Space & Future

Hot Jupiters with a memory of their past

How did hot Jupiters end up orbiting so close to their stars, thus earning their moniker? This is what a recent study published in The...

Astronomers discover giant spinning cosmic structure like a “teacup ride” in space

Astronomers have discovered one of the largest rotating structures ever seen in the universe, a vast cosmic formation that spins in a way reminiscent...

Astronomers witness ultra-fast winds erupt from a supermassive black hole

Astronomers have witnessed a dramatic and never-before-seen event near a supermassive black hole: an intense X-ray flare that, within hours, triggered ultra-fast winds blasting...

Did black holes change over time? Astronomers question a 50-year-old rule about quasars

Astronomers have uncovered surprising evidence that challenges a long-standing rule about quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe. The discovery suggests that the...

Supermassive black holes are picky eaters during galaxy mergers, study finds

Black holes are famous for their enormous appetites, pulling in gas, dust, and even light itself. But new research shows that even the largest black...

How stardust really travels: A new study rewrites the story of life’s building blocks

The atoms that make up life on Earth—carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and more—were forged inside stars long before our planet existed. For decades, astronomers believed they...

The solar system loses an ocean world

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may not have a subsurface ocean after all. That’s according to a re-examination of data captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which...

Why the same galaxy can grow or decline—It depends on its neighbor

Galaxies may look serene from afar, but their lives are shaped by powerful internal structures and by the neighbors they keep. A new study led...

Scientists crack 1.4-billion-year-old salt crystals to reveal Earth’s ancient air

More than a billion years before dinosaurs—and long before plants and animals—Earth looked very different. In what is now northern Ontario, a shallow, salty lake...

Webb spots the ‘smoke’ from crashing exocomets around a nearby star

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was involved in yet another first discovery recently available in pre-print form on arXiv from Cicero Lu at...

Scientists solve a big bang theory puzzle that could point to dark matter

For years, one of the most intriguing mysteries in physics has been dark matter—an invisible substance thought to make up most of the matter...

Astronomers discover the violent origin of mysterious blue cosmic explosions

For years, astronomers have been puzzled by rare and dramatic flashes of blue and ultraviolet light that suddenly appear in distant galaxies and then...

Deep Space

Metal-rich stars not necessarily make metal-rich planets, shows new study

Unraveling this surprising discrepancy could reveal new details about the planet formation process. A surprising analysis of the composition of gas giant exoplanets and their...

Scientists discover the clearest baby picture of the universe

Scientists have taken the clearest-ever images of the universe when it was just 380,000 years old—essentially a baby picture of the cosmos. This incredible discovery...

Astronomers think they’ve found examples of the first stars in the universe

When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang. Astronomers call these original...

Over 5,000 exoplanets exist beyond our solar system, confirms NASA

The count of confirmed exoplanets just ticked past the 5,000 mark, representing a 30-year journey of discovery led by NASA space telescopes. Not so long...

Dinosaurs-killing metal could destroy cancer cell’s ‘power source’

A space-age metal that formed part of the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs could provide a new method of treating cancer tumours selectively using...