🔎 Today’s Daily Sift: Space/Astronomy

• Cosmic acceleration in flux. DESI’s newest 3D map of 15 million galaxies hints that dark energy’s push on space‑time may be weakening . If the “cosmological constant” actually evolves , the fate of the Universe isn’t a settled story – the equations that describe our future could be rewritten before our eyes.

• When endings become beginnings. New theory suggests black‑hole singularities may tunnel into “white holes,” spewing matter and even time back into the cosmos . By linking the flow of time to dark energy and recasting gravity as four quantum‑friendly fields , physicists glimpse a universe where space‑time pulses with quantum possibility and death is just another phase.

• Hunting invisible matter. A tiny kink in a gravitationally‑lensed arc revealed an unseen clump a million times the Sun’s mass —the smallest dark‑matter halo ever detected across the cosmos. These hidden “mini‑halos” help map the scaffolding of the Universe and bring us closer to knowing what most of creation is made of.

• Nature’s own supercolliders. Near rapidly spinning supermassive black holes, infalling particles can smash together with energies rivaling our largest particle colliders . Cosmic jets could spray exotic particles—including dark‑matter candidates—through interstellar space , turning neutrino observatories into physics detectors and suggesting that the next breakthrough might come from the sky, not the lab.

• A Solar System teeming with life’s ingredients. Perseverance’s mudstones contain organic carbon and textures that could be biosignatures , while Curiosity discovered long‑chain molecules preserved for 3.7 billion years . Models of Titan’s methane lakes show they could splash out vesicles – tiny primitive cell membranes . Europa’s icy crust is recasting itself, with crystalline and amorphous ice and salts and CO₂ rising from a hidden ocean . Our neighborhood is a laboratory of pre‑biotic chemistry.

• Alien skies defy expectations. JWST found water vapor, carbon monoxide, silicon monoxide—and unexpectedly methane—on the ultra‑hot giant WASP‑121b . Methane’s presence implies violent vertical currents and suggests the planet formed in a cold zone before migrating inward . In the HR 8799 system, JWST directly imaged carbon dioxide in four young gas giants, showing they are rich in heavy elements and likely built by slow core accretion . Exoplanet atmospheres are becoming cosmic detective stories.

• Weather on a world without a star. The rogue planet SIMP‑0136 blazes with auroras and fierce storms . JWST tracked minute temperature shifts as it rotated , revealing a 1 500 °C world covered in sand‑like silicate clouds and roiled by storms reminiscent of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot . Even lonely planets dance to magnetic and meteorological rhythms.

• A planet that feasts like a star. Cha 1107‑7626, a free‑floating world five to ten times Jupiter’s mass, is gulping six billion tonnes of gas and dust per second . Its accretion rate surged eightfold, revealing magnetic fields funneling material and even water vapor into the hungry world . This growth spurt blurs the line between planets and stars , hinting that some rogue giants share star‑like origins.

• Technicolor solar‑system census. When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s 3.2‑gigapixel LSST camera comes online, it will sweep the sky every few nights, producing a 20‑terabyte nightly time‑lapse and an explosion of discoveries . Simulations predict it will triple the known near‑Earth object population to ~127 000 and catalog millions of asteroids and comets —5 million main‑belt rocks, 109 000 Jupiter Trojans and 37 000 Kuiper Belt worlds . Our solar system’s fossil record is about to be filmed in living color.

• The Moon calls again. After the uncrewed Artemis I, NASA plans to launch Artemis II in April 2026—a 10‑day flight that will carry astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen around the Moon . This mission will test the Orion spacecraft and pave the way for a 2027 lunar landing and the Gateway outpost . Fifty years after Apollo, humanity is preparing not just to touch the Moon, but to make it a new frontier.