Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, among the tiniest and faintest galaxies known, may hold the key to understanding one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries: the true nature of dark matter. A new study reveals that even a single collision between dark matter particles every 10 billion years — roughly the age of the Universe — is enough to explain the dark matter cores observed in these small systems. These galaxies, which contain only a few thousand stars, are dominated by dark matter and have relatively simple evolutionary histories. That makes them ideal cosmic laboratories for testing theories

From today until 5 December 2025, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is hosting the SO/PHI Science and Team Meetings, an international gathering focused on the scientific and technical advances of the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument aboard ESA's Solar Orbiter (SO) space mission. The development of PHI was co-led by the Spanish Space Solar Physics Consortium (S3PC), which also currently coordinates its scientific operation and exploitation. The IAC is part of this network. PHI is a high-precision solar observation instrument equipped with two telescopes—one