Whether helping create an alloy that can withstand the withering conditions of Venus in partnership with NASA or collaborating with the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to develop a portable sensor that can identify rare earth elements (REE), the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering’s Paul Ohodnicki is fueling innovative research while solving problems both in space and right here on Earth. R&D World has recognized Ohodnicki and his team of collaborators with 2025 R&D 100 Awards, this year for two emerging technologies: VulcanAlloy and eMission Critical Sensor.

In the first discovery of its kind, astronomers have found silane in the atmosphere of an ancient brown dwarf nicknamed The Accident. This molecule plays an important role in the formation of clouds in gas giant atmospheres, but for decades it has eluded detection in planets like Jupiter and Saturn. The discovery was made possible with complementary observations from the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Gemini South telescope in Chile and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

A pioneering study led by the University of Oxford in collaboration with international partners has applied AI for the first time to count the Great Wildebeest Migration from satellite images. Unexpectedly, the results showed fewer than 600,000 individual wildebeest – less than half the previous estimate of 1.3 million animals. The results have been published today (9 Sept) in PNAS Nexus.

SAN ANTONIO — September 9, 2025 — A Southwest Research Institute-led team has reported the first detection of gas on the distant dwarf planet Makemake, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This discovery makes Makemake only the second trans-Neptunian object, after Pluto, where the presence of gas has been confirmed. The gas was identified as methane.

A team of astronomers have observed an explosion in the universe unlike any ever witnessed before. The mysterious repeating gamma-ray bursts were spotted outside our own galaxy using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Organic molecules detected in the watery plumes that spew out from cracks in the surface of Enceladus could be formed through exposure to radiation on Saturn’s icy moon, rather than originating from deep within its sub-surface ocean. The findings, presented during the EPSC–DPS2025 Joint Meeting in Helsinki this week, have repercussions for assessing the habitability of Enceladus’s ocean.

Superconducting sensors can detect single low-energy photons. UZH researchers have now used this capability to search for light dark matter particles in the universe.