Scientists discover earth-size, habitable zone exoplanet in early NASA Kepler data
A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone,...
Scientists discover a new way that stars light up the sky
A nova, or stella nova, the Latin word for "new star," is an explosion on the surface of a star that can produce enough...
Scientists answer key questions about the mysterious interstellar object ‘Oumuamua
Since its discovery in 2017, an air of mystery has surrounded the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, an elongated, cigar-shaped...
Webb Space Telescope will pierce the dark birthplaces of massive stars
High-mass stars, which are eight or more times the mass of our Sun, live hard and die young. They often end their short lives in...
New observations show that the Universe might not be expanding at the same rate...
When we look at the world around us, we see patterns. The Sun rises and sets. The seasons cycle through the year. The constellations drift...
How did the TRAPPIST-1 planets get their water?
In 2017, an international team of astronomers announced a momentous discovery. Based on years of observations, they found that the TRAPPIST-1 system (an M-type red...
Scientists solve the mystery of Saturn’s hot atmosphere
The upper layers in the atmospheres of Saturn—and the other gas giants Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune—are hot, just like Earth’s. But unlike Earth, the sun...
Scientists find new way to grow medicines during long term space flights
An instrument currently aboard the International Space Station could grow E. coli bacteria in space, opening a new path to bio-manufacturing drugs during long...
Scientists measure wind speed on a brown dwarf for the first time
Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets but not quite as massive as stars. Generally speaking, they have between 13 and 80 times the...
Black hole could bend some light back like a boomerang
You may have heard that nothing escapes the gravitational grasp of a black hole, not even light. This is true in the immediate vicinity of...