When someone talks about frozen water, they typically mean the ice cubes in a cold drink or the vast glaciers in Earth’s coldest corners. What most people don’t know, however, is that H2O molecules can arrange themselves into many different types, or phases, of ice with various structures. Researchers have discovered more than 20 of these phases, the latest of which—called Ice XXI—a team recently created under extreme pressure, allowing water to turn to ice at room temperature.

Chances are that all your encounters with frozen water—while trudging through slushy winter streets, perhaps, or treating yourself to cool summer lemonades—have been confined to one structural form of ice, dubbed Ih, with the h referring to its crystal lattice’s hexagonal nature. But there is so much more to ice than that.

At the start of the year, Earth will quietly reach a milestone in its orbit around the sun. Known as perihelion, this is the moment when our planet is closer to the sun than at any other point in the year.

If you’ve been following astronomy headlines, you might have noticed a curious new arrival to the neighborhood: Comet 3I/ATLAS. It’s not just another “regular” comet from the outer solar system–this one’s an interstellar visitor, meaning it was born around another star entirely.

For the first time, scientists have detected two black hole mergers with spins so unusual they may reveal a new generation of cosmic collisions. The twin discoveries, labeled GW241011 and GW241110, were announced by the international LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations—teams that have been tuning their instruments to detect the faintest ripples in space and time. Each signal, lasting less than a second, was a final whisper from black holes that collided billions of years ago.

Michael Pravica talks about how consciousness can transcend the physical realm.