Space & Earth Science

1. Webb helps scientists better understand solar system's origins

   University of Central Florida (UCF) scientists and their collaborators discovered new insights into the formation of distant icy objects in space beyond Neptune, offering a deeper understanding of our solar system's formation and growth.

2. Fully automated laboratory heads into orbit to test food production in space

   Cranfield University spin-out company Frontier Space has sent a fully automated laboratory into orbit as part of a European Space Agency project to assess the viability of creating lab-grown food in microgravity.

3. New framework suggests stars dissolve into neutrons to forge heavy elements

   Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via "nucleosynthesis," a Los Alamos National Laboratory-led team is going where no researchers have gone before: the gamma-ray burst jet and surrounding cocoon emerging from collapsed stars.

4. Disk discovery changes views on star and planet formation

   A study led by Paolo Padoan, ICREA research professor at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), is challenging the understanding of planetary disk formation around young stars.