EurekAlert! News by Subject: Space & Planetary - News by Subject: Space & Planetary

Space & Planetary

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 24-Feb-2026 19:11 ET (25-Feb-2026 00:11 GMT/UTC)

Hunting pressure is shrinking safe space for mandrills in Equatorial Guinea

University of Bristol
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Africa’s largest monkey, the mandrill, Mandrillus sphinx, is being forced out of its home within a national park due to hunting pressure, new research has revealed.

Journal: American Journal of Primatology

Successful research on clean chemicals set to continue

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Grant and Award Announcement

Fine chemicals are part of daily life, serving as dyes, fragrances, and food additives. However, their production harms the climate and environment due to toxic chemical precursors. Since 2023, researchers in the ETOS Future Cluster, jointly led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have been working to replace conventional production processes with electrochemical processes that use renewable electricity. Following a successful initial phase, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) funds the cluster for an additional three years, providing EUR 12 million.

uOttawa researchers clear the path for turbulence-free quantum communication

University of Ottawa
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A University of Ottawa team has developed a new way to protect free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) from atmospheric turbulence, one of the main causes of distortion and errors when sending quantum information through air.

Journal: Optica

SwRI, collaborators offer new insights into potential for life in Jovian system

Southwest Research Institute

SAN ANTONIO — February 23, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute was part of an international team that demonstrated how complex organic molecules (COMs), key chemical precursors to life, could have been incorporated into Jupiter’s Galilean moons during their formation. The team’s findings have resulted in complementary studies published in The Planetary Science Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offering new insights into the potential for life in the Jovian system.

Measuring the expansion of the universe with cosmic fireworks

Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

That the universe is expanding has been known for almost a hundred years now, but how fast? The exact rate of that expansion remains hotly debated, even challenging the standard model of cosmology. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) and the Max Planck Institutes MPA and MPE has now imaged and modelled an exceptionally rare supernova that could provide a new, independent way to measure how fast the universe is expanding.

Journal: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Understanding biology in space: platforms, tools, and databases for spatial transcriptomics

Science China Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Recently, the research team led by Prof. Youqiong Ye at the Shanghai Institute of Immunology published a comprehensive review entitled “Mapping Biology in Space: From Spatial Transcriptomics Platforms to Analytical Tools and Databases” in Science Bulletin.The review summarizes the key challenges currently facing the field of spatial transcriptomics and outlines future directions for its development. In addition, the authors developed SpatialToolDB (https://www.spatialtooldb.yelab.site/), a systematically curated, classified, and continuously updated database that currently catalogs 77 spatial transcriptomics technologies and 594 spatial transcriptomics analysis tools.By integrating the existing analytical tool ecosystem and providing an interactive resource portal, this review and SpatialToolDB offer a data-driven foundation to support researchers in selecting appropriate spatial transcriptomics platforms and analytical methods across diverse biological and translational research contexts.

Journal: Science Bulletin

Humanity’s oldest geometries, engraved on ostrich eggs

Università di Bologna
Peer-Reviewed Publication

At several archaeological sites in southern Africa, hundreds of highly unusual fragments of ostrich eggs have been found. Dating back more than 60,000 years, the shells were engraved by groups of Homo sapiens who lived in that region. A new investigation, led by researchers from the University of Bologna, has now revealed for the first time that these engravings on ostrich eggshells were not random or improvised, but followed recurring and surprisingly organised geometric rules. The study — published in the journal PLOS One — shows the presence of a genuine cognitive organisation of forms, based on parallelism, orthogonality and the repetition of lines and regular patterns.

Journal: PLOS One

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