News: Research

New AI system successfully schedules observations on a major national telescope.

While the celestial body seems to host three features that could make a livable environment—an atmosphere, a rocky composition and a temperature that could allow liquid water to sit on the surface—researchers have not currently detected any residents.

A multi-institution team says warming Mars is feasible; finding out whether life exists there must come first.

AI-powered PoLARIS Project will execute science experiments remotely, allowing underserved researchers across the nation access to create novel soft materials from afar.

At the national laboratory, the first light bulbs lit by nuclear power have given way to supercomputers, quantum research and nanoscale engineering.

UChicago scientists offer new way to read atmospheric data on a vast class of 'sub-Neptune' worlds.

Molten-salt method from UChicago and Argonne could unlock durable materials for printed electronics, flexible devices.

To study molecules with complex structures, UChicago and IBM combined forces to develop a new method that takes advantage of today’s quantum computers.

Artificial intelligence-powered robotics are reshaping how experiments are designed, run and refined.

What University of Chicago scientists call an artificial leaf that mimics photosynthesis could be useful for wireless medical implants and other technologies.

The search for exoplanets—or worlds orbiting other stars—is astronomy’s great Easter egg hunt. For astronomers looking for extraterrestrial life, the true jackpot planet would be Earth-like: smallish and rocky, with an atmosphere, orbiting its parent star in the so-called habitable zone, that sweet thermal spot that is not too hot and not too cold, allowing water to exist in liquid form. In the 34 years exoplanets have been studied, no world that checks all of those boxes has ever been spotted—until now. 

Scientists say marine cloud brightening could weaken El Niño by cooling key Pacific waters, but major questions remain about feasibility, risks, and global oversight.

New benchmark shows specialized guardrails score near-random when content policies change.

Could the James Webb Space Telescope be missing hidden water on distant worlds? A new study suggests the answer may be yes.

The discovery marks a major milestone in the search for life on planets beyond our solar system. Incoming UChicago postdoc Collin Cherubim and current UChicago postdoc Michael Zhang participated in the research.