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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Earth

    Earth is reflecting less light. It’s not clear if that’s a trend

    A decrease in Earth’s reflectance shows our planet is absorbing more solar radiation, but it’s not clear if the trend will last.

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  2. Astronomy

    A Jupiter-like planet orbiting a white dwarf hints at our solar system’s future

    A new planet is the first ever discovered that is orbiting a white dwarf and resembles Jupiter in both its mass and its distance from its star.

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  3. Astronomy

    The fastest-spinning white dwarf ever seen rotates once every 25 seconds

    A white dwarf star that spins every 25 seconds owes its record-breaking rotation rate to a companion star dumping gas onto it.

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  4. Astronomy

    China’s lunar rock samples show lava flowed on the moon 2 billion years ago

    The first lunar rocks returned to Earth in more than 40 years show that the moon was volcanically active later than scientists thought.

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  5. Science & Society

    How our SN 10 scientists have responded to tumultuous times

    COVID-19, social justice movements and the realities of climate change have given our Scientists to Watch new perspective.

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  6. Astronomy

    When James Webb launches, it will have a bigger to-do list than 1980s researchers suspected

    The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development for so long that space science has changed in the meantime.

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  7. Astronomy

    Space rocks may have bounced off baby Earth, but slammed into Venus

    New simulations suggest a way to help explain dramatic differences between the sibling worlds.

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  8. Astronomy

    Satellite swarms may outshine the night sky’s natural constellations

    Simulations suggest that satellite “mega-constellations” will be visible to the naked eye all night long in some locations.

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  9. Astronomy

    A supernova’s delayed reappearance could pin down how fast the universe expands

    “SN Requiem” should reappear in the 2030s and help determine the universe’s expansion rate.

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  10. Planetary Science

    NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged its first Martian rock samples

    Two tubes of stone drilled from a basalt rock nicknamed Rochette are the first from Mars slated to eventually return to Earth.

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  11. Cosmology

    Astronomers may have seen a star gulp down a black hole and explode

    It took sleuthing through data collected by a variety of observatories to piece together the first firm evidence of a theorized cosmic phenomenon.

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  12. Astronomy

    How radio astronomy put new eyes on the cosmos

    A century ago, radio astronomy didn’t exist. But since the 1930s, it has uncovered cosmic secrets from planets next door and the faint glow of the universe’s beginnings.

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