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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Astronomy

    Black hole spurts jets of iron and nickel

    New observations show that the jets of black hole 4U 1630-47 carry massive particles such as iron and nickel atoms instead of the typical low-mass particles such as electrons.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Uninhabitable Earth

    A recent estimate of the lifetimes of the habitability zones of Earth and various exoplanets suggests Earth could become unable to support life as soon as 1.75 billion years from now, when the sun brightens before dying out.

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  3. Astronomy

    Moon’s craters remeasured

    Large craters cover more of the moon’s surface on its nearside than its farside, according to new maps from NASA’s GRAIL spacecrafts.

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  4. Astronomy

    Strange six-tailed asteroid makes a scene

    In September, scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the object and were shocked to see its cometlike appearance.

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  5. Microbes

    Bacteria starved in space grow better

    Given limited resources microbes in microgravity make more new cells than their counterparts on Earth.

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  6. Planetary Science

    Meteor explosions like this year’s Russian fireball more common than thought

    Chelyabinsk-sized rocks may come to Earth every 30 years, on average.

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  7. Science & Society

    Feedback

    Our redesigned cover and the astronomy stories from the Oct. 19 issue get readers' reviews.

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  8. Science & Society

    Replacing paradigms requires open minds

    Cosmological crises require creativity, but science enforces conformity.

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  9. Astronomy

    Billions and billions of Earth-sized planets call Milky Way home

    Using Kepler data, astronomers estimate that a sizeable fraction of the galaxy’s sunlike stars have Earth-sized planets that could support liquid water.

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  10. Astronomy

    Giant loner could shift idea of star formation

    Observations of WR 102ka suggest it could have been born without any gaseous companions.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Moon material on Earth

    Scientists now think that tektites are a type of impactite, formed during the rapid heating and cooling of material ejected when a meteorite strikes Earth.

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  12. Astronomy

    Astronomers explain planets’ backward motion

    Giant planets in distant orbits may be reversing the direction of their closer-in neighbors.

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