Yutong Li

The kitchen where stars are baked works on a simple recipe: as much flour as you have, that's how many pies you get. For a long time, astronomers saw a strict relation between a galaxy's mass and how fast it forms stars, and they considered it a standalone rule. But a new study of 24,954 nearby galaxies shows that this relation is just a shadow of two more fundamental laws.

Laser light is like a perfectly aligned row of soldiers on parade: all waves oscillate in the same plane. Such light is called polarized. In a new study, physicists have for the first time produced polarized gamma rays by colliding electrons with a powerful laser pulse.