Subsurface lakes discovered on Mars

Planetary scientists have confirmed the presence of a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole — and have found three more. The discovery was made using radar data from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft, called Mars Express. It builds on evidence, gathered two years ago, of the first body of liquid water ever detected on the red planet. The largest, central lake measures 30 kilometres across, and is surrounded by 3 smaller lakes, each a few kilometres wide. Life is able to survive in subglacial lakes in places such as Antarctica, but the lakes on Mars might be too salty. Or they might not be liquid water at all; it’s so cold, they could be slush.

How Neanderthals lost their Y chromosome

Neanderthals’ Y chromosome looks a lot like ours, despite much of their nuclear genome more closely matching a different human lineage, the Denisovans. The mystery persisted because very few complete male Neanderthal genomes have been recovered. Now researchers have used an innovative technique to probe some partial male Neanderthal genomes. The scientists found evidence that early modern human men mated with Neanderthal women more than 100,000 but less than 370,000 years ago, and their sons passed the modern Y through their offspring, replacing the Neanderthal Y.

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This suggests that the Sapiens tribes murdered Neanderthal men and abducted Neanderthal women.

Planet discovered transiting a dead star

Evidence has been found of a planet circling the smouldering remains of a dead star in a tight orbit. The discovery raises the question of how the planet survived the star’s death throes — and whether other planets also orbit the remains.

‘Unexplained’ molecule on Venus hints at life

Phosphine has been detected in Venus’s atmosphere, raising the thrilling question of whether the molecule might be a sign of life on the planet. On rocky planets, life is the only known source of the compound — although it forms without a helping hand near the energetic cores of the gas giants. Life seems impossible on the surface of the Solar System’s hottest world, but the middle of its cloud layer offers a more promising environment in terms of temperature, pressure and presence of water and organic molecules. Even if it’s not a sign of life on Venus, the unexpected observation is exciting.

Star system shreds its planet-forming disc

Astronomers have observed, for the first time, a multi-star system ripping apart the disk of material that could form planets. The three stars of GW Orionis have pulled some of their surrounding gas and dust into a warped disc with tilted rings. The rings could someday form planets with wildly oblique and distant orbits.

Solar cell floats on a soap bubble

Materials scientists have made printed solar cells that are so thin, light and flexible that they can rest on the surface of a soap bubble. Researchers formulated ‘inks’ for each layer of the solar-cell architecture so that they could print the cells on a substrate using an inkjet printer. The technology could one day help us ditch heavy batteries and generate power straight from the Sun for lightweight, flexible devices such as medical patches.

Astronomers detect most powerful black-hole collision yet

Astronomers have detected the most-powerful, most-distant and most-perplexing collision of black holes yet, using gravitational waves. Of the two behemoths that fused when the Universe was half its current age, at least one — weighing 85 times as much as the Sun — has a mass that was thought to be too large to be involved in such an event. And the merger produced a black hole of nearly 150 solar masses, the researchers have estimated, putting it in a range in which no black holes had ever been conclusively seen before.