Andy Tomaswick

Earth’s “Impenetrable” Space Radiation Shield Was Just Breached From Within

October 30, 2026

Remember the big solar storm back in May 2024? The one that caused auroras as far south as Florida and Mexico? Scientists are still parsing out the impacts that storm had on the local environment, and a new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters by Yoshizumi Miyoshi of Nagoya University and his co-authors shows it might have allowed some nearby electrons to accelerate to relativistic speeds using something called a chorus wave.

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of the Sun’s Spinning Plasma Jets

October 29, 2026

The torrent of corona related discoveries keeps coming. Lately we’ve covered a variety of potential solutions to the “coronal heating problem” - why the Sun’s corona is so much hotter than its surface. Now, a paper led by a team of researchers from the University of Newcastle, Indian Institute for Astrophysics, and University of Sheffield, offers another answer - that we’ve been viewing the “spicules” that form in the lower solar atmosphere all wrong.

Glowing Salt Crystals Tracked Radiation Aboard Artemis I

October 28, 2026

There weren’t any humans strapped into the bucket seats of the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission. But there were two anthropomorphic mannequins made to mimic human bone and soft tissue, but also equipped with hundreds of radiation sensors spread throughout their body as part of the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment. A recent paper led by Paweł Bilski of the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and published in the journal Radiation Measurements, reports on the results of that experiment, including the operation of a new type of long-term passive radiation monitor made of lithium.

A Deep-Mantle Garnet Might Hold the Secret to Ancient Martian Magma

October 27, 2026

A history of a planet’s volcanic activity is contained in its rocks. And Mars’ rocks - or at least many of the meteorites that have made the journey from it to Earth - were telling a contradictory story. They appeared to be highly oxidized, but our understanding of the internal volcanic forces on Mars meant that they should have been formed in a reducing environment - the exact opposite of what the chemical makeup of the rocks themselves indicate. Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth from planetary scientists Hideharu Kuwahara and Ryoichi Nakada of Ehime University provides an answer as to why - and it involves a gemstone.

Scientists Can Now Spot Hidden Sunspots on the Solar Far Side

October 26, 2026

Unlike the Moon, the Sun is constantly rotating from our perspective - but we still only see half of it at any given time. Since it takes 27 days to complete a full rotation, that leaves plenty of time for changes to happen to the side we can’t see that could directly impact Earth’s own space weather a few weeks later. Now a team of physicists led by Bibhuti Kumar Jha of the Southwest Research Institute has published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series that uses probability to map out what might be happening on the far side of the Sun, even if we can’t see it directly.

Parker Solar Probe Spots Twisted Magnetic Braids Growing in the Solar Wind

October 26, 2026

The magnetic environment around the Sun is a jumbled mess of chaotic fields and streams of charged particles. Recently we’ve been getting at least slightly better at mapping out its complexity, thanks in large part to data collected by missions like the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter. But there’s still a large grey area surrounding the interface between the large scale hydrodynamic properties of plasmas and the microscopic properties of individual ions, and scientists believe understanding large scale features of the Sun, such as why its corona is so much hotter than its surface, may rely on our knowledge of that interface. A new paper that directly tackles some of the outstanding questions about that interface was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Masatomi Iizawa of the Technical University of Braunschweig and his co-authors.

JWST Reveals a Lopsided Alien World with Blistering Evening Winds

October 23, 2026

Typically, when we think of exoplanets, we think of neat spheres floating directly in front of their star, which acts as a giant spotlight. From our vantage point, they would look more like two perfect two dimensional circles than spheres, though. But nature is almost never so clean-cut. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy from researchers at Cornell and the University of Bristol details the first-ever study of an exoplanet that is noticeably lopsided.

Autonomous Triangular Modules Could Build Tomorrow’s Mega-Observatories

October 22, 2026

Private companies are getting better and better at launching more and more mass into space with larger and larger rockets. But, there is still a major constraint on the size of objects we can get into orbit - fairing size. This places physical constraints on the overall shape of what we can launch, and severely limits the sizes of, say, a communications array or a power satellite. But a new paper from researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Beijing Institute of Technology offers a solution - a self-shaping, deployable module that can fine-tune both its positioning and its own dimensions.

How Inversion and NASA Plan to Unlock Interplanetary Aerocapture

October 21, 2026

Using a planet’s atmosphere to secure a satellite’s place in orbit, a process known as “aerocapture”, has been the dream of flight engineers for decades. The only problem? It’s really hard to actually do. It requires control systems, thermal management, and orbital mechanics to all coordinate in a dance that allows a spacecraft to not just slow down while passing by another planet (or moon in some cases) but to start to orbit it without the use of lots of additional propellant. For now, that remains a dream, but a recent NASA contract to a California start-up called Inversion is another step towards making it a reality.

Solar Orbiter Traces Giant Magnetic Switchbacks Directly Back to the Sun

October 21, 2026

There has been a torrent of solar physics data lately, largely thanks to new spacecraft that have begun actively observing the Sun. One of those spacecraft, Solar Orbiter, happened to have a serendipitous encounter with a type of solar physics phenomenon known as a “switchback”. A new paper, available in Nature Astronomy from researcher Jesse T. Coburn and their co-authors, describes how that serendipitous encounter allowed them to track the switchback back to its birthplace in the solar corona for the first time.

Mars’s Most Mysterious Cloud Might Be Defying Textbook Cloud Physics

October 21, 2026

It may not be as obvious, but just like Earth, Mars has seasons. And every day of every summer, an 1,800 kilometer long thin white cloud appears to the west of Arsia Mons, a 20 kilometer high extinct shield volcano. At least for a few hours, before it dissipates until it reappears the next morning. Scientists have known about this feature, which they call the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC), for decades, but planetary scientists have been unable to explain it using traditional atmospheric models. But a new paper, published in Nature Geoscience by a research team led by Dr. Jorge Hernández-Bernal of the Sorbonne, suggests that the cloud could be the first documented real-world example of a cloud flash-freezing out of thin air.

JWST Tracks Shifting Water Clouds and Churning Gases on the Coldest Known Brown Dwarf

October 20, 2026

When picturing a star, typically people think of giant balls of burning gas in the sky that emit enough light they are hard to miss. Planets, on the other hand, come in one of two general categories - rocky worlds like Earth or gas giants similar to Jupiter. But there is a third category of astronomical object that doesn’t really fit either of those descriptions, and also doesn’t exist in our own solar system. Known as a brown dwarf, they are sometimes called a “failed star” as they form the same way stars do, but never reach the critical mass of material to create active fusion in the cores. They are also much too massive to be considered a regular planet. But a new paper from researchers led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona describes one similarity between the coldest known brown dwarf and some of the planets in our solar system - it has water-ice clouds.

SPHEREx Just Took the Fingerprints of Failed Stars Across Our Cosmic Neighborhood

October 15, 2026

Brown dwarfs are the black (or brown?) sheep of astronomy. They’re too big to be considered a traditional gas planet, but they are too small to have started nuclear fusion and made the full transition to star-hood. They also change dramatically over time, cooling, shrinking, and spinning faster as they age. Or at least we think they do - our models of the atmospheres of these celestial objects aren’t the best, according to a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by a team led by Zafar Rustamkulov at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A Trip to Mars Could Break Your Heart - Literally

October 14, 2026

When astronauts first travel to Mars, or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet itself protects us from on its surface - radiation and weightlessness. Scientists already know both can have a profound impact on the human body, but just how much of one, and how long that impact can last, remain a mystery. A new paper by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and published in PLoS One, tackles those questions, and unfortunately comes up with some less than ideal answers in terms of the long term implications of deep space exposure.

Tiny Gold Nanogaps Could Crack the Chirality Puzzle

October 13, 2026

Looking for biosignatures across the solar system requires looking for asymmetry. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are famously either “left-handed” (L) or “right-handed” (D). We know abiotic processes (i.e. those that create amino acids but don’t involve life) create a 50/50 mixture of the two types, which is called a racemic mixture. But life as we know it almost exclusively relies on left-handed amino acids to fold proteins and right-handed ones to construct nucleic acids. So if we find an imbalance in the types of amino acids we analyze from somewhere in the solar system, it's a good indication that life is behind that imbalance. Differentiating between the two “chiralities”, as they’re called, is possible, but typically requires advanced equipment and chemical disposables that make them burdensome for spaceflight applications. But a new paper in Nature Communications from researchers led by Takahito Ohshiro and Masateru Taniguchi of Osaka University offers an alternative - a solid-state quantum tunneling sensor that can read the chirality of a single amino acid molecule using basically just some gold wire.

How Will Water Flow on the Moon?

October 12, 2026

Growing fresh food on the Moon is going to be crucial if astronauts there are ever going to eat anything other than freeze-dried rations. Since husbanding animals on the lunar surface is…difficult (to put it mildly), most mission planners believe that plants are the solution. But we still don’t entirely understand how one of the most fundamental materials to plant growth, water, operates under partial gravity. A team of researchers, led by Karl Hasenstein of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and including John Kiss of the Florida Institute of Technology, and Christopher McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center, recently published a paper in Microgravity Science and Technology that lays out the physics for how water behaves at lunar gravity.

Honda Wants to Put a Robotic Lab Assistant on Future Commercial Space Stations

October 11, 2026

As I’m writing this I’m able to stare out into my driveway at my trusty Honda Odyssey. Most of the public’s association with Honda is through their “mobility” products - i.e. their cars. But the company has an impressive track record of other technical achievements, not the least of which has been in robotics. Now, it’s teaming up with space infrastructure firm Redwire to develop an automated laboratory support system for use on future commercial space stations.

Stratospheric Balloon Telescope Peeks Above The Clouds At The Sun

October 10, 2026

There’s lots of things you can do with balloons. Children’s birthday parties come to mind, as do retirement parties. But you can also observe the Sun in unprecedented detail with one - or at least with a suite of equipment attached to a gondola floating beneath one. That’s what the SUNRISE III mission did back in 2024, and scientists have had time to compile a series of three scientific papers on the results from that mission, which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Thousands of Black Holes Could Be Lurking in Our Backyard—and You Can Help Find Them

October 07, 2026

According to stellar evolution models, there should be hundreds of millions of black holes floating around in our galaxy. But so far we’ve only found 70. That’s in large part because they are so hard to find, but a citizen science project from the University of Southampton is actively seeking out these hidden monsters with the help of tens of thousands of amateur astronomers through a project on Zooniverse called [Black Hole Hunters](https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/cobalt-lensing/black-hole-hunters).

To Keep GPS Constellations From Drifting, Look To The Moon

October 06, 2026

Global Positioning Systems are a key feature in everyday life for much of the world’s population. Whether it’s ensuring a ship delivers its goods safely, or you’re able to avoid a road closure on your commute home, GPS can help. But the system has a weakness - it relies on ground stations that could suffer from blackouts, natural disasters, or cyber attacks. And if those ground stations go offline for long enough, the whole system itself can begin to “drift”. Aerospace engineers have been attempting to counteract this problem for years, but so far with little success. But a new paper from a research team led by Xia Lin and Baojun Lin at the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites, and published in Satellite Navigation, explains a potential answer to this problem - link the GPS satellites up with some in orbit around the Moon.

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