Cosmology
A Light That Left Home Before the Stars Knew How to Shine
Astronomers confirm a galaxy so distant its light began traveling toward us when the universe was barely 290 million years old — and it is far brighter than anyone thought possible.
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
More from the frontier
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Physics
For a Fraction of a Second, We Lit a Star on Earth
In a laboratory the size of a sports stadium, 192 lasers converged on a target the width of a peppercorn — and, for the first time, a fusion reaction released more energy than was used to start it.
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Medicine
We Learned to Edit a Single Misspelled Word in the Book of Life
A therapy built from a bacterial defense system has been used to correct the genetic error behind sickle cell disease — the first medicine of its kind to reach patients.
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Planetary Science
Samples from asteroid Bennu contain building blocks of life
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission collected about 120 grams of rock and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and returned the sample to Earth.