JWST Will Hunt for Dead Solar Systems--and Much More--in Its Second Year of Science

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May 18, 2023

This week, our top story is about great things to come from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is poised to begin its second year of science operations (also known as “Cycle 2”). Only days ago, researchers from around the world reacted with agony or ecstasy to the disclosure of whether or not their proposals to use fractions of JWST’s precious observing time had been approved. But beyond sparking personal drama, the freshly-released plans also offer a potent preview of Cycle 2’s scientific winners and losers—and thus a hint of where and when JWST’s next rounds of transformative discovery will emerge. Elsewhere this week, we have stories about weird rocks on Mars, record-breaking cosmic explosions and quantum cats, the debatable astronomical benefits of SpaceX’s Starship, and much more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics

Astronomy JWST Will Hunt for Dead Solar Systems--and Much More--in Its Second Year of Science White dwarfs, Earth-sized exoplanets, early galaxies and even Saturn’s moon Enceladus are on the agenda for JWST’s second year in space, but exomoons and others miss out By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Astronomy Elon Musk's Starship Won't Save Astronomy from Satellites Cluttering the Sky Launching a fleet of space telescopes is not the solution to the Starlink problem By Phil Plait

Astronomy Betelgeuse's Brightening Raises Hopes for a Supernova Spectacle Betelgeuse, the red star at the shoulder of the constellation Orion, has been acting strange, raising hopes for the spectacle of a lifetime By Meghan Bartels

Astrophysics Is Time Travel Even Possible? Two SciAm editors duke it out to see if wormholes and multiverses could in fact exist. By Lee Billings,Clara Moskowitz,Alexa Lim,Tulika Bose | 07:26

Astronomy What Created This Mini Book-Shaped Rock on Mars? A book-shaped rock spotted by the Curiosity rover on Mars is the result of an interplay of wind, water—and the human brain By Stephanie Pappas

Planetary Science We Live in the Rarest Type of Planetary System New work suggests four distinct star system types—and finds our own in the rarest category By Lee Billings

Particle Physics Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities Experiments that imitate solid materials with light waves reveal the quantum basis of exotic physical effects By Charles D. Brown II

Energy What Is the Future of Fusion Energy? Nuclear fusion won’t arrive in time to fix climate change, but it could be essential for our future energy needs By Philip Ball

Astronomy Scientists Solve Star Spin Mystery Magnetic fields help to explain why some stars are spinning more slowly than astronomers thought they should By Clara Moskowitz,Lucy Reading-Ikkanda

Astrophysics Largest-Ever Cosmic Explosion Has Raged for Years For at least three years, the mysterious blast has shined ten times brighter than any supernova By Robert Lea,SPACE.com

Quantum Physics Physicists Create Biggest-Ever Schrödinger's Cat Physicists have put the largest-ever object into a quantum superposition By Lars Fischer,Daisy Yuhas

Weather Bizarre, Unexplained Rumblings in Earth's Atmosphere Puzzle Scientists Solar-powered balloons detected strange, ultra low-frequency rumblings in Earth’s stratosphere that, so far, scientists can’t identify By Ben Turner,LiveScience

Cosmology Mirror-Image Supernova Yields Surprising Estimate of Cosmic Growth A new way to gauge the universe’s expansion rate has delivered a confusing result that may conflict with previous related measurements By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Public Health Astronomy Tool Can Now Detect COVID in Breath Laser-based optical frequency combs, originally developed to time atomic clocks, can also perform fast, noninvasive tests for COVID—and potentially other diseases as well By Starre Vartan

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The future of ground-based astronomy is bright. And that's bad." Phil Plait, astronomer and Scientific American columnist, on the light pollution from artificial satellites that threatens dark-sky astronomical observations around the globe

FROM THE ARCHIVE Is Time Travel Possible? The laws of physics allow time travel. So why haven’t people become chronological hoppers? By Sarah Scoles | April 2023

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