Recently, NIRISS, one of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s four primary scientific instruments concluded its postlaunch preparations and was declared ready for science. Now a second of Webb’s four primary scientific instruments, known as the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), has also concluded its postlaunch preparations and is now ready for science. MIRI’s coronagraphic imaging...

Theoretical physics is full of weird and wonderful concepts: wormholes, quantum foam and multiverses, just to name a few. The problem is that while such things easily emerge from theorists’ equations, they are practically impossible to create and test in a laboratory setting. But for one such “untestable” theory, an...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.  Webb’s image is approximately...

Researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany and the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory have recently carried out an experiment aimed at measuring the rate of quantum transitions caused by collisions between molecules and electrons. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, offer the first experimental evidence of this rate, which had...

Ryan Day studies superconductors. Materials that conduct electricity perfectly, losing no energy to heat and resistance. Specifically, the University of California, Berkeley scientist studies how superconductors can coexist with their opposites; insulating materials that stop the flow of electrons. The materials that combine these two opposed states, called topological superconductors, are understandably weird, hard...

In biology, getting rid of stuff can be just as important as making it. A buildup of cells, proteins, or other molecules that are no longer needed can cause problems, so living things have evolved several ways to clean house. A prime example is the RNA exosome. RNA molecules perform many...