Compared to the other terrestrial planets, Mercury has always been a bit of a mysterious one. It’s internal structure is very different from its planetary siblings with its core accounting for 70% of its overall mass and an unusually thin mantle composed of silicates. One theory suggests a head-on collision between a larger proto-Mercury and a smaller object while another suggests Mercury sideswiped an Earth-mass object. It may be something completely different and a new paper suggests that a grazing collision between two similarly sized bodies led to the formation of the planet we see today.

The Moon is a common sight in our night time (and sometimes daytime) skies but it hasn’t always been there. The widely accepted theory of lunar formation involves a Mars-sized planet crashing into the Earth, creating a cloud of debris that eventually that eventually coalesced to form the Moon. Estimates of this cataclysmic event that gave us the Moon range from between 4.52 to 4.35 billion years ago however a new presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference have pushed that timeline back even further!

When it comes to safe places for life, supermassive black holes are probably the last place you'd consider safe for nearby planets, let alone life-bearing ones. There are good reasons for this: those monsters at the hearts of galaxies suck down everything that comes into contact with them. When they do that, they blast out killer radiation. Neither activity is necessarily good for life. Or is it? As it turns out, radiation from these active galactic nuclei (AGN) can nurture life under the right circumstances.

Scientists have detected a fascinating spiral galaxy located about one billion light-years away. At the heart of this cosmic goliath, powerful radio jets are blasting out of its centre, stretching six million light years into space. A team of researchers have suggested that a smaller dwarf galaxy plunged into its centre, passing close to its supermassive black hole triggering immense flares, intense radiation and driving the colossal radio jets. Surprisingly however, despite the tremendous amounts of energy, the galaxy has kept its spiral structure.

China’s Chang’e-6 mission has been exploring the largest crater on the Moon. It’s known as Aitken Basin and is found at the South Pole of the Moon where craters are permanently shadowed. The crater is a whopping 2,500 km across and measures 10km deep and Chang’e-6 data has revealed that a giant asteroid smashed into the Moon about 4.25 billion years ago.

We've learned that Interstellar Objects (ISOs) are not strangers to our Solar System. Many have visited, and many more will in the future. The Vera Rubin Observatory is expected to find hundreds each year. Scientists are keen to learn more about them, and a swarm of spacecraft on standby might be the way to do it.

Telescope optics can be made of mirrors or lenses, but in both cases, they're bulky and need to follow a strict mathematical curve to focus light. Researchers have shown that it's possible to make a completely flat lens that focuses light. Traditionally, this has been done with Fresnel lenses, but they distort colors. Their new technique carves tiny concentric rings into a substrate that matches the wavelengths of different colors, allowing a full-color, in-focus image.

One of the surprising discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is that galaxies formed very early in the Universe. JWST has discovered about two dozen galaxies at a redshift of around z = 14, meaning that we see them at a time when the cosmos was just 300-500 million years old. The most distant galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, is seen at an age of less than 300 million years. All of these galaxies are rich with stars and have a basic structure similar to what we see in more modern galaxies. This discovery challenged our understanding of galactic evolution. Now a new discovery challenges it even further.

What's on and in a star? What happens at an active galactic nucleus? Answering those question is the goal of a proposed giant interferometer on the Moon. It's called Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI) and would deploy a series of 15-30 optical/ultraviolet-sensitive telescopes in a 1-km elliptical array across the lunar surface.

In the years since Miguel Alcubierre came up with a warp drive solution in 1994, you would occasionally see news headlines saying that warp drives can work. And then a few months later you’ll see that they’ve been ruled out. And then after that you’ll see that warp drives kind of work, but only in limited cases. It seems to constantly go around and around without a clear answer. What gives?