Some black holes may be older than the stars themselves. One could even be hiding inside our sun. And their existence could help solve one of the biggest mysteries in physics: dark matter.

Astronomers have discovered enormous black holes in the early universe that seem to have grown far, too quickly for our current theories to explain. Now, observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, alongside some unusual black holes closer to home, are raising an extraordinary possibility: some black holes may have formed in the first fractions of a second after the big bang.

These hypothetical objects, known as primordial black holes, could have existed long before the first stars and galaxies. Some may have become trapped inside stars, potentially even our own sun, tracing intricate, geometric orbits deep within their interiors.

And, perhaps most intriguingly, some scientists think these ancient black holes could account for the universe’s mysterious dark matter.

We may be on the verge of solving the mystery of the Martian moons. On 20 October, the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft launches towards the larger of the two moons, Phobos, with the goal of bringing back a sample that may finally explain how Phobos and its sibling, Deimos, formed.

MMX will launch from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. If all goes to plan, it should arrive at Mars in August 2027, entering an orbit that keeps it alongside Phobos so it can build a detailed map of the surface. Along the way, it will also observe the surface of Deimos.

Once the map is complete enough, the spacecraft’s operators at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will use it to pick out a spot on Phobos for MMX to land. During one or two brief landings, it will take on two tasks: to drop off a small rover called IDEFIX and to pick up samples. The rover is the first anyone has ever placed on such a small cosmic body, so part of its purpose aside from scientific observations is to confirm that a wheeled rover even works on an object with such low gravity.

The samples, though, are the most important part of the mission. MMX has two different sampling devices: one that shoots a puff of gas onto the surface, blowing dust and pebbles back up into a sampling container, and another that blasts a hollow cylinder into the ground to take a sample a several centimetres deep. After the samples are taken, they will be stowed away inside the spacecraft, which will then head back towards Earth. It is expected to arrive home in 2031.

Once these samples get back to Earth and are analysed by scientists on the ground, they should finally solve the mystery of how Phobos and Deimos formed. For more than a century, researchers have debated whether the two are captured asteroids or formed from an impact on Mars, similar to how Earth’s moon formed. On first look, their shapes and surfaces resemble asteroids, but their circular orbits around Mars’s equator are more consistent with the impact hypothesis. Figuring out what they are made of should settle it once and for all.

Free newsletter

Sign up to Launchpad

Sign up to newsletter

This will also help illuminate what the solar system was like billions of years ago when these strange moons formed. “Having the answer will help illuminate that early era when Earth and the other inner planets may have been acquiring much of their water and organic compounds,” said , part of the NASA team that is collaborating on the MMX mission, in a .

If we are very lucky, the samples from Phobos may even contain bonus bits of dust and debris from Mars itself. Impacts on the planet could have launched material into space, which would have collected on the moon’s surface and been preserved there for billions of years. That means that these samples could illuminate not just the history of Phobos and Deimos, but also of Mars.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) released a trove of files on UFOs. The files include images along with government documents and correspondence, some of which were classified until now.

“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” said US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a statement on where the files are displayed.

The images are mostly photographs taken by members of the US military showing small dots or indistinct shapes in the sky. Of more interest are the hundreds of pages of files relating to UFOs, also called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), from the FBI, Air Force and various other government departments.

Many of the pages are correspondence between the government and concerned members of the public. Some are pamphlets from special-interest groups such as the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America or the Fraternity of Cosmic Sons and Daughters, and others are requests from children to the head of the FBI – many to J. Edgar Hoover, who served in the role from 1935 to 1972 – for help with school projects.

Letters from UFO enthusiasts through the years, from the 1940s to now, show remarkable similarities in the sentiments they express: a feeling that UFO sightings have been mounting, that the government must be hiding something and that they are sure to be persecuted for saying as much.

The responses to these letters, and the internal government communications that have been released, seem to show something different – many thousands of reports of UFO sightings have been taken seriously and investigated, and there has been no indication that any of them have been extraterrestrial. This mirrors the 2023 results from NASA’s task force on UAPs, which found that normal aircraft and weather phenomena account for most reports, with only a few remaining unexplained due to blurry images and low-quality data.

The documents that have made the biggest splash are images and transcripts from NASA’s Gemini 7, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, each referencing some bright lights that the astronauts saw in space and could not explain. Most of these sightings have already been investigated and explained as micrometeoroid impacts on the moon or the spacecraft, bits of floating debris, and camera or film defects, although a few have remained unexplained thus far.

The DoD has opened a new investigation into the images that remain unexplained, and has been directed by the administration of President Donald Trump to “conduct separate reporting” on any unresolved UAP cases. According to the website, this is only the first of many rolling document drops expected “every few weeks” as more files are found and declassified.