What We're Reading

With the end of Europe’s major Planck mission, researchers are moving to smaller projects studying different aspects of the cosmic microwave background.

Its subtly different chemistry from its ‘solar twins’ may be the result of having rocky planets.

This article describes the Simons collaboration known as CBIOMES, which brings together researchers in oceanography, statistics, data science, ecology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing.

Juan C. Meza, director of the division of mathematical sciences at the National Science Foundation, reveals why mathematics is such a powerful tool for understanding the world around us.

An interview with Stanford University data scientist Johan Ugander, who explains his research on dissimilarities in social networks.

The p53 gene, the cell's defensive agent against mutations, seems to be the reason human cells resist gene editing.

Of the thousands of exoplanets discovered by astronomers, only a handful are in their formative years. These baby planets provide important clues to planet formation, including the process by which our own solar system came into existence.

This article looks at philanthropic efforts on behalf of basic research, including those of the Simons Foundation. They span a range of modalities, from assistance for individual investigators to the establishment of research institutes.

April 25 was the day astronomers said goodbye to the old Milky Way they had known and loved and hello to a new view of our home galaxy. NPR describes the first day of CCCA's Gaia workshop.

As a major new catalogue of our galaxy's stars from the Gaia space mission reverberates through the scientific community, astronomers are rushing to make revolutionary discoveries through such efforts as a dawn-to-dusk data hack-a-thon at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics.