A new study published in Conservation Biology examines the behavior and distributions of queen conch (Aliger gigas) to guide conservation management for the threatened sea snail. The research, which tracked adult snail movements, suggests that establishing a 330-meter spatial buffer – about the height of the Eiffel Tower by comparison – around breeding areas could help protect conch populations and serve as a practical tool for local management.

The largest structures in the universe are galaxy clusters—groups of galaxies held together by gravity. Their developmental history is now being rewritten—thanks to a student’s bachelor project.

Topological photonics promises robust light transport immune to disorder, but existing linear systems are essentially static and cannot be reconfigured after fabrication. Now, a collaboration of researchers have shown that picosecond time-scale reconfigurable topological routing can be achieved using nonlinear physics in driven-dissipative exciton–polariton lattices, and proved its topology using a real-space framework. This advance will enable adaptive and disorder-immune photonic circuitry for next-generation communication, quantum, and ultrafast optical technologies.

New research into JWST images provides possible answers to three seemingly disparate, yet pressing, cosmic dawn puzzles. Specifically, the authors show how Dark Stars could help explain the unexpected discovery of Blue Monster galaxies, the numerous early overmassive black hole galaxies, and the little red dots” in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). 

Active galactic nuclei, energetic and luminous regions powered by an accreting supermassive black hole at the center of some galaxies, can launch a jet that drives a gas outflow, shaping star formation in their host galaxy. Justin Kader and colleagues have observed this phenomenon in the nearby active galaxy VV 340a. Kader et al. observed the jet and galaxy across infrared, optical, radio, and sub-millimeter wavelengths, using the James Webb Space Telescope, Keck-II telescope, the Jansky Very Large Array and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The researchers combined these observations with modeling, to show that the low-power radio jet emitted by VV 340a undergoes a conical wobble, known as precession, as it moves outward. The jet ionizes and ejects gas as it propagates away from the supermassive black hole, driving a gas outflow at a rate of 19.4 ± 7.9 solar masses per year. This outflow rate is large enough to affect the star formation rate of the host galaxy, Kader et al. conclude.

Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in the evolution of a galaxy.