Andy Tomaswick

JWST Tracks Shifting Water Clouds and Churning Gases on the Coldest Known Brown Dwarf

October 20, 2026

When picturing a star, typically people think of giant balls of burning gas in the sky that emit enough light they are hard to miss. Planets, on the other hand, come in one of two general categories - rocky worlds like Earth or gas giants similar to Jupiter. But there is a third category of astronomical object that doesn’t really fit either of those descriptions, and also doesn’t exist in our own solar system. Known as a brown dwarf, they are sometimes called a “failed star” as they form the same way stars do, but never reach the critical mass of material to create active fusion in the cores. They are also much too massive to be considered a regular planet. But a new paper from researchers led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona describes one similarity between the coldest known brown dwarf and some of the planets in our solar system - it has water-ice clouds.

SPHEREx Just Took the Fingerprints of Failed Stars Across Our Cosmic Neighborhood

October 15, 2026

Brown dwarfs are the black (or brown?) sheep of astronomy. They’re too big to be considered a traditional gas planet, but they are too small to have started nuclear fusion and made the full transition to star-hood. They also change dramatically over time, cooling, shrinking, and spinning faster as they age. Or at least we think they do - our models of the atmospheres of these celestial objects aren’t the best, according to a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by a team led by Zafar Rustamkulov at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A Trip to Mars Could Break Your Heart - Literally

October 14, 2026

When astronauts first travel to Mars, or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet itself protects us from on its surface - radiation and weightlessness. Scientists already know both can have a profound impact on the human body, but just how much of one, and how long that impact can last, remain a mystery. A new paper by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and published in PLoS One, tackles those questions, and unfortunately comes up with some less than ideal answers in terms of the long term implications of deep space exposure.

Tiny Gold Nanogaps Could Crack the Chirality Puzzle

October 13, 2026

Looking for biosignatures across the solar system requires looking for asymmetry. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are famously either “left-handed” (L) or “right-handed” (D). We know abiotic processes (i.e. those that create amino acids but don’t involve life) create a 50/50 mixture of the two types, which is called a racemic mixture. But life as we know it almost exclusively relies on left-handed amino acids to fold proteins and right-handed ones to construct nucleic acids. So if we find an imbalance in the types of amino acids we analyze from somewhere in the solar system, it's a good indication that life is behind that imbalance. Differentiating between the two “chiralities”, as they’re called, is possible, but typically requires advanced equipment and chemical disposables that make them burdensome for spaceflight applications. But a new paper in Nature Communications from researchers led by Takahito Ohshiro and Masateru Taniguchi of Osaka University offers an alternative - a solid-state quantum tunneling sensor that can read the chirality of a single amino acid molecule using basically just some gold wire.

How Will Water Flow on the Moon?

October 12, 2026

Growing fresh food on the Moon is going to be crucial if astronauts there are ever going to eat anything other than freeze-dried rations. Since husbanding animals on the lunar surface is…difficult (to put it mildly), most mission planners believe that plants are the solution. But we still don’t entirely understand how one of the most fundamental materials to plant growth, water, operates under partial gravity. A team of researchers, led by Karl Hasenstein of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and including John Kiss of the Florida Institute of Technology, and Christopher McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center, recently published a paper in Microgravity Science and Technology that lays out the physics for how water behaves at lunar gravity.

Honda Wants to Put a Robotic Lab Assistant on Future Commercial Space Stations

October 11, 2026

As I’m writing this I’m able to stare out into my driveway at my trusty Honda Odyssey. Most of the public’s association with Honda is through their “mobility” products - i.e. their cars. But the company has an impressive track record of other technical achievements, not the least of which has been in robotics. Now, it’s teaming up with space infrastructure firm Redwire to develop an automated laboratory support system for use on future commercial space stations.

Stratospheric Balloon Telescope Peeks Above The Clouds At The Sun

October 10, 2026

There’s lots of things you can do with balloons. Children’s birthday parties come to mind, as do retirement parties. But you can also observe the Sun in unprecedented detail with one - or at least with a suite of equipment attached to a gondola floating beneath one. That’s what the SUNRISE III mission did back in 2024, and scientists have had time to compile a series of three scientific papers on the results from that mission, which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Thousands of Black Holes Could Be Lurking in Our Backyard—and You Can Help Find Them

October 07, 2026

According to stellar evolution models, there should be hundreds of millions of black holes floating around in our galaxy. But so far we’ve only found 70. That’s in large part because they are so hard to find, but a citizen science project from the University of Southampton is actively seeking out these hidden monsters with the help of tens of thousands of amateur astronomers through a project on Zooniverse called [Black Hole Hunters](https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/cobalt-lensing/black-hole-hunters).

To Keep GPS Constellations From Drifting, Look To The Moon

October 06, 2026

Global Positioning Systems are a key feature in everyday life for much of the world’s population. Whether it’s ensuring a ship delivers its goods safely, or you’re able to avoid a road closure on your commute home, GPS can help. But the system has a weakness - it relies on ground stations that could suffer from blackouts, natural disasters, or cyber attacks. And if those ground stations go offline for long enough, the whole system itself can begin to “drift”. Aerospace engineers have been attempting to counteract this problem for years, but so far with little success. But a new paper from a research team led by Xia Lin and Baojun Lin at the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites, and published in Satellite Navigation, explains a potential answer to this problem - link the GPS satellites up with some in orbit around the Moon.

A Buried Volcano on the Moon Hints At An Ancient Lunar Dynamo

October 06, 2026

Scientists know for certain the moon doesn’t currently have a magnetosphere. But they’ve been debating for decades about whether it ever did. Data from both Apollo samples and orbital scientific instruments have proven divisive, and so the debate still rages. But a new paper from researchers at ETH Zurich, DLR, and the Institute of Applied Geosciences hopes to resolve the debate once and for all - by definitively proving that the Moon did, indeed, once have a magnetic dynamo.

Space Radiation Sparks A Biological Cascade Of Cancer

October 05, 2026

Deep space travel comes with a huge potential downside - radiation exposure that can kill an astronaut either quickly or slowly over time if not managed correctly. But what exactly does that mean, and is there any way to handle it other than sticking more and more protective layers between the squishy biological systems inside a spacecraft and the radiative void of deep space? A new paper from researchers at Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas Health Science Center hopes to answer both questions, and while the causes of radiation they point out are complex, they also offer some potential solutions as well.

X-Rays and AI Reveal How Spacecraft Heat Shields Burn in Real Time

October 05, 2026

Heat shields are undeniably one of the most important parts of any spacecraft that intends to enter an atmosphere. And the material they are made out of is absolutely critical. Improving them has been a bit of a challenge though, as typically researchers only get “before” and “after” pictures of when the heat shield completes its job of helping a spacecraft land safely back on Earth. That changed recently, though, with a collaboration between NASA and the Advanced Light Source (ALS) located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which allowed researchers to watch a heat shield fall apart in real time.

Asteroid Bennu Has an Identity Crisis, and Jupiter Might Be to Blame

October 02, 2026

Asteroid sample return missions have brought well preserved samples of the early solar system (that hadn’t been roasted in a fireball) back to Earth for the first time. But those samples, like the OSIRIS-REx sample from asteroid (101955) Bennu, sometimes provide more questions than answers. A new paper, published in Science Advances from researchers at ETH Zurich and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, highlights one of those questions - why Bennu appears to have been born in both the inner and outer solar system - and a possible answer to it.

Exercise Keeps Astronaut Hearts in Fighting Shape for the Journey to Mars

October 01, 2026

Getting a human body to Mars will take a toll on it. NASA and other space agencies have been concerned for years that the 6-9 month travel time to get to the Red Planet could have such a deleterious impact on human anatomy that any crewed mission would fail before it even began. But a new study, co-led by Dr. Benjamin Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and published in the journal Circulation, eases some of that concern by claiming that, given a sufficient exercise regimen in low gravity, astronauts should be able to operate on Mars upon arrival without any major cardiac issues.

Older Alien Worlds Might Still Be Stuck in the Slime Age

September 29, 2026

There’s an active debate in the astrobiology community of where to use our best telescopes to look for our best chance of seeing alien life. That debate has been going on for decades, and will continue for some time to come, but now there’s another option up for consideration. A new paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology by Dr. Christopher Doughty of Northern Arizona University talks about how the total amount of carbon a planet is able to bring into the service of biology is a good indication of how evolved life on it might be.

ESA And JAXA's Planetary Defense Mission Powers On For The First Time

September 28, 2026

There’s a once-in-a-millennia astronomical opportunity coming up in about three years, and space agencies are rushing to make sure they’re ready for it. On Friday April 13th, 2029, the asteroid 99942 Apophis will fly within 32,000km of the Earth’s surface. The cruise liner sized piece of rock won’t hit us, but it should put on a great show, and, given the date it will pass by, is sure to cause panic amongst some parts of western civilization. One of the missions planned to watch this historic event (and hopefully alleviate some people’s fears) - ESA and JAXA’s Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) - has just passed a successful development milestone - turning on its computer for the first time.

Why the World’s Biggest Radio Telescope Had to Tweak Nature’s Perfect Sunflower Spiral

September 28, 2026

Scientists love taking inspiration from nature. The evolutionary processes that have created such a diverse panoply of life on Earth can be a great source of ideas in solving technical problems. One such example is the pattern of sunflower seeds - they are arranged in a mathematically optimized pattern known as a Vogel spiral, and the international team building the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) in Australia decided to lay out their antennas in a similar pattern. But, as they report in a paper recently published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, when they did so they found a huge blind spot in the data which hints that maybe this particular natural pattern might need to be modified to work well for this particular application.

A 1,000°C Lunar Microreactor Could Power the Next Era of Moon Bases

September 28, 2026

As humanity continues to move towards a permanent settlement on the Moon, we still have at least one big hurdle to face - the lunar night, which lasts for roughly fourteen days straight and can drop temperatures to a bone-chilling -223°C. In order to survive those conditions, we need a power source that doesn’t come and go with the Sun, or rely on non-existent stock of coal, gas or wind. In other words, we need nuclear power, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Julius Mercz of the Technical University of Munich and his co-authors, describes a new type of nuclear reactor that wouldn’t just power a habitat’s environmental systems, but also enable its materials extraction technologies as well.

Astronomers Couldn't Explain This Ancient Star's Chemistry. A Lab Experiment Just Did.

September 28, 2026

Everything from the gold in your smart phone to the calcium in your bones was originally created in a star. But for a long time there has been a question about the levels of one particular element - strontium, which makes fireworks burn bright red and is used in glow-in-the-dark paint. A new paper published in Nature Communications Physics from a large group of researchers led by Caley M. Harris, a graduate student at Michigan State University, thinks they have found an answer for why that particular elemental level was skewed - and doing so required some very elaborate laboratory testing.

The Solar System’s First Planets Were Made of Fire, Not Ice

September 28, 2026

The early stages of the solar system remain shrouded in mystery. Not much remains from that time, but scientists have developed plenty of theories about what was going on back then. One of those theories attempts to answer a simple question - did the early system prefer “fire” or “ice”? A new paper published in Nature Astrophysics from lead author Damanveer Grewal, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Yale, and his co-authors, have a definitive answer to that question - the early solar system preferred fire.

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