Space

The weather and climate on other planets has unusual features but planetary astronomers think JWST could potentially discover clues to help answer the fundamental question of “Where do we come from?”

The time has come for the James Webb Space Telescope to take exoplanet astronomy to the outer reaches. European researchers have been doing a lot of groundwork in preparation for this moment.

Robots are learning to walk and work. While robot dogs are not yet man's best friend, real autonomy and reasoning will make them useful companions in industry, search & rescue and even space exploration. But you must walk before you can run and machines are learning lessons from biology for better walking robots.

A deeper understanding of black holes could revolutionise our understanding of physics, but their mysterious nature makes them difficult to observe.

Each year, nearly three-quarters of a million people die from mosquito-borne diseases, and with climate change the problem is getting worse. EU researchers are giving public health officials the tools they need to take targeted action fast.

This article was originally published on 19 April 2021.

Asteroids can pose a threat to life on Earth but are also a valuable source of resources to make fuel or water to aid deep space exploration. Devoid of geological and atmospheric processes, these space rocks provide a window onto the evolution of the solar system. But to really understand their secrets, scientists must know what’s inside them.

Groundbreaking discoveries about gravitational waves, black holes, cosmic rays, neutrinos and other areas of cutting-edge astronomy may soon become more frequent due to the convergence of two major communities of astronomers in a fresh project.

Just as human beings and all other living things exist in a vast number of different forms thanks to their genetic makeup, so different types of planets occur due to the chemical processes at work in the dusty regions surrounding newborn stars.

As anyone who has ever tried to clean a home knows, ridding yourself of dust is a Sisyphean effort. No surface stays free of it for long. It turns out that space is somewhat similar. Space is filled with interplanetary dust, which the Earth constantly collects as it plods around the sun – in orbit, in the atmosphere, and if it’s large enough, on the ground as micrometeorites.

There are a lot of things that pose a threat to our planet – climate change, natural disasters, and solar flares, for example. But one threat in particular often captures public imagination, finding itself popularised in books and films and regularly generating alarming headlines: asteroids.