The organic ingredients to life, hints to where Earth’s water came from, and the fundamental building blocks of our planet and the solar system seem like a lot to fit in 4 ounces of dusty rock, but that’s exactly what scientists have found in samples of asteroid Bennu brought to Earth in 2023.

There is no cure for the common cold. But there are cures — or at least vaccines — for other viruses, and researchers are working hard to build a toolbox to be able to rapidly develop vaccines for new and emerging viruses. Viruses are so small that tens of millions of them can fit on the head of a pin. Understanding, let alone fighting, something so infinitesimally small is a crowning challenge of modern medicine. The physical structure of its molecules dictates how a virus infects people and moves through their bodies as well as how to formulate effective vaccines and treatments.

A coin flip. A roll of the dice. A shake of the Magic 8 Ball. Humans have been outsourcing their decision-making to inanimate objects since long before recorded history. But when a Magic 8 Ball reports “outlook good,” it’s random chance. It lacks any information about the situation. Computer scientist Alex Psomas is designing artificial intelligence models to outsource decisions to make better, more informed and fairer choices, including how best to distribute food among food pantries.

Being a baby is harder than it looks. Born into the world knowing almost nothing, they spend their first few years getting a PhD in navigating a physical environment. Likewise, artificial intelligence programs come into the world as a stream of code, knowing nothing, with no experience and no abilities. But while babies learn about physics from the moment they’re born, robots have to be programmed to understand innately human traits.

Amphibians are not viewed as the most maternal of animals. However, a team of herpetologists have discovered that one species of amphibian, the ringed caecilian, produces a milk-like substance to feed its young.

Across the Midwest during the warmer months, studying the sky for signs of storms and tornadoes becomes one of the most popular pastimes. Weather expert Dan Chavas takes it further: All day every day, he studies what makes tornadoes tick. Working at the intersection of climate science and meteorology, he looks at the big picture of what causes severe storms and tornadoes — and what dictates where they occur.

Of the thirty-five phyla of animals on Earth, only three are known to have high-resolution eyesight: vertebrates; cephalopods, including squid and octopuses; and arthropods, such as shrimp and spiders. But some species of deep-water bristle worms or polychaetes possess enormous eyes for their body size—twenty times the size of their heads—that invite questions about the quality of their eye- sight.

To build something fantastic, you need fantastic building blocks. Which is exactly what physicists are creating: new materials, with qualities undreamed of in our current world.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — There is no avoiding robots. With increasing autonomy, satellites span the skies, vacuums vroom underfoot and bots conduct surgery, deliver packages and explore the solar system. Robot expert Sooyeon Jeong works in artificial intelligence to ensure that those robots are more friendly helpers to humans and less inscrutable interlopers, more R2-D2 than HAL, more Baymax than Terminator. “My goal, and the goal of my research group, is to design robots and AI that can have socially and emotionally natural interactions with people,” Jeong said. “I want anything I make or design to have a measurable positive impact on people’s lives.”

Every cloud is lined, not with silver, but with science — at least from cloud expert Alexandria Johnson’s point of view. Clouds are ubiquitous. They are one of the most notable characteristics of planet Earth. Studying them is akin to studying the blood and arteries of the planet itself. Johnson, an atmospheric scientist and assistant professor in Purdue University’s College of Science, studies clouds wherever they are: in her lab, on Earth, throughout the solar system and into the galaxy.

Sometimes planetary physics is like being in a snowball fight. Most people, if handed an already-formed snowball, can use their experience and the feel of the ball to guess what kind of snow it is comprised of: packable and fluffy, or wet and icy. Using nearly the same principles, planetary scientists have been able to study the structure of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon.

Modern urban life has its advantages and opportunities (e.g., access to education, jobs, health care, transportation, etc.). But with more than half the world’s population now living in urban centers, and with that number expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050, urban living exacts a price—negative health and cognition effects due to “pollution, artificial light, stress, and overstimulation,” according to a team of scientists, who set out to quantify these effects. What they found confirms an age-old intuitive assumption: that a walk in nature is a good way to clear one’s head.

Pharmaceuticals are an important foundation of modern health and society. Without vaccines, medications and therapeutics, civilization as we know it would break down. And without careful formulation and storage, the pharmaceuticals themselves can break down and decay into uselessness.

Images of stars released to the public, like the new image of Cassiopeia A revealed last month, fire the public’s imagination and kindle wonder in the breadth and beauty of the universe. But those images are more than just awe-inspiring art — they are treasure troves of priceless scientific information. By taking photos of the stellar remnant using a range of tools and filters on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers are getting their clearest look ever at Cassiopeia A. Astronomer and star expert Danny Milisavljevic (pronounced mili-sahv-la-vich), an associate professor of physics and astronomy in Purdue University’s College of Science, led an enormous international team of researchers on a JWST Year 1 project to study the supernova remnant.

Dogs are humans’ best friends. Need to quickly locate a bomb? There’s a dog for that. Can’t see very well? There’s a dog for that. Searching for a lost hiker in the mountains or survivors in an earthquake, diagnosing illness, comforting the bereft — there are dogs for every need. They are even helping humans track down the causes of cancer. A new study links cigarette smoke exposure to an exponentially higher rate of bladder cancer in Scottish terriers. By assessing individual dogs and studying their medical history, scientists are beginning to untangle the question of who gets cancer and why, and how best to detect, treat and prevent cancer.

Ten thousand years ago, a star exploded. Now scientists are getting their best look ever at the details of that explosion, Cassiopeia A. Space-age tools and methods are allowing them to glimpse never-seen-before details that may change forever the way scientists think about star death, star formation and the distribution of matter in the galaxy. And now, a new image of that dead star has a starring role in First Lady Jill Biden’s digital Advent calendar this year.

The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth. Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the planet’s surface, researchers have discovered significant amounts of metals in aerosols in the atmosphere, likely from increasingly frequent launches and returns of spacecraft and satellites. That mass of metal is changing atmospheric chemistry in ways that may impact Earth’s atmosphere and ozone layer. Airplane

To study the planets, someone has to go there: Either a human or a bot launches into space to physically explore other worlds. Scientists who study extraterrestrial materials can’t usually bring their work home. That’s exactly what’s happening this month, though, as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx project brings home pieces of the asteroid Bennu.

Purdue University chemistry professor Jonathan Wilker draws inspiration from the natural world, from his experiences scuba diving to studying shellfish in his lab. He has developed a sustainable adhesive system — an alternative to toxic, permanent, traditional adhesives. (Purdue University photo/Rebecca Robinos)

Alexandria Johnson does hard science on the most nebulous of subjects: clouds. As an atmospheric scientist and assistant professor of practice in Purdue University’s College of Science, she studies clouds wherever they are: in her lab, on Earth, throughout the solar system and into the galaxy.