Since 2016, a Japan-led ALMA team kept breaking distance records for oxygen in the early universe. In 2026 they finally caught the cold neutral gas itself — [O I] 145μm in four galaxies ~13 billion years back. The decade-long quest, and how it complements the Webb-led race.
A Japanese team led by NAOJ has detected an atmosphere on a tiny trans-Neptunian object beyond Pluto for the first time, using stellar occultation observed from three sites across Japan. Why this rewrites textbooks on the outer solar system.
