SPACE/COSMOS
New method sharpens the search for alien biology
Life leaves a pattern, not just a trace
image:
The search for life beyond Earth has a new approach that relies more heavily on statistical patterns of molecules than on any one molecule's presence.
view moreCredit: NASA
For decades, the search for life beyond Earth has revolved around a key question: What molecules should scientists be looking for on other planets or moons?
A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, suggests the more revealing clue may not be the molecules themselves, but the hidden order connecting them.
“We’re showing that life does not only produce molecules,” said Fabian Klenner, UC Riverside assistant professor of planetary sciences and co-author of the study. “Life also produces an organizational principle that we can see by applying statistics.”
The researchers found that amino acids are consistently more diverse and more evenly distributed in a material sample created by a living thing than those found in abiotic or nonliving things. In contrast, the pattern reverses for fatty acids: abiotically produced fatty acids are distributed more evenly than those produced by biological processes.
This study is the first to demonstrate that this fundamental principle of life can be detected using a statistical approach that does not rely on any one special instrument. Instead, it may be possible to find this pattern in data collected by instruments already aboard current and planned space missions.
The work arrives as planetary exploration enters a new phase in which longstanding questions about the origin of life and its prevalence in the universe may finally become testable with real observational data. Missions to Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and other worlds are returning increasingly sophisticated measurements of organic chemistry. Yet interpreting those measurements remains difficult.
Many compounds central to terrestrial biology, including amino acids and fatty acids, can also form through nonbiological processes. They have been detected in meteorites and synthesized in laboratory experiments designed to mimic conditions in space. Finding such molecules alone is not enough to claim evidence of life.
“Astrobiology is fundamentally a forensic science,” said Gideon Yoffe, postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and first author of the study. “We’re trying to infer processes from incomplete clues, often with very limited data collected by missions that are extraordinarily expensive and infrequent.”
The researchers approached the problem with a statistical framework borrowed from ecology, where scientists quantify biodiversity by measuring two properties: richness, or how many species are present, and evenness, or how uniformly they are distributed. Yoffe first encountered the approach while completing doctoral work in statistics and data science, where diversity metrics were used to uncover patterns in complex datasets, including studies of ancient human cultures.
The team applied the same logic to extraterrestrial chemistry.
Using approximately 100 existing datasets, the researchers analyzed amino acids and fatty acids from microbes, soils, fossils, meteorites, asteroids, and synthetic laboratory samples. Biological samples repeatedly exhibited distinct organizational patterns that separated them from nonliving chemistry.
What surprised the researchers most was the method’s strength despite its simplicity.
Looking at the samples in this way, the researchers were consistently able to separate biological and abiotic samples with striking reliability. In addition, they were also able to see that biologically derived materials formed a continuum from well-preserved to degraded states.
“That was genuinely surprising,” Klenner said. “The method captured not only the distinction between life and nonlife, but also degrees of preservation and alteration.”
Even heavily degraded biological samples retained traces of that organization. Fossilized dinosaur eggshells analyzed in the study, for example, still carried detectable statistical signatures shaped by ancient life.
The researchers emphasize that no single method is likely to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life on its own.
“Any future claim of having found life would require multiple independent lines of evidence, interpreted within the geological and chemical context of a planetary environment,” Klenner said.
Still, the team believes their framework could become an important new tool for future missions.
“Our approach is one more way to assess whether life may have been there,” Klenner said. “And if different techniques all point in the same direction, then that becomes very powerful.”
Journal
Nature Astronomy
Article Title
Molecular diversity as a biosignature
Article Publication Date
11-May-2026
When the clouds clear – the emergence of young star clusters
Stockholm University
image:
Alex Pedrini, first author and PhD Student at the Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University & Oskar Klein Centre.
view moreCredit: Giacomo Bortolini
The Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes have revealed thousands of young star clusters emerging from their birth clouds. The observations, published in Nature Astronomy, show that more massive clusters clear away their natal gas faster than lower-mass clusters. The result has important implications for our understanding of star formation and how the young stars affect their surroundings.
“I was excited to see that the emerging timescale of a star cluster is related to its mass in stars. This has implications on a range of research fields, from planet formation to galaxy evolution”, says Alex Pedrini, PhD student at the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University and first and corresponding author of the study.
Alex Pedrini is part of the Galaxy group and the FEAST* team at the Department of Astronomy and Oskar Klein Centre (OKC) at Stockholm University, where he studies how stars are born and how they influence their host galaxies. Most stars form in clusters hidden inside dusty gas clouds, where massive young stars release energy that blow away this material and slow down further star formation.
Estimating the timescale for emergence
The research team used the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes to measure the emission at ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths of thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies: M51, M83, NGC 628 and NGC 4449, which are all in the Local Volume, that is within 30 million light years of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
Different wavelenghts of light reveal different stages in the process as young star clusters emerge from their dusty birth clouds. Infrared light allows us to see through warm dust and detect the newborn clusters during the emergence process, while visible light reveals the stars after the gas has been dispersed.
“By comparing how many clusters we see in each stage, we can estimate how long it takes for young star clusters to emerge and how this depends on their mass in stars,” says Alex Pedrini.
The authors detected around nine thousands young star clusters in all the four galaxies, finding that more massive clusters emerge, on average, quicker than lower mass clusters.
Understanding of early stages
The findings suggest that massive star clusters may form in very dense regions where gas is more efficient at forming new stars than in environments where low-mass clusters form. Together with results from simulations, this work provides a more complete understanding of the early stages of star cluster emergence.
“Because massive star clusters disperse their birth gas more quickly, more of their energetic and ionizing radiation can escape into the galaxy, making them important sources of ionizing radiation in galaxies”, says Alex Pedrini.
Synergy between observations
“This study is a team effort enabled by the unique synergy between HST and JWST observations. Understanding how star clusters form and affect their environment is one of the main goals of the FEAST team”, says Angela Adamo”, associate professor at the Department of Astronomy and leader of FEAST, addressing fundamental questions related to star formation and stellar feedback across a wide range of galactic environments.
Opens for more knowledge
Understanding the emergence process in detail can help in figuring out how galaxies re-ionized the early universe, even though the galaxies in this study are in our local universe. The results also have implications for planet formation: in regions dominated by massive clusters, faster gas dispersal may reduce the time available for planets to form.
“With upcoming JWST observations, we will be able to study a wider variety of galaxies and more extreme cosmic environments, helping us uncover how young star clusters emerge and how stars and planets begin their lives across the Universe”, says Alex Pedrini.
FACTS
*FEAST (Feedback in Emerging Extragalactic Star ClusTers) is a James Webb Space Telescope Cycle 1 international program led by Angela Adamo and involving several researchers from Stockholm University: Alex Pedrini, Arjan Bik, Giacomo Bortolini, Helena Faustino Vieira, Jens Melinder, and Göran Östlin. Together with a team of about 30 astronomers from around the world, the collaboration aims to address fundamental questions related to star formation and stellar feedback across a wide range of galactic environments.
Read more
Find more information and images in a press release from ESA
Angela Adamo, Associate professor at the Department of Astronomy and leader of FEAST.
Credit
Arjan Bik
A graphic showing three images of spiral galaxy M51. The top image spans the spiral arms and the galactic centre. A large upright portion of the spiral arm on the left is highlighted in a box, which expands to the image on the left, showing the area in more colour and greater detail. This image has a scale bar labelled “1000 light-years”. A square indicates a cloud of gas, shown enlarged on the right with a scale bar “100 light-years”.
Find all formats and a zoom version at ESA: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2608/
Credit
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
(picture 2, color composites of the four galaxies)
A collage featuring four images of spiral galaxies observed by Webb. Blue colours, especially in the centre of the galaxies, are near-infrared light that show the location of bright stars. Orange and yellow show ionised gas and red colours come from complex molecules and dust grains; these are longer mid-infrared wavelengths. They trace out the spiral arms of each galaxy as a network of filaments with cavities in between.]
Credit
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
Journal
Nature Astronomy
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The emerging timescale of young star clusters regulated by cluster stellar mass
Article Publication Date
6-May-2026
DAMPE observes charge-dependent limit of cosmic ray acceleration
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
Cosmic rays (CRs) are energetic particles traveling through space at speeds close to that of light. They consist of atomic nuclei, electrons, positrons, high-energy gamma rays, and neutrinos, and are thought to originate from extreme astrophysical objects such as supernova remnants, rapidly rotating neutron stars, and accreting black holes.
Although CRs have been studied for more than a century, fundamental questions—how and where they are produced, how they are accelerated, and how they propagate and interact in interstellar space—have persisted.
Answering these questions relies on understanding the energy spectrum of CRs—how particle numbers vary with energy. For this reason, obtaining precise measurements of the spectra of individual CR components is key to understanding cosmic-ray physics.
Now, the international collaboration of the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) satellite has, for the first time, directly observed the charge-dependent "spectral softening" of five primary cosmic-ray nuclei, i.e. protons, helium, carbon, oxygen, and iron, whereby the number of these particles drops off more steeply at higher energies.
This observation confirms the charge-dependent acceleration model—termed the Peters cycle—which was first proposed in 1961 by Bernard Peters. According to the model, the maximum energy a cosmic ray can reach is proportional to its electric charge (Z). It also offers a key clue to solving the longstanding mystery of the origin of Galactic cosmic rays.
The study was published in Nature on April 29. It was led by researchers from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with their collaborators from other institutions.
DAMPE, also known as "Wukong," is designed to study high-energy CRs and indirectly probe dark matter. Since its launch in late 2015, DAMPE has operated flawlessly and has recorded about 18.5 billion high-energy particle events. Its excellent energy resolution, good particle identification capability, and reasonably large acceptance (how many particles can be collected) make it suitable for studying the spectral structures of CRs, particularly in the tera- to peta-electronvolt range.
Based on nine years of data collected in orbit, the DAMPE collaboration precisely measured the spectra of the five most abundant cosmic-ray nuclei and, for the first time, directly detected distinct spectral softenings in carbon, oxygen, and iron nuclei by extending the measurements to the peta-electronvolt energy range. Combined with the updated proton and helium spectra, the collaboration found that spectral softening appears universally at a rigidity (momentum per unit charge) of about 15 teravolts, and nuclei-mass-dependent softening is rejected at a confidence level of >99.999%.
These findings, combined with large-scale anisotropy measurements, indicate the presence of a nearby cosmic-ray accelerator, with the observed spectral softening marking its charge-dependent energy limit.
The DAMPE observation provides the first experimental verification of the Peters cycle, which posited that particle acceleration in magnetic fields should obey a charge-dependent limit. With this achievement, DAMPE is expected to shed new light on fundamental questions about cosmic-ray physics.
Journal
Nature
Article Title
Charge-dependent spectral softenings of primary cosmic rays below the knee
Space junk falls to Earth faster when sunspots peak, and this can help prevent collisions with satellites
Scientists have shown for the first time that solar activity can predict the rate at which space junk and satellites descend from orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) between 400 and 2,000 km altitude is ideal for imaging and surveillance satellites and internet ‘mega-constellations’ such as Starlink. Unfortunately, these days it’s also chock-full of ‘junk’ like old satellite debris and rocket stages, and these threaten new space launches. For example, even one collision may spread damage through a domino effect. Because missions to capture space junk with robots are still in their infancy, scientists today focus mainly on tracking debris more accurately to identify the most dangerous objects for future removal.
“Here we show that space debris around Earth loses altitude much faster when the Sun is more active,” said Ayisha M Ashruf, a scientist and engineer at the Space Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, India, and the corresponding author of a new study in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.
“For the first time, we find that once solar activity passes a certain level, this loss of altitude happens noticeably more quickly. This observation is expected to be key for planning sustainable space operations in the future.”
Chasing the Sun
The Sun has an 11-year cycle of active and quiet phases – correlated with the number of sunspots – which results in changes in the intensity at which it emits
UV radiation and charged particles, for example helium nuclei and heavy ions. When this outward stream peaks, like most recently in late 2024, solar emissions heat and expand upwards into the Earth’s thermosphere (located between approximately 100 and 1,000 km, with a temperature between 500 and 2,500 °C). This in turns raises the atmospheric density around orbiting bodies (between 350 and 36,000 km) and increases the resistance or ‘drag’ on them, thus slowing them down and making them fall faster.
Ayisha and colleagues from the same institute followed the historic trajectory of 17 LEO space junk objects over a 36-year period since the 1960s, during the 22nd through 24th solar cycles. These objects orbit the Earth every 90 to 120 minutes at an altitude between 600 and 800 km, and are yet to reenter the atmosphere, where they will ultimately burn up.
Because space junk doesn’t perform active station-keeping maneuvers like satellites do, changes in the speed of their descent (‘orbital decay’) only depend on fluctuations in thermospheric density. “This makes space debris an excellent tool for tracing long-term solar-activity effect on atmospheric drag,” wrote the authors.
The scientists linked the trajectories to long-term data at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam that track the number of sunspots and daily changes in the Sun’s radio and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) emissions.
Crossing the threshold
The results showed that when the number of sunspots is higher than two-thirds of its maximum, space junk passes through a ‘transition boundary’ – a threshold beyond which it begins to fall much faster.
“This threshold doesn’t seem to be tied to a fixed value of solar radiation, but rather to how close the Sun is to its peak activity. Around this point, the Sun produces more intense EUV radiation, which may be driven by changes in solar processes that become stronger near the peak,” concluded Ayisha Ashruf.
The authors stress that their results are expected to help space scientists plan the trajectories of satellites better, avoiding collisions with space junk.
“Our results imply that when solar activity passes certain levels, satellites – just like space junk – lose altitude faster so that more orbit corrections are required. This directly affects how long satellites stay in orbit and how much fuel they need, especially for missions launched near a solar maximum,” explained Ayisha Ashruf.
“What is most interesting is that all of this information comes from objects launched back in the 1960s. They are still contributing to science, serving as valuable tools for studying long-term effects of solar activity on the thermosphere.”
Journal
Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Characterizing Solar Cycle Influence on Long-Term Orbital Deterioration of Low-Earth Orbiting Space Debris
Article Publication Date
6-May-2026
On the ground or in the atmosphere? New satellite data can help characterize and pinpoint destructive events
European Geosciences Union
image:
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare, seen as the bright flash toward the upper middle, on Feb. 4, 2026. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in blue and red.
view moreCredit: NASA/SDO: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/strong-solar-flare/
Vienna, Austria - When solar storms strike Earth, they can disrupt power grids, rail systems, satellites, and even marine life. These effects arise because solar wind and geomagnetic activity disturb the magnetosphere–ionosphere system, generating electric and magnetic field variations that can resemble fainter signals from natural hazards. This risk is not theoretical. On 03 February, 2022, a moderate space weather event demonstrated its destructive potential: Shortly after launch, SpaceX lost 38 out of 49 Starlink satellites. The incident underscores how even modest geomagnetic storms can significantly disrupt human systems and highlights the need for more accurate prediction and forecasting.
New research at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU26) highlights a new project launched by the European Space Agency called Swarm-AWARE (Swarm Investigation of Space Weather and Natural Hazards Effects). Georgios Balasis of the National Observatory of Athens in Greece will present how data from Swarm satellites, combined with ground-based and Copernicus Sentinel-5P observations, can help distinguish ionospheric electromagnetic signatures driven by space weather from those linked to natural hazards. Their research has important implications for infrastructure, communications, and early-warning systems.
Swarm satellites are collecting measurements of Earth’s magnetic field, plasma densities and temperatures, electric fields and an array of other important data. By integrating these datasets with complementary observations, researchers aim to advance our understanding of how space weather impacts the near-Earth environment, and to separate those effects from hazard-driven signals. The 2022 Hunga Tonga eruption provides a benchmark case, Balasis says. “The eruption not only pumped tons of water from the South Pacific Ocean into the stratosphere, but generated waves that reached the upper atmosphere, causing significant perturbations in the ionospheric density,” he says. “The waves triggered electric fields that travelled along magnetic field lines, causing instantaneous changes on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.” These disturbances were all detected by Swarm magnetometers. The Swarm-AWARE team will apply machine learning and advanced time series analysis to satellite and ground data in hopes of better understanding how space weather affects infrastructure but also move toward reliable space weather predictions. Ultimately, the project will not only support future scientific research but also help organizations make better decisions in [near]real time.
Text written by Alka Tripathy-Lang.
Note to the media:
When reporting on this story, please mention the EGU General Assembly 2026, which is taking place from 03– 08 May 2026. This research will be presented at Session EMRP2.6 on Wednesday, 06 May at 08:30-10:15 CEST, Hall X2, X2.119.
If reporting online, please include a link to the abstract: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU26/EGU26-11971.html
Molecules shed light on dark matter
Analysis of precision measurements of unexplored interactions between electrons and atomic nuclei give information of new particles
Dark matter particles could be mediators of the interaction between electrons and atomic nuclei, as shown by a study conducted by junior group leader, Dr. Konstantin Gaul, Dr. Lei Cong, and Professor Dr. Dmitry Budker, of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Helmoltz Institute Mainz (HIM) and the PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence. Their work, published last week in the renowned journal Physical Review Letters, presents new constraints on previously unexplored candidates for dark matter and more generally, some hypothetical particles that are not included in the Standard Model of particle physics (SM).
Using results from precision measurements on barium monofluoride (BaF) molecules, the team constrained these interactions mediated by Z’ bosons for the first time. Z’ bosons are hypothetical mediators of the weak interaction and possible dark matter particles in several SM extensions. “These results address a significant blind spot in physics: a regime of forces between electrons and nuclei that had remained unexplored by both laboratory experiments and cosmological data,” explained Gaul. Our universe is made up of about four percent of visible, or ordinary, matter. This includes planets, stars, and life on Earth. The remaining 96 percent of the universe are invisible and consist of dark matter and dark energy, with dark matter making up about 23 percent. Astrophysical observations confirm its presence throughout the cosmos, where it, for example, plays an important part on the structure of galaxies. However, we don’t know what particles make up dark matter. Many theories and ongoing experiments are looking for an answer to this open question.
An interdisciplinary approach to a fundamental question in particle physics
To determine the contribution of Z’ bosons to the interaction between electrons and nuclei, which gives rise to the so-called hyperfine structure of atoms, the authors used the supercomputer MOGON 2 at JGU to reinterpret existing results of precision measurements in BaF molecules. This study did not only require good knowledge of the weak interaction and the properties of these beyond SM bosons, but also a solid foundation of atomic, molecular and nuclear physics, making this a truly interdisciplinary project. “Konstantin Gaul and Lei Cong are new-generation theorists working at the interface of atomic, molecular, and optical physics, particle, and nuclear physics,” said Budker. “Having them embedded in a mostly experimental group within HIM and PRISMA++ has led to highly productive collaborations and very interesting and important results, of which this work is just one example.”
In the search for “new physics” such an approach might be able to shed light on long-standing questions. As Gaul explained: “Because the dense internal environment of polar molecules naturally amplifies subtle physical effects, they act as powerful laboratories for detecting new forces that are otherwise invisible to science.”
The study also found similar bounds by analyzing the parity-violation experiment with the atom cesium 133, which is a more traditional method of studying the interactions between electrons and atomic nuclei. However, in contrast to studies of experiments with atoms, the analysis of diatomic molecules, such as BaF, currently does not depend on nuclear theory. This means that, since they are not affected by uncertainties related to nuclear physics, the results can be more precise. “The current study proves that measurements of molecular physics are an emerging tool for new physics, rivaling traditional atomic methods. Our findings demonstrate that future experiments with heavy diatomic species like RaF will boost sensitivity by 100-fold, pushing deeper into unexplored territory to hunt for the hidden forces of the universe,” concluded Gaul.
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Constraints on New Vector Boson Mediated Electron-Nucleus Interactions from Spectroscopy
Article Publication Date
6-May-2026
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