Speeding up chemical reactions is key to improving industrial processes or mitigating unwanted or harmful waste. Realizing these improvements requires that chemists design around documented reaction pathways. Now, a team of Penn State researchers has found that a fundamental reaction called oxidative addition can follow a different path to achieve the same ends, raising the question of whether this new order of events has been occurring all along and potentially opening up new space for chemical design. 

An international team of scientists have provided an unprecedented tally of elemental sulfur spread between the stars using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft.

A team of astronomers confirms the existence of a fifth potentially habitable planet around L 98-59, a 35-liter red dwarf.

Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array is marking the 20th anniversary of its first scientific results, published in the July 20, 2005, issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Earth’s magnetosphere protects us from charged particles constantly emitted by the Sun, but intense conditions can breach it through a process called magnetic reconnection. Now, researchers from Japan propose a novel method using soft X-ray imaging to remotely measure the reconnection rate, a key parameter in magnetic reconnection. This study showcases a powerful tool for forecasting hazardous space weather events, paving the way to safer near-Earth space applications and exploration.

Fast X-ray transients (FXTs) are blasts of X-rays from distant galaxies. Astronomers have detected FXTs since the 1970s, but their origins have remained unknown. By studying the closest FXT associated with a supernova ever detected, scientists found it was produced by a geyser of high-energy particles trapped inside the outer layer of a massive star.