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Surrounded by stardust: Antarctic ice cores confirm Earth is accumulating iron-60 from local interstellar cloud

Our solar system is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Iron-60 is formed in the interiors of massive stars and is ejected into space when they explode. Geological archives show that our solar system was hit twice by iron-60 from supernovae millions of years ago. In more recent times, however, there have been no nearby stellar explosions—and thus no direct supply of iron-60. When scientists discovered iron-60 in Antarctic surface snow less than twenty years old a few years ago, the question of its origin arose.

“Our idea was that the Local Interstellar Cloud contains iron-60 and can store it over long time periods. As the solar system moves through the cloud, Earth could collect this material. However, we couldn’t prove this at the time,” explains Dr. Dominik Koll from the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR.

Science beyond the physical

For centuries, we’ve assumed that science has banished the transcendent and established that reality is entirely physical. But critics argue there are signs that a rigorous materialism might be holding science back. Increasingly, “emergence” is used to account for everything from consciousness to spacetime – a convenient placeholder for what materialist science may be unable to explain. Physicists like Heisenberg and Hawking concluded that science gives us models of reality, rather than final descriptions of its true nature, while there are scientists working in everything from biology to computer science who suggest that dualism is a productive metaphysical framework for their research. Materialism may have enabled science to reach beyond the dogmas of religion, but there are now those who are restlessly probing the limits of materialism itself.

Astrophysicists use ‘space archaeology’ to trace the history of a spiral galaxy

Billions of years ago, a young spiral galaxy began to grow in a crowded part of the universe. It pulled in gas and small companion galaxies, slowly building up the bright central region and sweeping spiral arms we see today.

In a new study published in March 2026, my colleagues and I used this galaxy’s chemical fingerprints to reconstruct its life story in detail.

Astronomers want to know how spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be, as these galaxies can give us hints about how the elements we rely on, such as oxygen, were created and spread through space over time.

A hidden threshold enables tunable control of liquid crystal helices for energy-efficient technologies

Liquid crystals are an integral part of modern technology, ranging from displays to advanced sensory systems. In a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (IEP SAS) in Košice, in collaboration with international partners, have demonstrated how minute changes in material composition can achieve precise control over behavior in electric and magnetic fields.

The research focused on cholesteric liquid crystals, which naturally form spiral (helical) structures. These structures provide unique optical properties used in displays, smart windows, and virtual reality devices.

The team investigated how the addition of a specific substance, a chiral dopant, affects the “unwinding” process of this helix.

Michio Kaku: The von Neumann Probe (A Nano Ship to the Stars) | Big Think

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One of the inventions that may be realized by advances in nanotechnology is the creation of a Von Neumann probe, which is essentially a virus, a self-replicating probe that can then explore the universe near the speed of light.

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Michio Kaku: Recently there was a conference, the One Hundred Year Starship, and of course many people came in with designs to have gigantic fusion rockets take us to Mars and beyond Jupiter, into the stars. Other people said yes, antimatter rockets, that’s the way to go, and we all had this mental vision of the Enterprise going to the nearby star systems… here is another way to do it. Think of Mother Nature. When Mother Nature wants to propagate life, one possibility is to send out seeds, not just one or two, but millions of seeds. Most of the seeds never make it, but one or two do and as a consequence that’s how trees in forests propagate. So why not create a nano ship using nanotechnology? How big would it be? Some people like Paul Davies say it could be as big as a bread box. Other people say it could be even smaller than that. Why not something the size of a needle? And because they’re so small it wouldn’t take much to accelerate them to near the speed of light.

World’s largest ever survey of physicists, results & reaction

What do physicists really think about the biggest mysteries in the universe?

In this video, leading voices in theoretical physics come together to unpack the results of the Big Mystery Survey—the largest survey ever conducted of professional physicists, prepared in collaboration with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine.\.

A twinkling pulsar reveals invisible structures in space

The twinkling stars in the night sky are not just beautiful to look at. Their flickering reveals something about the varying temperatures and densities in the layers of Earth’s atmosphere, which refract the light as it travels toward us. Certain stellar remnants that emit radio waves can exhibit a very similar effect.

Although their radio waves—which have longer wavelengths than visible light—can penetrate Earth’s atmosphere almost undisturbed, they are scattered by the thin gas between the stars. Their twinkling—known as scintillation—thus provides unique insights into interstellar space.

An international team led by Tim Sprenger from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has measured the flickering radio radiation from an object using an innovative observation technique. The results are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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