We will be writing more of these. If you’re a scientist and your science has been disrupted, we want to hear from you: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

Your aperiodic reminder that this is the true scale of Saturn's moon Enceladus and the biggest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons on Mars.

UK, Online: Skills for the future. Suw Charman-Anderson, Kate Whyles and Sue Stack talk about the importance of continuous learning in STEM subjects, the need to adapt to career changes and the essential role human perspectives play in STEM. 14 Oct, free #ALD25 findingada.com/event..#ALD25

Making the most of a flat calm morning.. #reflections #chartres #farm #wideopenspaces

In August, astronomers released the clearest image yet of a planet sitting smack dab in the middle of a gap in a dusty disk around a young star, confirming that the new theories of planetary formation are on the right track. Paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

But until recently, astronomers were missing the smoking gun: a visible planet actively sculpting its disk.

These images rewrote planetary formation theory: It takes just a million years to make a planet, not many millions. And instead of gradually building up from pebbles to planets, it may often be easier to start with one big rock that hoovers up pebbles, carving out a gap around it.

Others feature gaps, possibly grooves etched by baby planets as they spin round and round their parent stars.A

Some reveal spirals, which researchers suspect to be dust trails dragging behind juvenile Jupiter-style gas giants.

And ALMA, an array of radio dishes in Chile, can pick up the dim glow of cold dust grains. Another Chilean instrument, SPHERE, contorts its mirror in real time to kill the “twinkling” effect our atmosphere has on light. Now high-definition baby pictures of solar systems abound.

Since then, new telescopes have revolutionized our ability to watch planets form. The James Webb Space telescope can spot fingerprints of specific molecules, revealing exactly what kinds of dust exist in these disks.

Astronomers directly spotted the first “proto-planetary” disks using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1992. These images confirmed their suspicions that planets are made of leftover stardust, but the images were too fuzzy to distinguish any details.

But what happened next? How does a dusty disk turn into a bunch of planets, here and elsewhere in the cosmos?

Some five billion years ago, a giant cloud of gas and dust collapsed and ignited to become our sun. The leftover detritus swirled into a flat, dusty disk surrounding the star.

A new installation has been unveiled in London, designed to help people understand the influence of DNA and genomes on their health - and it's absolutely mesmerising

Daily briefing: Universities made the modern world — now they must survive it

Today, we honor all the babies who endured a NICU stay. #NICUAwarenessDay #NICU #NICUAwareness

Few ideas in modern science have reshaped our understanding of reality more profoundly than space-time — the interwoven fabric of space and time at the heart of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Weaver Ants Form Complex Chains to Pull More Than 100 Times Their Weight www.scientificamerican.com/article/weav...

@janerushtonart.bsky.social Sunday morning, Loch Leven, South Ballachulish @carolynfahm.bsky.social

We used machine-learning tools in an attempt to recreate the method for cutting funding, and then applied it to past US NIH grants to reveal the broad-reaching consequences go.nature.com/46G0F0X

You might be breaking, but you’re not broken, you just really need a break.

Mirror, mirror, reflecting our [LASER] beam... What is the loudest [gravitational wave] signal that we've seen? It’s #GW250114! (Yes, it’s been two weeks since it was announced, but I can still celebrate! 🎉 ) #EinsteinWasRight #HawkingWasRight @ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social

Happy to kick off @sfchronicle.com’s new Closer Look column with an interview about how I photographed Orange Sky Day. Gift link 🎁 bit.ly/42A7MqH

A secret place is where time washes over you, & the critical voices slowly become silent It is where you will find me when life’s load starts to define my thoughts Over time my senses are overwhelmed by the sights & sounds of the forest, & it feels I become part of it Again

A one-time gene therapy can markedly slow the progression of Huntington’s disease, potentially paving the way for the first ever treatment to alter the course of this rare, inherited brain disorder. go.nature.com/4nu6YMs

Gift Link www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...

Ooh - my new paper on case study is out! What’s a case study, how do you do one, how do you spot a good one? Includes niche examples like the REF impact case study (though it’s mainly about research case studies).

Sagittarius B2 is a vast molecular cloud about 400 lightyears from the Milky Way core. This image spans about 30 lightyears left to right. Read more about how this NIRCam image was acquired: science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/s... Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/A. Ginsburg/N. Budaiev/T. Yoo/A. Pagan

A new JWST image, showing the star-forming region Sagittarius B2. Open up the image and lose yourself in the stars...

A global clinical trial for a new Huntington’s disease treatment has posted positive results today, announced by trial sponsor uniQure and UCL scientists Prof Sarah Tabrizi and @profwild.bsky.social @uclqsion.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social. Watch on BBC News at One 📺

This is very exciting! A small clinical trial using gene therapy for Huntington's disease has been successful. microRNAs were used to edit the Huntington mRNA, stopping it making mutant protein that can damage neurons. Huge hopes now for treating such a devastating condition

I just went for work to Helgoland, where quantum physics was born 100 years ago. Are you a young researcher as excited about quantum physics as I am? And maybe you want to contribute to the next 100 years of quantum physics? Then check out this workshop: indico.desy.de/event/50023/

⏰ Start your countdown clock for the exact moment of the autumn #equinox, 19:19 (UK) 22nd Sept, when the Northern hemisphere and Southern hemisphere are equally illuminated. Today the day length in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland is ~the same as in 🇳🇿New Zealand 🤓🧪🔭 📷: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Our best descriptions of nature, quantum mechanics and general relativity, are failing us. To dig into the deepest levels of reality, we’re going to need new physics.

🧵 A study, published in ApJ (July 2025), suggests that quasars, the extremely luminous active nuclei of galaxies, could signpost pairs of supermassive black holes, orbiting each other. Video: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Noble; simulation data, d'Ascoli et al. 2018 🔭 🧪 #cosmology

Thin-film solar cells have long been toted as the future of photovoltaic research. Recent innovations in kesterite research have led to a breakthrough that push the efficiency of the material across the threshold of commercial viability.

At Kentallen @carolynfahm.bsky.social

A cosmic choreography at the tiniest scales! 🩰 CMS researchers study light-ion collisions, and provide robust evidence of how the shapes of the colliding nuclei guide the collective flow of particles 🌊 📍Read more: cms.cern/news/collect...

This Hubble image shows interacting galaxies AM 1054-325. The clusters of stars born from the galaxy merger appear like a string of pearls. Formations like these were common in the early universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba). 🔭 🧪

Rainbow over Ballachulish Bridge @carolynfahm.bsky.social

www.thetimes.com/world/asia/a... Gift Link

Pythagorean Triple Square Day, as one man affectionately calls 9/16/25, is a day like no other this century.

🐦 Fly through a 3D map of stellar nurseries ✨ Scientists have created the most accurate 3D map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from #ESAGaia. The map extends to a distance of 4000 light-years from us, with the Sun at the centre 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

A new mini-documentary by our colleagues at @uofgravity.bsky.social celebrating the 10th anniversary of our first detection and the progress in #GravitationalWave astronomy youtu.be/SqhFtkQ4f2c #GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️🎢