Interstellar Updates

 

These are items of interest to the interstellar exploration community that we’ve found in our quest for information that will help us advance toward our goals.  If you know of anything we’ve overlooked, or any sources of such information we should monitor, or if you would like to be added to our IRG-updates mailing list and receive these updates in you email every weekday, please send that information to info@irg.space.

You can now search our database of interstellar updates and find items of interest to you.

April 16, 2026 Updates

The Identification of CS2 and Evidence for Carbon-Sulfur Chemical Coupling in a Warm Giant Exoplanet Atmosphere
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13168

Measurements and predictions of H2 pressure-broadening coefficients of CO2 absorption lines for exoplanet atmosphere studies
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa59106-26/aa59106-26.html

Photochemistry and haze in chemically reducing terrestrial atmospheres
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667325826002281

History-augmented contrastive learning with soft mixture of experts for blind super-resolution of planetary remote sensing images
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092523122601012X

Water D/H in 3I/ATLAS as a Probe of Formation Conditions in Another Planetary System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07026

C5H6 formation in Dense Molecular Clouds
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa58985-26/aa58985-26.html

Cosmic Illuminating Gift: A One-Way Information Box for Extraterrestrial Intelligences
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/12/4/115

Analysing the sample preparation process in meteorites and its impact on the pretreatment of returned samples to Earth
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883292726000296?via%3Dihub

Projections of Earth’s Technosphere: Civilization Collapse-Recovery Dynamics and Detectability
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13774

Innovations in Health-Oriented Space Travel Food: Addressing Nutritional Challenges for Long-Term Missions
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jtr.70318

Cultivation and Synthesis of Food for Humans Beyond Earth: A Future View
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214552426000581

Advances and challenges in energy storage technologies: A comprehensive review of technical maturity, applications, and future directions
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352152X26016300

Thermal Adaptability and Low-Power Survival-Operation Strategies for Lithium Batteries in Deep Space Cryogenic Environments: Review and Critical Outlook
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2405829726002424

Liquid metals for the booming of space exploration
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S3051383926000095

Viruses in Extreme Marine Environments and Their Potential Existence in Extraterrestrial Environments
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/18/4/457

Spaceflight and the rodent skeleton: A perspective
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352187226000215

April 15, 2026 updates

Origin and characterization of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11779

Climates and Habitability of the Eccentric Super-Earth HD 20794 d: A Multi-parametric Investigation
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae56f7

An Atmosphere on the Ultra-Short Period super-Earth HD 3167 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11911

Sub-Neptunes as Soot Factories: Deep Atmosphere Hydrocarbon Formation and Quenching as the Origin of Sub-Neptune Aerosol Trends
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11919

Observational and Dynamical Constraints on an Unseen Outer Perturber in the GJ 436 Hot Neptune System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09834

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Roman Sees Where You Are: Predicting Exoplanet Transit Yields in the Rosette Nebula with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae547d

Variability classification of TESS targets in LOPS2, the first long-term pointing field of PLATO. Version 1 of the public variability catalogue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12758

The RoPES project with HARPS and HARPS-N III. Two candidate planets orbiting the G-type star HD 161098
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11516

The GAPS Programme at TNG. LXXIII. Confirmation of the hot sub-Neptune TOI-4602 b (HD 25295 b), a key target for future atmospheric characterization
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11728

The molecular chemistry of nanoscale organic matter in asteroid Ryugu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16798

LIFE — an energy efficient advanced continual learning agentic AI framework for frontier systems
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12874

The Dyson Minds 2025 Workshop: SETI Around Black Holes
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ae5a02

Broadband Searches for Extraterrestrial Technological Intelligence: A New Strategy to Find Nearby Alien Civilizations
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae4c38

Can AI Detect Life? Lessons from Artificial Life
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11915

April 14th, 2026 updates

Analytical Scaling of Relativistic Drag in the Interstellar Medium
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00041

Large Dust Grains and a Possible Dust Trap in the Polar Circumbinary Disc of HD 98800B
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag641/8651298

Desorption dynamics of interstellar molecule on amorphous solid water investigated by machine learning potential-based PaCS-MD simulation
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/jcp/article-abstract/164/14/144310/3386875/Desorption-dynamics-of-interstellar-molecule-on

 

April 13, 2026 updates

Extreme Arabian environments and their microbiomes: new frontiers for astrobiology and biosignature discovery
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00792-026-01426-5

Direct Images of CO2 Absorption in the Atmosphere of a Super-Jupiter: Enhanced Metallicity Suggestive of Formation in a Disk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09785

Observational and Dynamical Constraints on an Unseen Outer Perturber in the GJ 436 Hot Neptune
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09834

Secular Light Curve of Exocomet 3I/ATLAS, and its Location on a Comet Evolutionary Diagram
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09941

Compact CO emission and no evidence of radial drift. ALMA observations of the faintest planet-forming disks in Lupus
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11292

From Dust to Planets — A Chemical Perspective
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11405

Investigation of gravitational stability of protoplanetary disks based on statistical analysis of their masses
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11642

The GAPS Programme at TNG. LXXIII. Confirmation of the hot sub-Neptune TOI-4602 b (HD 25295 b), a key target for future atmospheric characterization
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11728

Origin and characterization of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11779

UMI: GPU-Accelerated Asymmetric Robust Estimator for Photometric Detrending in Exoplanet Transit Searches
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06602

Warps survive beyond fly-by encounters in protoplanetary disks: RW Aur A as a case study
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa57365-25/aa57365-25.html

Detectability of continuous gravitational waves from planetary-mass companions orbiting compact stars
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa57134-25/aa57134-25.html

PLATOSpec first results: Three new transiting warm Jupiters from the WINE survey, TIC 147027702, TIC 245076932, and TIC 87422071
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa58698-25/aa58698-25.html

Long-period magnetic activity in the K dwarf GJ1137 and a new super-Earth on a 9-day orbit: A cautionary tale for Jovian-analogue detection from Doppler surveys
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa57806-25/aa57806-25.html

Dust distribution in circumstellar disks harboring multi-planet systems: II. Super-thermal-mass planets
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa58980-26/aa58980-26.html

The Permeable Particle Model to Describe the Collisional Evolution of Dust Clusters in Protoplanetary Gas–Dust Disks
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1063773725700653

New way to date globular clusters: Brown dwarf cooling sequences
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-026-04563-7

A study on the stability of ritonavir form III processed in orbit and returned to Earth
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-026-00594-0

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Roman Sees Where You Are: Predicting Exoplanet Transit Yields in the Rosette Nebula with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae547d

The Dyson Minds 2025 Workshop: SETI Around Black Holes
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ae5a02

April 10, 2026 updates

Super-Earth masses and stellar abundances from NIRPS reveal tentative evidence for water-rich formation around M dwarfs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07447

The Goldilocks problem for detecting water in terrestrial planets: Constraining water abundances in the mid-IR with LIFE
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07461

Habitability Study of Terrestrial Planets: Application to Venus-like Worlds
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06792

Hydrolyzed Hazes on Water-rich Exoplanets: Optical Constants and Detectability
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07498

Exoplanet Orbital Distribution around FGK Sun-like Host Stars II: a valley in the orbital semi-major axis distribution of sub-Neptunes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08428

NCCR PlanetS: Observational and computational characterization of exoplanet atmospheres
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09385

Nii-body: Bayesian Inference of Multiplanet Dynamics via N-body Simulations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09383

Detecting nitrogen-carriers in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09383

Long-period transiting exoplanets: advances in detection and characterization
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09254

The Illusory Precision of TTV Masses: Hidden Solutions Behind Kepler-9’s Tight Mass Ratio
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09268

Terrestrial planet formation in the era of GPU computing
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09184

Machine Learning as a Transformative Tool for (Exo-)Planetary Science
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09152

Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09042

Recent development in high-precision high-fidelity spectrographs for exoplanet research and characterization
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09020

The formation of planetary systems: physics, populations, and architectures
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09011

Spectral signatures from the habitable zone
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08993

Polarimetry in Planetary Sciences and Astronomy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08975