As part of its commitment to unraveling the universe’s mysteries through sustained support of the astrophysics community, the Flatiron Institute is securing the future of MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics), an open-source software suite that has transformed how researchers model the evolution of stars. The Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) is stepping up to support MESA’s need for ongoing maintenance and continued development. CCA has hired Philip Mocz as a full-time software engineer to help ensure MESA’s bright future for the collective benefit of the astrophysics community.

In April 2019, rare primitive meteorites fell near the town of Aguas Zarcas in northern Costa Rica. In an article published online in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, an international team of researchers describe the circumstances of the fall and show that mudball meteorites are not necessarily weak.  "27 kilos of rocks were recovered, making this the largest fall of its kind since similar meteorites fell near Murchison in Australia in 1969," said meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center. The research team now believes that Aguas Zarcas is strong because it avoided collisions in space and did not have the cracks that weaken many meteorites.

The first galaxies in the Universe were born enshrouded in a “foggy” gas, and could not be seen clearly until they had cleared up this fog. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen has now detected the hitherto most distant — and hence earliest — sign of this important epoch in the history of the Universe. A galaxy, seen only 330 million years after the Big Bang, has formed a bubble of transparent gas around itself, revealing that the epoch began earlier than thought. The result has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.

Researchers from California State University Northridge (CSUN), National University of Singapore (NUS), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) have introduced a new concept called autonomous additive manufacturing (AAM), where AI agents take over tasks traditionally managed by human operators. This breakthrough represents a major step toward creating autonomous manufacturing systems, offering improvements in knowledge representation and multi-modal capabilities in additive manufacturing (AM) processes.

The lead Ph.D. candidate, Mr. Haolin Fan, explained: "In the era of generative AI, this research points out a future where human expertise and AI collaborate seamlessly, leading to more resilient and adaptable manufacturing systems that could transform industrial production."