Astronomers using data from the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) have discovered tens of thousands of gigantic hydrogen gas halos, called “Lyman-alpha nebulae,” surrounding galaxies 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. Known as Cosmic Noon, this is an epoch in the early universe when galaxies were growing their fastest. To spur this growth, they would have needed access to vast reservoirs of hydrogen gas, a key building block for stars. However, until recently, astronomers had only found a handful of these essential structures. A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal has now increased the known number of hydrogen gas halos by a factor of ten: from roughly 3,000 to over 33,000. 

A new study published in Big Earth Data introduces the Cloud-Aware Mixture-of-Experts Linear Transformer U-Net (CA-MTransU-Net) for precise forest burned area (FBA) detection. By integrating Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical data, the model overcomes traditional challenges such as cloud contamination and the high computational complexity of standard segmentation models. Achieving the highest mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) of 87.00% and an inference speed of 6.26 ms, this architecture significantly outperforms conventional benchmark models, offering a robust and efficient solution for post-fire environmental monitoring.

Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?” Cinquemani is the lead author of a scientific review, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

A class of undergraduate students at University of Chicago has used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to discover one of the oldest stars in the universe, a star that formed in a companion galaxy and migrated to the Milky Way.

A new study published in Big Earth Data applies the INFORM Climate Change model to project future risks of humanitarian crises and disasters by integrating climate hazards, population dynamics, conflict, and socioeconomic development pathways. Incorporating forward-looking projections of vulnerability and coping capacity under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, the analysis shows that global risk may decline under moderate and rapid development scenarios but could rise sharply in the high-emission, fragmented SSP3 pathway. The findings provide evidence for prioritizing vulnerable regions and guiding targeted risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies.

New observations of "forbidden" planet TOI5205-b reveal surprising details about it its atmospheric chemistry.

A record-setting pristine star provides a window into the dawn of stars and galaxies in the universe. This breakthrough was made possible by undergraduate students from the University of Chicago, data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V, and the telescopes of Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.