Space & Physics: A frigid exoplanet 12 light-years away

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July 25–This week, NASA proposes to cancel its VIPER lunar rover. In happier news, physicists are finding a new path to the periodic table's "island of stability," astronomers image a chilly, close-to-home exoplanet, and mathematicians make progress on the "Busy Beaver Challenge." Enjoy! --Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space and Physics

Top Stories

New Superheavy Element Synthesis Points to Long-Sought 'Island of Stability' A novel way of making superheavy elements could soon add a new row to the periodic table, allowing scientists to explore uncharted atomic realms Max Springer, intern writer

JWST Images Freezing Giant Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away The Jupiter-like world Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest—and closest—exoplanets that astronomers have ever seen Davide Castelvecchi; Nature magazine

Mathematicians Have Finally Found the Fifth 'Busiest Beaver' The busy beaver function is unpredictable. But now, after more than 40 years, the fifth value of the function has been revealed Manon Bischoff

How SpaceX Will Turn a Workhorse Vehicle into a Hulking Destroyer of Space Stations SpaceX will supercharge its Dragon capsule to send the International Space Station to a watery retirement Meghan Bartels

Nope—It's Never Aliens Claims of alien starships visiting Earth always fall short, but people still fall for them Phil Plait

Artificial Intelligence Will Let Humanity Talk to Alien Civilizations Large language models may enable real-time communication with extraterrestrial civilizations despite the vast distances between stars. We need to start thinking about what to tell them about us Franck Marchis, expert writer; Ignacio G. López-Francos , expert writer

'Dark Oxygen' Discovered Coming from Mineral Deposits on Deep Seafloor Baffling new results show that rocklike mineral deposits in the deep sea can produce oxygen Allison Parshall

China's Fresh Samples from the Lunar Far Side Could Explain Earth's Two-Faced Moon Material from the moon's far side collected by China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft could solve a long-standing lunar mystery Phil Plait

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