An international team from Kanazawa University (Japan), Tohoku University (Japan), LPP (France), and partners has demonstrated that chorus emissions, natural electromagnetic waves long studied in Earth’s magnetosphere, also occur in Mercury’s magnetosphere exhibiting similar chirping frequency changes. Using the Plasma Wave Investigation instrument aboard BepiColombo’s Mercury orbiter Mio, six Mercury flybys between 2021 and 2025 detected plasma waves in the audible range. Comparison with decades of GEOTAIL data confirmed identical instantaneous frequency changes. This provides the first reliable evidence of intense electron activity at Mercury, advancing understanding of auroral processes across the solar system.

An international team of astronomers, including researcher from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has uncovered the first decisive evidence that at least some fast radio burst (FRB) sources—brief but powerful flashes of radio waves from distant galaxies—reside in binary stellar systems. This means the FRB source is not an isolated star, as previously assumed, but part of a binary stellar system in which two stars orbit each other.

Radio telescopes are instruments that capture faint radio signals from space and convert them into images of celestial bodies. To observe distant black holes clearly, multiple radio telescopes must capture cosmic signals at exactly the same time, acting as a single unit. Research teams at KAIST have developedr a new reference signal technology that uses laser light to precisely synchronize the observation timing and phase of these telescopes.

A mysterious bar-shaped cloud of iron has been discovered inside the iconic Ring Nebula by a European team led by astronomers at Cardiff University and University College London (UCL).

New instrument on William Herschel Telescope spots previously unknown strip of ionised iron atoms at the heart of Ring Nebula

The SETI Institute announced that nominations are now open for the 2026 Tarter Award for Innovation in the Search for Life Beyond Earth. The Tarter Award recognizes individuals whose projects or ideas significantly advance humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence. 

Named in honor of Dr. Jill Tarter, SETI Institute co-founder and leader in the field of SETI research, the award celebrates contributions across science, technology, education, art, philosophy, law and ethics that support the SETI Institute’s mission to search for life and intelligence beyond Earth. Tarter received the inaugural Tarter Award in 2024.

“The SETI Institute’s Tarter Award recognizes innovators whose creativity produces a concept that helps improve the search for intelligent life beyond Earth, even though its original purpose was something entirely different,” said Tarter. “Although the Keder Welt was invented so long ago that no official inventor has ever been identified, the person who came up with that exceedingly efficient way of attaching fabric sails to a ship’s mast has greatly improved the antennas of the Allen Telescope Array, allowing a radome cover to protect the sensitive electronics at the heart of the signal detection system. We are looking for other creative individuals and their creations that we can use in unexpected ways to do our mission better.”

A research team including a UC Riverside astrophysicist and his former graduate student has received the 2025 Buchalter Cosmology Prize for a study that offers new insight into one of the universe’s earliest and most transformative eras — the epoch of cosmic reionization — and its possible role in generating magnetic fields that permeate intergalactic space.

Researchers led by Rice University’s Guido Pagano used a specialized quantum device to simulate a vibrating molecule and track how energy moves within it. The work, published Dec. 5 in Nature Communications, could improve understanding of basic mechanisms behind phenomena such as photosynthesis and solar energy conversion.