A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published today (16 March) in Nature Astronomy.

Games are often called the ‘Formula 1’ of AI: clear rules, clear winners. AlphaZero-style algorithms learn by self-play: a neural network predicts moves and guides tree search. We tested this recipe on Nim, a simple children’s matchstick game that has been mathematically solved. Because the correct move is known for every position, we can measure whether an agent plays optimally across the state space. We find a gap: learning can work on small boards, but blind spots remain and performance degrades as the board grows, with predictions approaching random. This suggests impartial games often need analytic representations, not pattern learning.

Researchers from the University of Seville are participating in an international study that sheds new light on the genetic diversity of Andalusian society between the 8th and 11th centuries AD and reinforces the historical significance of the dolmen as a sacred space used throughout the ages

Cosmic rays are one of the greatest challenges for space travel and pose a considerable risk to humans and materials. For the first time on European soil, an international research team in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) has succeeded in providing a simulator for Galactic Cosmic Rays at the GSI/FAIR accelerator facility in Darmstadt, Germany. The results have been published in two articles in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research.

In a recent study published in Analytical Chemistry, researchers from the University of Amsterdam’s Van ’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS) reveal a sobering reality regarding "nontargeted" chemical analysis. Although widely used for screening the environment for chemicals, this concept isn't nearly as broad as its name suggests, leaving massive "blind spots" in the data. To quantify these gaps, the team developed a novel computational framework: Measurable Feature Prediction. It helps predict which regions of the vast chemical space are actually measurable — before running real samples.

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers have uncovered evidence for our Sun joining a mass migration of similar “twins” leaving the core regions of our galaxy, 4 to 6 billion years ago. The team created and studied an unprecedentedly accurate catalogue of stars and their properties using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Their discovery sheds light on the evolution of our galaxy, particularly the development of the rotating bar-like structure at its center.