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For decades, scientists have operated on the assumption that dark energy—the mysterious force pushing the universe apart—is a constant. But mountains of new data, especially from supernovae, are challenging this. Evidence suggests dark energy might be evolving, and its force has weakened since the universe's inception. If it's true, what does this mean for the future of the cosmos?

The discovery was made around HOPS-315, a star 1,370 light-years away that is a cosmic infant—only 100,000 to 200,000 years old. Using the combined power of the James Webb Space Telescope and the ALMA telescope network, astronomers peered deep into the gas disk around the protostar and found the key ingredients for rocky planets actively condensing from gas into solid specks.

Galaxy clusters are the largest known gravitationally-bound structures in the universe, containing thousands of galaxies. They are excellent laboratories for studying cosmic evolution. A team led by Keegan Trehaeven of Rhodes University used the powerful MeerKAT and uGMRT radio telescopes to study Abell 3558, a massive cluster 1.48 quadrillion times the mass of our sun. Their detailed study revealed that the diffuse radio emission at its center is a "peculiar" radio mini-halo

When you look at the night sky, you can see the "Seven Sisters" (Pleiades) and the V-shaped Hyades near the constellation Orion, whose "sword" contains the Orion Nebula. For centuries, we've known them as three separate star clusters. But new research from the University of Bonn and IASBS in Iran suggests they are all part of the same story—a story of how star clusters are born, how they age, and how they die.

For decades, scientists have hunted for lithium in Mercury's thin exosphere. Its presence was predicted, but every attempt to find it failed. A new study from the Austrian Academy of Sciences finally found the "smoking gun" by using a fresh angle: they stopped *looking* for the atoms and started *listening* for the magnetic waves they create.