July 2026

At first glance, Neptune seems like the last place where violent weather should thrive. The ice giant circles the Sun at an average distance of about 4.5 billion kilometres, leaving it in a region where daylight is remarkably faint. Even at midday, the sunlight reaching Neptune would resemble a dim twilight compared with conditions on…

Long before Earth existed, before the Sun had fully formed, clouds of gas and microscopic dust drifted through interstellar space. Within those tiny grains, astronomers believe, some of the chemistry that eventually gave rise to planets, and perhaps even life, first began. Yet studying this process has always been difficult because the dust forms in…

On an infrared camera, a warm object normally stands out clearly against its cooler surroundings. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have now built a three-dimensional cloak that bends heat around an object entirely, erasing its thermal outline while keeping the space inside protected from extreme temperatures. Rather than blocking heat at a barrier,…