Space & Physics: Black hole time travel

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June 18— This week, our top story is Scientific American’s inaugural batch of Young American Scientists. Our in-depth special report highlights the work, hopes and dreams of the nation’s brightest minds—including many from the realm of space and physics. But we have other fare on offer, too, of course, with stories about black holes transmitting information back in time, the quest to build the world’s best radio telescope, a pink puffball exoplanet and much more. Enjoy! Thoughts? Questions? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), X or Bluesky. —Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Physical Sciences

Top Stories

How we chose the 2026 Young American Scientists Scientific American used expert recommendations and data analysis to identify 28 exceptional early-career researchers Ari Sen

How one new telescope is going to change astronomy forever Construction of the Deep Synoptic Array is about to start in rural Nevada. It will reveal untold galaxies in stunning detail and help explain how they form and grow Joseph Howlett

Brought to you by Scientific American Travel Discover the Wonder: The Monarch Butterfly Migration Reservations now open! Take an extraordinary trip to the Mexican mountains to witness the annual monarch butterfly migration. See oyamel fir forests transformed into living tapestries with Chief Newsletter Editor Andrea Gawrylewski as your guide. Learn More.

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Tonima Tasnim Ananna Understanding the behavior of supermassive black holes Emma Gometz

Can black holes send information back in time? Extremely curved spacetime can warp cause and effect, creating channels for backward communication Clara Moskowitz

Anna Ho Describing the characteristics of short-lived astrophysical events Lee Billings

SpaceX’s historic IPO ignites the new space race SpaceX’s IPO—the largest in history—has out-of-this-world implications for AI, space commerce and extraterrestrial exploration Jonathan O'Callaghan

How to watch August’s total solar eclipse live with Scientific American Even if you aren’t going to be within the path of totality, you can still watch the solar eclipse as it happens with Scientific American Claire Cameron

Our brains underestimate Elon Musk’s wealth Why the human brain can't fathom what it means to be a trillionaire Manon Bischoff

Erini Lambrides Characterizing the “Little Red Dots” to decipher the beginnings of galaxies Megha Satyanarayana

Salty clouds discovered on pink puffball planet A cold, cherry-blossom-hued exoplanet supports bizarre clouds chock-full of salts Jeanna Bryner

Ex-Google CEO’s Relativity Space selected for upcoming NASA Mars orbiter mission This partnership marks the latest foray into space exploration for Relativity Space, which aims to build cheap, reusable rockets Adam Kovac

Astronomers discover another galaxy seemingly devoid of dark matter A galaxy appears to be missing the invisible substance thought to hold such objects together, further challenging long-held assumptions about how galaxies form Sam Macdonald

NASA data reveals weird x-ray changes in the exploded ruins of dead stars This sparkling galaxy is home to a set of supernova remnants that showed variable brightnesses over 14 years of data Marta Hill

What Disclosure Day gets wrong about the search for aliens The new movie Disclosure Day is all about a big alien secret. But SETI researchers behind the updated postdetection protocol say they aren’t in the business of secrets Emma Gometz

NASA’s experimental quiet supersonic plane passes another critical milestone NASA’s X-59 research aircraft reached its target speed and altitude for the first time on Friday Claire Cameron

Scientists need more snapshots of shooting stars—and you can help Meteor camera networks can reveal the hidden history of the solar system, and you can assist from your own backyard Phil Plait

What We're Reading

Among the large new rockets Amazon was counting on, only Europe has delivered | Ars Technica NASA Leader Pushes Back on Complaints That No Women Will Be on Next Artemis Mission | New York Times A quantum state that lasts forever may finally be within our grasp | New Scientist

From the Archive

Cosmic Simulation Shows How Dark-Matter-Deficient Galaxies Confront Goliath and Survive A research team finds seven tiny dwarf galaxies stripped of their dark matter that nonetheless persisted despite the theft. Joanna Thompson

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