NASA engineers are preparing a risky power maneuver called 'the Big Bang' to keep the Voyager probes exploring interstellar space. The two spacecraft, launched in 1977, are running low on electricity from their aging nuclear power sources. In April, engineers shut down an instrument on Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment to buy about a year of time. The Big Bang plan swaps a group of powered devices all at once, turning some off and replacing others with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to keep working. Tests on Voyager 2 are planned for May and June, with Voyager 1 to follow no sooner than July. If all goes well, the probes could keep doing science into the early 2030s, with Voyager 1 possibly reaching 200 astronomical units from Earth around 2035.
A study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology shows that a gene variant inherited from Neanderthals still shapes muscle and jaw structure in some people today. The variant affects the growth hormone receptor, which controls how the body responds to growth hormone. Lab-grown mouse cells carrying the Neanderthal receptor grew about 40% more when exposed to growth hormone. Data from more than 1.1 million adults across five biobanks showed carriers have roughly 270 to 285 grams of extra lean mass and slightly more height. The variant is common in people with European and Asian ancestry and rare or absent in sub-Saharan Africa.
Astronomers using the GRAVITY instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer have found a star, named S301, that passes closer to Sagittarius A* than any known star. Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The discovery could let scientists measure the spin of the black hole for the first time. The team plans to keep tracking the star through its orbit.
Astronomers have found a faint star whipping around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, on the tightest orbit ever recorded. The star, named S301, passes closer to the black hole than any other known star. The discovery was made with the GRAVITY instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. The star's extreme orbit could allow scientists to measure the spin of the black hole for the first time. A spinning black hole drags space around with it, and measuring that effect reveals how the black hole formed and grew. The findings were reported by the European Southern Observatory team.
Hong Wang, a 35-year-old mathematician at New York University and France's Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, has won the 2026 Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics. She is the third woman to receive the award in its 90-year history, after Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska in 2022, and the first Chinese woman. The International Mathematical Union honored her for solving the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a problem about how needles rotate in space that had stumped mathematicians for half a century. Her proof was described by experts as a once-in-a-century achievement. Wang is one of four medalists this year, alongside Yu Deng, John Pardon and Jacob Tsimerman.
An international team of physicists says it has found the strongest evidence yet for the glueball, a mysterious particle made almost entirely of gluons. Researchers at the Beijing Spectrometer III collaboration presented their results at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Brazil. The particle, known as X(2370), was first detected in 2011. The team says it has no quark flavors, behaving exactly as predicted for a particle built from pure force. Glueballs were predicted in the early 1970s but had never been confirmed. Researchers from 15 countries spent 15 years on the search.
Hong Wang, a mathematician at New York University, has become the third woman to win the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics. Wang was recognized for helping solve a geometry problem that had stood for decades, combining tools from harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory in a new way. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40. Wang joins Maryam Mirzakhani, who won in 2014, and Maryna Viazovska, who won in 2022. Colleagues said her proof was elegant and opened new research directions. The award is being celebrated as a milestone for diversity in mathematics, where women remain a minority at the highest levels. Wang said she hopes the prize encourages young students to pursue the field.
Physicists say they have found strong evidence for a particle called a glueball, which is made entirely of the strong force and contains no matter. The particle was predicted more than 50 years ago but had never been confirmed. Researchers observed the candidate in the debris of high-energy particle collisions at a major accelerator, and its mass and decay patterns match theoretical predictions. The team used a new analysis technique to separate glueball candidates from ordinary particles with similar properties. If confirmed, the discovery would deepen our understanding of the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Independent teams are now working to reproduce the result, and physicists caution that a single experiment is rarely enough to settle the question.
Mathematician Hong Wang of New York University has won the 2026 Fields Medal, becoming the third woman ever to receive mathematics' most prestigious prize. The International Mathematical Union announced the award at the opening of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Wang was honored for solving a decades-old geometry problem tied to the Kakeya conjecture, work that opened new links between harmonic analysis and number theory. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40. Wang, 37, said she hopes the award will encourage more young women to enter mathematics. The union also named three other medalists for 2026.
Physicists at China's BES III experiment have found the strongest evidence yet for glueballs, exotic particles made entirely of gluons, the force carriers of the strong nuclear force. The results, presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics and posted on arXiv, center on a particle called X(2370) observed in J/psi decays at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II. Its mass matches lattice quantum chromodynamics predictions for a pseudoscalar glueball, and its decay patterns show the expected flavor-singlet properties. Physicists have searched for glueballs for more than 50 years. Independent verification could come from China's proposed Super Tau-Charm Facility or the Electron-Ion Collider under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.