Space & Future
Can Martian soil kill Earth microbes? Water bears reveal surprising clues
Scientists are using one of Earth’s toughest microscopic creatures to explore an important question for future space travel: Could the soil on Mars naturally...
6 million years ago something slammed into modern-day Brazil
Giant impacts on Earth's surface can be cataclysmic events with far-reaching consequences. They can excavate massive craters like the Vredefort Crater.
There's also growing evidence...
Early Mars was warm and wet not icy
A recent study showed that Mars was warm and wet billions of years ago.
The finding contrasts with another theory that this era was mainly...
Moon once had a magnetic field stronger than Earth’s—But only for brief moments
For decades, scientists have debated whether the Moon once had a powerful magnetic field like Earth’s or only a weak one.
Now, a new study...
One of the biggest stars in the universe might be getting ready to explode
One of the largest known stars in the universe underwent a dramatic transformation in 2014, new research shows, and may be preparing to explode.
A...
Stunning new image reveals hidden gas “rivers” at the heart of the Milky Way
Astronomers have captured the most detailed view ever of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, revealing a tangled web of cold gas filaments...
How giant galaxies could form just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang
When the venerable Hubble Space Telescope made its Deep Fields studies of the early Universe, it discovered something that would puzzle astronomers to this...
Scientists discover Earth-like auroras on Jupiter’s giant moon
Scientists have discovered that the colorful light shows seen above Earth’s poles also occur on Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon—and they behave in strikingly similar...
NASA spots a young sun blowing a giant bubble in space
Astronomers have captured the first clear image of a giant “bubble” surrounding a young star that closely resembles what our own sun looked like...
Jupiter’s icy moons may have been born with the ingredients for life
Scientists have found new evidence that Jupiter’s largest moons may have received the chemical building blocks of life at the moment they formed.
The discovery...
Why we may still be waiting for an alien signal
Since the first Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) experiment in 1960, scientists have been scanning the Milky Way for signs of advanced alien civilizations.
They...
Could quantum light expose the universe’s biggest mystery?
Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in science.
Astronomers believe it makes up most of the matter in the universe, yet no one...
Deep Space
Very Large Telescope detected a passing double asteroid hurtling by Earth at 70 000...
The unique capabilities of the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have enabled it to obtain the sharpest images of a double asteroid...
Eris could be slushier than Pluto, shows study
In 2005, astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz announced the discovery of a previously unknown planetoid in the Kuiper...
Early dark energy could explain the crisis in cosmology
In 1916, Einstein finished his Theory of General Relativity, which describes how gravitational forces alter the curvature of spacetime.
Among other things, this theory predicted...
Mars has the right conditions for life just under the surface
According to the immortal words of Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) “Life..uh…finds a way”.
Back in 2005, an article in Nature used the famous quote from...
Astronomers use little hurricanes to weigh and date planets around young stars
Little ‘hurricanes’ that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation,...