Space & Future
Moon Dust Could Reveal 100 million Years of Exploding Star History
The soil covering the moon may contain a remarkable record of ancient stars that exploded millions of years ago.
Scientists have developed a new way...
The Sun’s Wild Past May Have Shaped Earth’s Climate and Helped Life Begin
The sun does much more than provide Earth with light and warmth.
Two new studies suggest that events in the sun’s distant past—from traveling through...
Space Rocks Don’t Just Burn Up—Scientists Discover What Really Happens
When a space rock plunges into Earth’s atmosphere, it creates a brilliant streak of light before some pieces may eventually reach the ground as...
Ancient Meteorite Dust Reveals Magnetism May Have Helped Build Our Sun
About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system looked nothing like it does today. Instead of a sun surrounded by planets, it began as...
Astronomers Discover 4 Strange Planets Around One of Our Closest Stars
Astronomers have taken their most detailed look yet at a fascinating group of small planets orbiting Barnard’s Star, one of the closest stars to...
Why a Planet’s Slow Spin Could Turn It into a Scorching World Like Venus
Why did Earth become a comfortable home for life while its similar-sized neighbor Venus turned into a scorching world with a crushing atmosphere?
Scientists think...
Astronomers Find a Flaw in a Cosmic Yardstick Used for 50 Years
For more than half a century, astronomers have relied on a basic assumption when estimating the number of stars inside distant galaxies: stars of...
Dry Martian Meteorite Reveals Early Water in Mars’s Crust
Billions of years ago, Mars was hypothesized to have been a habitable world with flowing liquid water and the potential for life.
But directly studying...
Mysterious Gravitational Waves May Be Echoes of Ancient Dark Stars
A faint gravitational-wave signal spreading across the universe may contain clues about mysterious stars that existed more than 13 billion years ago, according to...
Hidden Stars Reveal Early Galaxies Were Far Bigger Than We Thought
Some of the earliest massive galaxies in the universe may be hiding enormous numbers of small, faint stars, suggesting they contain much more mass...
One Giant Asteroid Impact May Have Reshaped Mars’ Tiny Moon Deimos
A single asteroid impact may have dramatically reshaped Deimos, the smaller of Mars' two moons, creating both a huge depression near its south pole...
Dying Galaxies Reveal What Happens After Black Hole Jets Switch Off
Astronomers have discovered a group of faint "dying" radio galaxies that could change our understanding of what happens after supermassive black holes stop producing...
Deep Space
How the solar system got its ‘Great Divide,’ and why it matters for life...
Scientists, including those from the University of Colorado Boulder, have finally scaled the solar system's equivalent of the Rocky Mountain range.
In a study published...
TESS finds a triple star system that could fit within Mercury’s orbit
TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been on the lookout for alien worlds since 2018.
It has just hit the news again having identified...
Dark matter is slowing the spin of the Milky Way’s galactic bar
For 30 years, astrophysicists have predicted such a slowdown, but this is the first time it has been measured.
The researchers say it gives a...
Carbon is surprisingly abundant in an early galaxy
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again found evidence that the early universe was a far more complex place than we thought.
This...
Some black holes at the centers of galaxies have a buddy, but detecting these...
Every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, much like every egg has a yolk. But sometimes, hens lay eggs with two...