It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics. But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched.   

Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality. If successful, this century-long mission could return data from nearby black holes that completely alter our understanding of general relativity and the rules of physics. 

A team of astronomers has taken the sharpest-ever picture of the unexpected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the crisp vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is one of many missions across NASA’s fleet of space telescopes slated to observe this comet, together providing more information about its size and physical properties. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency's ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand near-Earth objects.

 

A piece of GSI/FAIR’s cutting-edge research is scheduled to be launched into space next year: the Biophysics department will be involved in one of the next scientific missions on the International Space Station (ISS) with a highly innovative research project. The “HippoBox” project was successfully reviewed by the German Space Agency at DLR and recently selected for participation in the CELLBOX-4 mission on the ISS. The aim of the project is to use brain organoids (“mini-brains”) to investigate neuroplastic changes in a specific area of the brain, the hippocampus – a question that is highly relevant for the medical preparation of future long-term missions in space.

A research paper titled "AP2-domain transcription factor WRI5a-regulated MtABCB1 promotes arbuscule development in mycorrhizal symbiosis" was published in Science Bulletin by the research teams of Ertao Wang from the Center of Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Nan Yu from Shanghai Normal University. The study discovered that the ABCB family transporter MtABCB1 regulates arbuscule development, potentially through directly exporting auxin into the periarbuscular space.

University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered compelling evidence that a nearby white dwarf is in fact the remnant of two stars merging — a rare stellar discovery revealed through Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet observations of carbon in the star’s hot atmosphere.