progress with a range of papers that sample the breadth of this booming discipline.

With its exquisite precision and wide wavelength range, JWST is able to push the characterization of exoplanets solidly into the sub-Neptune regime. Such planets, with a size between approximately 1.5 and 2.5 Earth radii (R⊕), are the most common in the Universe but their nature and internal structure are strongly debated. Björn Benneke and colleagues use JWST observations of the 2.2 R⊕-sized TOI-270

The Milky Way is thought to have experienced several merger events throughout its history, but there are conflicting ideas regarding which is the most recent: the ‘last major merger’. A scenario put forward by Thomas Donlon and colleagues in 2019 proposes that the Virgo Radial Merger (VRM), an event responsible for an overdensity of stars in Virgo, occurred within the last 3 Gyr, making the VRM the

The solar dynamo cycle, a process responsible for solar activity and magnetic fields in the Sun, is believed to be located deep inside the Sun, within the tachocline — a boundary between the outer convective and inner radiative zones. Recently Geoffrey Vasil and colleagues reported their results from state-of-the-art simulations, which support the idea of the solar dynamo originating near (the outer

X-ray binaries (XRBs) are systems where material is being accreted onto a compact object (white dwarf/neutron star/stellar-mass black hole) from a donor star, and as such they provide an excellent laboratory for studies of accretion physics. While the physics of the donor–recipient pair is well characterized, little is known about the wider system, including whether such systems have circumbinary disks

Given their extreme luminosities, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have the potential to be powerful probes of the early Universe, however observational challenges mean that only 26% of GRBs observed by the Swift Observatory, for example, have confirmed redshifts. Maria Dainotti and colleagues tackle this problem by applying a supervised statistical learning model, fed by the optical afterglow observed by Swift

A rocky Earth-sized exoplanet with a temperate climate and relatively close to us? It seems too good to be true, but this is what Gliese 12 b could be. Simultaneously announced by Masayuki Kuzuhara, Akihiko Fukui and colleagues and by Shishir Dholakia, Larissa Palethorpe and colleagues in two papers published on the same day, Gliese 12 b promises to become a benchmark planet. Gliese 12 b’s signal was

Surveys aimed at different astronomy communities reveal persistent mental distress, widespread bullying and other unwanted behaviour. Marginalized groups are the most affected, causing continuous and damaging loss of talent from academia.