Extraterrestial

For years, astronomers have hunted for Population III (Pop III) stars. These are the first stars ever born, composed *only* of the hydrogen and helium left over from the Big Bang. They were massive, lived short, violent lives, and died out long ago. Now, a team led by Ari Visbal believes they've spotted their signature in a distant galaxy called LAP1-B, and it's the first candidate to match all theoretical predictions.

Johns Hopkins researchers may have identified a compelling clue in the ongoing hunt to prove the existence of dark matter. A mysterious diffuse glow of gamma rays near the center of the Milky Way has stumped researchers for decades. Now, new research published in Physical Review Letters suggests two leading theories—colliding dark matter particles or rapidly spinning neutron stars—are equally likely to be the cause.

Astronomers have captured the clearest picture yet of how massive stars are born. A team led by Dr. Qizhou Zhang from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to conduct the largest and most detailed survey to date of magnetic fields in 17 regions where clusters of massive stars are forming.

For twenty years, two European spacecraft have been watching the red planet. Now, by combing through their vast archives, scientists have done something remarkable: they've created the first global map of Martian "dust devils," the tornado-like whirlwinds that sculpt the planet's surface. The findings, published in Science Advances, track over a thousand of these twisters, revealing a dynamic weather system with winds far faster than we ever expected.

Astronomers from Australia and Serbia have performed multi-band photometric observations of a binary star known as V717 Andromedae, finding it to be an active, low-mass-ratio contact binary system. The research, published on the arXiv preprint server, provides the first detailed look at this fascinating system, where two stars are locked in an extreme gravitational dance.