News

  1. Astronomy

    The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected

    Images from the New Horizons spacecraft suggest that light from all known galaxies accounts for only half of the cosmos’ visible background glow.

    By Liz Kruesi
  2. Planetary Science

    Diamonds may stud Mercury’s crust

    Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have flash-baked much of a primitive graphite crust into precious gemstones.

    By Nikk Ogasa
  3. Climate

    Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer

    Massive fires like those that raged in Australia in 2019–2020 can eat away at Earth’s protective ozone layer, researchers find.

    By Carolyn Gramling
  4. Particle Physics

    How light from black holes is narrowing the search for axions

    The orientation of light waves from the region around galaxy M87’s central black hole rules out the existence of axions of a certain mass.