Astronomers have long searched for life within a rather narrow ring around a star, the “habitable zone,” where a planet should be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water. A new study argues that this ring is too strict: on tidally locked worlds that keep one face in daylight and the other in permanent night, heat may still circulate enough for liquid water to persist on the dark side, even when the planet orbits closer to cool M- and K-dwarf stars than conservative climate models allow. The study also points outward: liquid water could exist far beyond the classical outer edge, hidden beneath ice as subglacial or intraglacial lakes, meaning the number of worlds worth checking for water, and potentially life-friendly conditions, may be much larger than the traditional map suggests.

This study introduces a custom-designed NV quantum sensing based microscopy for high-sensitivity microscopic magnetic imaging (MMI) of individual Chang'e-5 lunar regolith grains, achieving the first direct observation of surface magnetic field distributions at the single-particle scale. Overcoming the limitations of traditional orbital magnetometry (kilometer-scale) and macroscopic bulk rock-magnetic measurements (e.g., VSM), our approach realizes the separation and identification of magnetic signals at the micro- to nanoscale. Results indicate that native irons in basalt clasts exhibits weak and directionally uniform magnetism, suggesting it records the lunar paleomagnetic field during magma cooling; in contrast, carriers such as nanophase iron and Fe-Ni alloys in breccia grains, as well as crack-associated magnetic “stripe” features, display distinct magnetic signals reflecting the influence of multiple geological processes, including meteorite impacts and space weathering. Overall, this study advances lunar magnetic detection to the single-particle microscopic level, providing direct evidence for understanding the origin of lunar magnetic anomalies and the magnetic field evolution history, offering a new microscopic perspective for lunar and planetary science.

Chiral metasurfaces can strongly twist the polarization of light, but how this process unfolds in space and time has been unclear. Scientists in China have now used ultrafast electron microscopy and photon-induced near-field electron microscopy to directly image the near fields of a chiral metasurface at nanometer-femtosecond resolution, revealing their correlation to the far-field ellipticity and geometry-dependent energy dissipation pathways for the chiral light transformation.

A multi-institutional study led by the University of California, Davis, finds that living in urban areas with a higher percentage of visible trees is associated with a 4% decrease in cardiovascular disease. By comparison, living in urban areas with a higher percentage of grass was associated with a 6% increase in cardiovascular disease. Likewise, a higher rate of other types of green space, like bushes or shrubs, was associated with a 3% increase in cardiovascular disease. The new research was published in Environmental Epidemiology.

NYU Abu Dhabi researchers discover the first organic crystalline material that not only remains flexible, but can also self-heal after damage at temperatures where most polymer materials become brittle and fail.

University of Warwick-led study shows how tabletop devices could uncover the fundamental texture of the universe.