Precise ages for Gaia stars near the Sun suggest the Milky Way disc thinned rapidly in a turbulent youth, then switched to a slow, steady settling about 10.8 billion years ago.
A single tremor recorded by NASA’s InSight lander in 2021 has been traced to faults 20 to 40 km beneath Valles Marineris, showing that the largest canyon in the Solar System is still geologically active.
Webb has measured the make-up of the gas swirling around Sagittarius A*, and found it rich in metals forged by the stars nearby. That matters for understanding why our galaxy’s black hole eats so little.
A radio source shaped like a treble clef, hidden behind the Milky Way, turns out to be a radio phoenix: debris from an old black hole outburst revived by colliding galaxy clusters.
