Snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements are critical for water resource management, yet existing remote sensing methods struggle to provide accurate, large-scale estimates.

A recent study published in National Science Review has revealed an extreme ionospheric electron density depletion and the pronounced hemispheric asymmetry during the May 2024 geomagnetic storm. The near-total depletion of ionospheric electrons caused widespread failures in high-frequency radio wave propagation. This research provides critical observational evidence from CMP and modeling insights into the ionosphere's response to extreme space weather, advancing understanding of the physical processes of magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling.

In a new study, researchers at Penn State and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed when and where human deep space transmissions would be most detectable by an observer outside our solar system and suggest that the patterns they see could be used to guide our own search for extraterrestrial intelligence 

For the first time, light itself has been sculpted into a toron—a 3D pinwheel-like chiral topology that marries skyrmion textures with paired synthetic magnetic monopoles. Using vector structured beams, the scientists create, image and continuously tune these “pinwheels of light,” and watch them morph into typical topologies such as hopfions and monopole pairs on demand. The platform promises topologically protected information channels in free space and new routes for light–matter interaction.

Kyoto, Japan -- The size of our universe and the bodies within it is incomprehensible for us lowly humans. The sun has a mass that is more than 330,000 that of our Earth, and yet there are stars in the universe that completely dwarf our sun.

Stars with masses more than eight times that of the sun are considered high mass stars. These form rapidly in a process that gives off stellar wind and radiation, which could not result in stars of such high mass without somehow overcoming this loss of mass, or feedback. Something is feeding these stars, but how exactly they can accumulate so much mass so quickly has remained a mystery.

Observations of enormous disk-like structures that form around a star -- accretion disks -- had been proposed as the chief way of rapidly feeding young stars. However, a team of researchers from several institutions including Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo, has discovered another possibility.

A newly published paper, led by IPAC scientist Joe Masiero, provides evidence that two kinds of asteroids likely formed in the same regions during the beginning of our solar system. “Asteroids offer us the chance to look at what was going on in the early solar system like a freeze frame of the conditions that existed when the first solid objects formed,” said Masiero.