Aging stars may be swallowing their closest planets, study finds
New research suggests that aging stars may be destroying the giant planets orbiting nearest to them—a dramatic process that could foreshadow the distant future...
Giant stars may have forged the universe’s oldest star clusters, study finds
Astronomers have long puzzled over how the oldest and most mysterious star clusters in the universe—known as globular clusters—came to be.
Now, an international research...
Astronomers witness brightest and most distant black hole flare ever recorded
Astronomers have captured the most powerful and farthest black hole flare ever recorded—a cosmic light show so bright it outshined 10 trillion suns.
The flare,...
Dark matter obeys gravity just like ordinary matter, scientists discover
For decades, scientists have been trying to understand dark matter—the mysterious, invisible substance that makes up about 85% of all matter in the universe.
It...
Repeated impacts could regenerate exoplanet atmospheres around red dwarfs
Exoplanet scientists are eagerly awaiting the discovery of an atmosphere around a terrestrial exoplanet.
Not a thin, tenuous, barely perceptible collection of molecules, but a...
A stormy brown dwarf reveals secrets of how stars and planets are born
Astronomers have discovered a fascinating new object orbiting a small red star not far from Earth — a brown dwarf with powerful storms and...
Tiny galaxies prove dark matter is real, defying modified gravity theories
A new international study has provided one of the clearest signs yet that dark matter—not a change in gravity—is responsible for the mysterious way...
Ancient dead star still feasting on the remains of its planets
In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and collapse into a dense, Earth-sized remnant called a white dwarf.
Though...
MIT scientists uncover the richest chemical cloud in the galaxy
Astronomers from MIT have uncovered an astonishingly rich mix of molecules in a region of space known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 (TMC-1).
This dark,...
Colliding black holes might have formed from earlier cosmic smashups
A pair of distant black hole mergers, measured just one month apart in late 2024, are improving how scientists understand the nature and evolution...