For the first time ever astronomers may have glimpsed light from a world in a life-friendly orbit around another star.The planet candidate remains unverified and formally unnamed, little more than a small clump of pixels on a computer screen, a potential signal surfacing from a sea of background noise. If proved genuine, the find would in most respects not be particularly remarkable: a “warm Neptune” estimated to be five to seven times larger than Earth, the kind of world that galactic census takers such as NASA’s Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite missions have revealed to be...…For the first time ever astronomers may have glimpsed light from a world in a life-friendly orbit around another star.The planet candidate remains unverified and formally unnamed, little more than a small clump of pixels on a computer screen, a potential signal surfacing from a sea of background noise. If proved genuine, the find would in most respects not be particularly remarkable: a “warm Neptune” estimated to be five to seven times larger than Earth, the kind of world that galactic census takers such as NASA’s Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite missions have revealed to be...WW…

It’s never aliens—until it is. On December 18th news leaked in the British newspaper the  of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nonetheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial...…It’s never aliens—until it is. On December 18th news leaked in the British newspaper the  of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nonetheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial...WW…

In a landmark study, a team of Chinese scientists using an experimental satellite has tested quantum entanglement over unprecedented distances, beaming entangled pairs of photons to three ground stations across China—each separated by more than 1,200 kilometers. The test verifies a mysterious and long-held tenet of quantum theory, and firmly establishes China as the front-runner in a burgeoning “quantum space race” to create a secure, quantum-based global communications network—that is, a potentially unhackable “quantum internet” that would be of immense geopolitical importance. The...…In a landmark study, a team of Chinese scientists using an experimental satellite has tested quantum entanglement over unprecedented distances, beaming entangled pairs of photons to three ground stations across China—each separated by more than 1,200 kilometers. The test verifies a mysterious and long-held tenet of quantum theory, and firmly establishes China as the front-runner in a burgeoning “quantum space race” to create a secure, quantum-based global communications network—that is, a potentially unhackable “quantum internet” that would be of immense geopolitical importance. The...WW…

Thirty years ago a team of NASA astronauts tipped the Hubble Space Telescope out of a space shuttle’s cargo bay and into low-Earth orbit. High above our planet’s starlight-smearing atmosphere, Hubble could study phenomena across the cosmos that ground-based observatories could never hope to see. It was not the first space telescope, but it is by far the longest-lived and most productive—thanks in large part to an innovative design that allowed Hubble to be visited, repaired and upgraded. Today it has irreversibly transformed astronomy, leading not only to profound new discoveries about the...…Thirty years ago a team of NASA astronauts tipped the Hubble Space Telescope out of a space shuttle’s cargo bay and into low-Earth orbit. High above our planet’s starlight-smearing atmosphere, Hubble could study phenomena across the cosmos that ground-based observatories could never hope to see. It was not the first space telescope, but it is by far the longest-lived and most productive—thanks in large part to an innovative design that allowed Hubble to be visited, repaired and upgraded. Today it has irreversibly transformed astronomy, leading not only to profound new discoveries about the...WW…