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New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe—not a flaw in telescope measurements—may be behind the decade-long mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago. The new data confirms the Hubble Space Telescope measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies, offering a crucial cross-check to address the mismatch in measurements of the universe's mysterious expansion. Known as the Hubble tension, the discrepancy remains unexplained even by the best cosmology models. The research builds on the work of Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and his Nobel Prize–winning discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating owing to a mysterious "dark energy" permeating vast stretches of space between stars and galaxies.

On December 9, 2024, Google’s Quantum AI team, under the leadership of Hartmut Neven, unveiled Willow, a state-of-the-art quantum computing chip that has the ability to not only exponentially correct errors, but also process certain computations orders of magnitude faster than today’s fastest supercomputers. For example, Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in less than five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe. Most folks are familiar with classical computing based on binary digits (or “bits”) that can be either 1’s or 0’s. They power everything from video games, to smart phones, to graphics computers, to the most massive data centers. Classical computers underlie all of the digital innovations of the past half-century. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is an entirely new style of computing. Rather than using classical bits, quantum computers use quantum bits, or “qubits.” Qubits behave according to the laws of quantum physics. Instead of being confined to the “either/or” of binary 1’s and 0’s, they can exist as a blend of both. Qubits can store information in states of superposition (multiple states at the same time) of 0 and 1. They can also be entangled with each other to make even more complex combinations — e.g., two qubits can be in a blend of 00, 01, 10 and 11. When you entangle lots of qubits together, you open up a vast number of states they can be in, which provides massive amounts of computational power. Those two special properties enable quantum computers to solve some of the most difficult problems much, much faster than regular, classical computers can. Unlike classical computing chips — which are produced by a huge and well-established industry — quantum computing is a new style of computing that requires Google to make its own qubit chips in-house with superconducting materials in the integrated circuits. By patterning superconducting metals in a unique way, Google forms circuits with capacitance (the ability to store energy in electrical fields) and inductance (the ability to store energy in magnetic fields), along with special nonlinear elements called Josephson junctions. By carefully choosing materials and dialing in the fabrication processes, Google can build chips with high-quality qubits that can be controlled and integrated into large, complex devices.

Welcome to the night sky report for December 2024 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all visible during the month. Also, the Geminid meteor shower peaks at mid-month. Step outside on a cold December night when the stars shine bright to find the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus. They will help you locate a binary star system (Eta Cassiopeiae), a fan-shaped open star cluster M103 (NGC 581), and a variable star (Mu Cephei). Also, throughout the month, you can find Pegasus, the winged stallion, high overhead in the south. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Aftershock II, the latest rocket designed and built by the student-run USC Rocket Propulsion Lab (USCRPL) at the University of Southern California (USC), has broken the international civilian-built rocket altitude record – reaching further into space than any non-governmental and non-commercial group has ever flown before. Aftershock II officially became the highest and fastest civilian-built rocket of all time following its successful launch to space on October 20, 2024. A post-flight internal data review concluded that the rocket achieved a world-record altitude of 470,400 feet and a top speed of 5283 feet per second (Mach 5.5).

Test pilot Roy Martin: “Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. We just fixed it.” NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft, developed at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, has fired up its engine for the first time. These engine-run tests start at low power and allow the X-59 team to verify that the aircraft’s systems are working together properly while powered by its own engine. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to demonstrate how the X-59 can fly supersonic without generating loud sonic booms and then survey what people hear when it flies overhead. Public reaction to the quieter sonic "thumps," which should be no louder than a car door shutting, will be shared with regulators who will then consider writing new sound-based rules to lift the ban on faster-than-sound flight over land. First flight of the X-59 is scheduled for 2025.

Since it arrived at Jupiter in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been probing beneath the dense, forbidding clouds encircling the giant planet – the first orbiter to peer so closely. It seeks answers to questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our Solar System, and giant planets across the cosmos. During a recent close encounter with Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this color-enhanced view of the giant planet’s northern hemisphere. It provides a detailed view of chaotic clouds and cyclonic storms in an area known to scientists as a folded filamentary region. In these regions, the zonal jets that create the familiar banded patterns in Jupiter’s clouds break down, leading to turbulent patterns and cloud structures that rapidly evolve over the course of only a few days.

Welcome to the night sky report for November 2024 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. This month, hunt for the fainter constellations of fall, including Pisces, Aries, and Triangulum. They will guide you to several galaxies, including the spiral galaxies M74 (NGC 628, the Phantom Galaxy) and M33 (NGC 598, the Triangulum Galaxy). Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter can be observed during the month. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

NASA’s Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. The spacecraft launched on October 14, 2024 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft is the largest that NASA has ever built for a mission headed to another planet. Europa Clipper also is the first NASA mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) on a trajectory that will leverage the power of gravity assists, first to Mars in four months and then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026. After it begins orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times.

Mars wasn’t always the cold desert we see today. There’s increasing evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet’s surface billions of years ago. And if there was water, there must also have been a thick atmosphere to keep that water from freezing. But sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, the water dried up and the air, once heavy with carbon dioxide, dramatically thinned leaving only the wisp of an atmosphere that clings to the planet today. Where exactly did the Martian atmosphere go? This question has been a central mystery of the planet’s 4.6 billion year history. For two MIT geologists, the answer may lie in the planet’s clay. They propose that much of the missing atmosphere could be locked up in the planet’s clay surface as methane — a form of carbon that could be stored undisturbed for eons.

Welcome to the night sky report for October 2024 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. The highlight of this October is a potentially bright comet (C/2023 A3 aka Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) that will appear around mid-month. In addition, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter can be observed along with the Moon. The crisp, clear October nights are also full of celestial showpieces for the deep sky observer. For example, find Pegasus the flying horse of Greek mythology to pinpoint nice dense globular clusters and galaxies. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Fritz Zwicky was not a shy person – He called them like he saw them. And he was very outspoken about his views. He, for example, was the first astrophysicist to come up with the concept of Dark Matter in 1933. He also had very strong views about redshift. Zwicky's contention was that the redshift observed from Earth was not because the galaxies were moving faster and faster away from us, but because the light photons were being shifted toward the red side of the spectrum as they lost energy while traveling long distances through space. Zwicky proposed that the longer the light traveled, the more energy it lost, leading to an illusion that galaxies that were more distant from Earth were also moving faster. His “Tired Light Theory” was largely ignored and neglected at the time (and even today), as astronomers adopted the more popular Big Bang Theory as the consensus model of the Universe. Now, new peer-reviewed research from Kansas State University shows that Fritz Zwicky may actually have been right, putting the whole narrative supporting the Big Bang Theory into question.

Welcome to the night sky report for September 2024 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. During the month you will have an opportunity to view five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), as well as a supermoon eclipse and a NASA solar sail satellite. In September, Pegasus becomes increasingly prominent in the southeastern sky, allowing skywatchers to locate globular clusters M2 (NGC 7089), M30 (NGC 7099), as well as a nearby double star, Alpha Capricorni, which is an optical double (but not a binary pair). Also, if you have access to dark skies away from urban light pollution, you might be able to get a glimpse of the faint, glowing pillar of the zodiacal light, which is sunlight reflecting off of an interplanetary dust cloud between Earth and the inner fringes of the main asteroid belt, just past Mars. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

It may seem like the Sun is stationary while the orbiting planets are moving, but actually the Sun is also orbiting around the Milky Way Galaxy at an impressive rate of about 220 kilometers per second — almost half a million miles per hour. As swift as that may seem, when a faint red star was discovered moving even faster across the sky, clocking in at a speed of about 1.3 million miles per hour (600 kilometers per second), scientists took notice. Located just 400 light-years from Earth, this rare stellar speedster is the first “hypervelocity” very low mass star found. More remarkably, this star may be on an unusual trajectory that could cause it to leave the Milky Way Galaxy altogether based on research led by University of California (UC) San Diego Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Adam Burgasser. This hypervelocity star was found thanks to the efforts of citizen-scientists and a team of astronomers from around the country using several telescopes, including two in Hawaii – W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii Island and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on the peak of Haleakala in Maui. So how did the volunteer citizen-scientists contribute? This project capitalized on the keen ability of humans, who are evolutionarily programmed to look for patterns and spot anomalies in a way that is unmatched by computer technology. Volunteers tagged what they perceived to be moving objects in the large data files and when enough volunteers tagged the same object, astronomers investigated and eventually made the discovery.

The Universe is teeming with galaxies, each brimming with billions of stars. Though all galaxies shine brightly, many are cloaked in dust while others are so distant that to observers on Earth they appear as little more than faint smudges. By creating comprehensive maps of even the dimmest and most-distant galaxies, astronomers are better able to study the structure of the Universe. The largest such map to date has just grown even larger, with the tenth data release from the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Survey. The DESI Legacy Imaging Survey expands on the data included in two earlier companion surveys: the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Legacy Survey and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey. Jointly these three surveys imaged 14,000 square degrees of the sky visible from the northern hemisphere. This ambitious six-year effort involved three telescopes, one petabyte (1000 trillion bytes) of data, and 100 million CPU hours on one of the world’s most powerful computers at the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.