Some of Earth's Most Famous Art Started with Stardust

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July 06, 2023

This week, we're thinking about Van Gogh's Starry Night—or, rather, the starry sources for the pigments in its thickly-daubed brushstrokes. Our lead story is an astrophysicist's thoughtful reflection about how paint colors such as cobalt blue and cadmium yellow actually have their origins in core-collapse supernovae, merging pairs of neutron stars, and other celestial cataclysms that generate the heavier elements of the periodic table. After appreciating this astronomical side of art, indulge in our other offerings this week, which include articles on the launch of Europe's latest, greatest space telescope, a neutrino-based map of the Milky Way, the potential discovery of interstellar meteor fragments, and much, much more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics

Space Exploration Some of Earth's Most Famous Art Started with Stardust Astrophysics reminds us that earthly beauty has stellar origins By Sanjana Curtis

Dark Energy Europe's Euclid Space Telescope Is Launching a New Era in Studies of the 'Dark Universe' The Euclid mission will probe dark energy and dark matter like never before, setting the stage for an international, multiobservatory push to solve some of the universe's deepest mysteries By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Astrophysics In a First, Scientists See Neutrinos Emitted by the Milky Way The disk of our galaxy was long thought to produce these ghostly high-energy particles, but they haven't been detected until now By Stephanie Pappas

Space Exploration Have We Found Fragments of a Meteor from Another Star? Tiny spheres of once-molten metal magnetically dredged from the seafloor could be pieces from IM1, a potential interstellar meteor that struck Earth in 2014 By Amir Siraj

Astronomy Earth's Aphelion Isn't the Reason for the Seasons Our planet's not-quite-circular orbit means that on July 6 we'll be about 2.5 million kilometers farther from the sun than average—but we won't feel any colder By Phil Plait

Planetary Science We Need to Widen the 'Habitable Zones' Seen around Alien Stars When looking for life in space, we should broaden our horizons By Phil Plait

Weather Lightning 'Megaflashes' Dozens of Miles Long Are Sparked by These Kinds of Storms Scientists are beginning to understand what kind of thunderstorm produces so-called megaflashes of lightning that stretch more than 60 miles By Meghan Bartels

Astronomy Solar Maximum Could Hit Us Harder and Sooner Than We Thought The sun is quickly approaching a major peak in solar activity. Experts warn it could potentially begin by the end of 2023, years before initial predictions suggested By Harry Baker,LiveScience

Mathematics Where's Waldo? How to Mathematically Prove You Found Him without Revealing Where He Is Zero-knowledge proofs allow mathematicians to prove claims without explaining why they're true By Jack Murtagh

Arts Poems: 'The Southern Lights at –50° Fahrenheit' and 'Lake Vostok' Science in meter and verse By Paul Brooke

Planetary Science Pebbles from an Asteroid Are about to Be Delivered to Earth, and It's Totally Awesome The OSIRIS-REx mission will return samples from the asteroid Bennu that could rewrite our solar system's history By Clara Moskowitz

Quantum Physics This Quantum Fluid Freezes When Heated Physicists finally understand why heating a supercold quantum fluid freezes it into a solid By Elise Cutts

Planetary Science Did Earth's Water Come from Meteorites? At least some of our planet's water was carried here by hydrogen-rich space rocks, but it's not yet clear how much By Joanna Thompson

Mathematics Discovery of Elusive 'Einstein' Tile Raises More Questions Than It Answers A surprisingly simple answer to a mathematical puzzle intrigues the math world By Manon Bischoff,Allison Parshall

QUOTE OF THE DAY "By telling tales about stardust, I hope we can remind ourselves that we live in an interconnected and beautiful world, full of rare and precious elements. It is our duty to treat it, and each other, with care and respect." Sanjana Curtis, an astrophysicist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, on the cosmic origins of everyday things

FROM THE ARCHIVE How Star Collisions Forge the Universe's Heaviest Elements Scientists have new evidence about how cosmic cataclysms forge gold, platinum and other heavy members of the periodic table By Sanjana Curtis | January 2023

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