Largest Magnetic Map of Universe Released

🧲 Universe's magnetic secrets mapped

🕳️ JWST weighs ancient dormant black hole

🔴 NASA bids farewell to MAVEN

🌀 Milky Way's missing wind found

🪐 How Earth got life's building blocks

CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and SKAO (SKA Observatory) researchers led by Dr. Alec Thomson created SPICE-RACS, the largest magnetic map of the universe ever produced.

ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) radio telescope collected rotation measures from nearly 4 million galaxies, measuring how light twists through magnetic fields to reveal their locations and relative strengths across the Southern Sky.

Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths, SKAO's Chief Scientist, stated this map replaces datasets astronomers relied upon for twenty years, enabling investigation of intergalactic magnetism and cosmic web structure.

Carnegie Institution astronomer Andrew Newman led a team using JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) to make the first direct mass measurement of a dormant black hole in an early universe galaxy.

JWST detected stellar motions in galaxy MRG-M0138, located 10 billion light years distant, revealing a 6-billion-solar-mass black hole magnified 30 times by gravitational lensing from a foreground galaxy cluster.

Newman explained this technique extension to early cosmic history suggests the densest galaxies hosted rapid black hole growth, informing models of galaxy-black hole co-evolution across billions of years.

NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission team confirmed the spacecraft is unrecoverable after losing signal on December 6, 2024, following more than eleven years studying Martian atmospheric escape processes.

DSN (Deep Space Network) analysis revealed MAVEN entered safe mode while rotating at an unusually high rate, draining batteries and disabling communications after emerging from behind Mars during its final orbit.

Principal investigator Shannon Curry stated MAVEN's 800-plus publications on atmospheric sputtering, solar wind interactions, and Martian auroras will inform radiation protection requirements for future human Mars missions.

Northwestern University astrophysicists Mark Gorski and Elena Murchikova discovered the long-theorized wind emanating from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, resolving a fifty-year astronomical mystery.

Five years of ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array) observations revealed a cone-shaped cavity nearly one parsec long and 45 degrees wide, swept clear of cold molecular gas by hot energetic outflows.

Murchikova explained this discovery confirms Sgr A* behaves like other supermassive black holes during quiet phases, providing a unique window into non-active black hole physics unavailable from distant galaxies.

Rice University researchers led by senior author Rajdeep Dasgupta examined phosphorus-to-nitrogen ratios in meteorites to understand how Earth acquired elements essential for life during early solar system formation.

Laboratory experiments revealed first-generation planetesimals showed higher P/N ratios in the outer solar system, but Jupiter's growth reversed this distribution, trapping phosphorus and nitrogen in inner solar system materials.

Lead author Debjeet Pathak concluded Earth likely acquired its life-essential phosphorus and nitrogen inventory primarily from inner solar system planetesimals, without requiring significant contributions from outer solar system chondrites.