This is the third in my annual series reviewing everything that happened in the LLM space over the past 12 months. For previous years see Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023 and Things we learned about LLMs in 2024.
It’s been a year filled with a lot of different trends.
You can’t see, feel, hear, taste or smell them, but tiny particles from space are constantly raining down on us.
They come from cosmic rays—high-energy particles that can originate from exploding stars and other extreme astrophysical events far beyond our solar system. When the rays collide with atoms high in Earth’s protective atmosphere, they trigger a cascade of secondary particles. Among the most important of these new particles are muons, which can pass through the atmosphere and even penetrate into the ground.
An invention by University of Delaware physics professor Spencer Axani called CosmicWatch is putting the science of muons in the palms of experienced scientists and high school students alike.
How does a star affect the makeup of its planets? And what does this mean for the habitability of distant worlds? Carnegie’s Luke Bouma is exploring a new way to probe this critical question—using naturally occurring space weather stations that orbit at least 10% of M dwarf stars during their early lives. He is presenting his work at the 247th American Astronomical Society meeting.
The paper is also published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
We know that most M dwarf stars—which are smaller, cooler, and dimmer than our own sun—host at least one Earth-sized rocky planet. Most of them are inhospitable—too hot for liquid water or atmospheres, or hit with frequent stellar flares and intense radiation. But they could still prove to be interesting laboratories for understanding the many ways that stars shape the surroundings in which their planets exist.
“What’s so exciting is that we’re seeing a preview of what will become a very normal planetary system,” said Dr. John Livingston.
How are the most common types of planets made? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the intricate processes responsible for the most common types of exoplanets—super-Earths and sub-Neptunes—to form and evolve. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand not only planetary formation and evolution, but for solar systems, as our solar system doesn’t have super-Earths or sub-Neptunes.
For the study, the researchers conducted a multi-year examination of the V1298 Tau system, which is an approximately 20-million-year-old system located about 350 light-years from Earth and hosts four growing exoplanets orbiting in a tight formation, and each being between 5 to 10 Earth radii. Given the young age of the system, as our solar system is about 4.5 billion-years-old, the goal of the study was to predict the sizes of the four planets when they stop evolving.
In the end, the researchers ascertained that while the four young planets are between 5–10 Earth radii right now, they will end up being between 1–4.5 Earth radii when they are done forming. They note this is due to the rapid cooling they underwent after initial formation due to their small masses and large radii, resulting in their shrinking while losing their atmospheres, with one of the researchers calling this the “missing link” in understanding the formation of super-Earth and sub-Neptunes, which are the most common types of exoplanets.
“When we see a region on the sun with an extremely complex magnetic field, we can assume that there is a large amount of energy there that will have to be released as solar storms,” said Dr. Louise Harra.
How can astronomers observe and study the Sun’s activity in the most efficient way despite the Sun and Earth orbiting each other at different speeds? This is what a recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated new methods for studying the Sun with the goal of better understanding its activity and how it influences Earth.
For the study, the researchers collected data from the Sun using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, which orbits the Sun once every six months and is fixed on the nearside of the Sun towards Earth, respectively. The goal of the study was to observe the solar active region called NOAA 13,664, which is one of the most misunderstood and active regions observed over the last 20 years.
During the 94-day study period, lasting from April to June 2024, the researchers successfully observed a full cycle of activity from NOAA 13,664, including an initial 20-day buildup of energy, peaking approximately one month after initiation, followed by a wind-down period lasting approximately two months. These results could help scientists better understand the magnetic field activity of the Sun and predict future solar activity.
Simultaneous ground-and space-based observations of a newly discovered free-floating planet have enabled direct measurement of its mass and distance from Earth, according to a new Science study.
The findings offer insights into the diverse and dynamic pathways by which planets can be cast adrift into interstellar space.
Learn more in a new Science Perspective.
A collaboration between ground and space observations unveils a rogue planet.
Gavin A. L. Coleman Authors Info & Affiliations
Science
Questions to inspire discussion.
Commercial Availability & Pricing.
A: Unitree is reportedly eyeing a $7 billion IPO, reflecting growing investor confidence in humanoid robotics as a serious commercial category with clear trajectory toward public, industrial, and commercial space operations.
Technical Specifications & Capabilities.
🤸 Q: What physical capabilities does the Unitree H2 demonstrate and how is it engineered?
A: The H2 humanoid performs flying kicks, backflips, and sandbag strikes using 31 degrees of freedom (12 in shoulders, 6 per arm, 3 in torso, 7 per leg), showcasing agility for potential real-world applications.
The giant planet Jupiter has nearly 100 known moons, yet none have captured the interest and imagination of astronomers and space scientists quite like Europa, an ice-shrouded world that is thought to possess a vast ocean of liquid salt water. For decades, scientists have wondered whether that ocean could harbor the right conditions for life, placing Europa near the top of the list of solar system bodies to explore.
A new study led by Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, throws cold water on the idea that Europa could support life at the seafloor. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Co-authors from the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences include Professor Philip Skemer, associate chair of the department; Professor Jeffrey Catalano; Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor; and graduate student Henry Dawson. Byrne, Skemer, Catalano, Wiens, and Dawson are also members of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.
Astronomers have captured the most detailed look yet at faraway galaxies at the peak of their youth, an active time when the adolescent galaxies were fervently producing new stars.
The observations focused on 18 galaxies located 12.5 billion light-years away. They were imaged across a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to radio over the past eight years by a trio of telescopes: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope; NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST); and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile, of which the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a partner. Data from other ground-based telescopes were also used to make measurements, such as the total mass of stars in the galaxies.
“With this sample, we are uniquely poised to study galaxy evolution during a key epoch in the universe that has been hard to image until now,” says Andreas Faisst, a staff scientist at IPAC, a science and data center for astronomy at Caltech. “Thanks to these exceptional telescopes, we have spatially resolved these galaxies and can observe the stages of star formation as they were happening and their chemical properties when our universe was less than a billion years old.”