Wall Street Journal: Two scientists share this year’s Shaw Prize in astronomy: Gerald Fishman, chief scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Enrico Costa, director of research at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. According to a press release, the two men were picked “for their leadership of space missions that enabled the demonstration of the cosmological origin of gamma ray bursts, the brightest sources known in the universe.” The Shaw Prize, Hong Kong’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, annually recognizes innovation in three fields—astronomy, medicine, and mathematics—with three awards of $1 million each.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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