Space & Future
How heavy can a neutron star get
The physics of neutron stars are almost too fantastic to believe. Something the weight of two Suns compacted to a sphere the size of...
Scientists get their best-ever look at distant planet’s surface
Astronomers have found thousands of worlds in faraway star systems, but one of the questions that’s been hardest to answer is the one that...
Is extracting oxygen from lunar soil the future of space exploration
A new race to the moon is emerging between the United States and China.
Unlike fifty years ago, the goal is no longer just about...
Everything we thought we knew about dark energy could be wrong
For nearly 30 years, scientists have believed that a mysterious force called dark energy is causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
But a...
The Sun is changing and we don’t know why
Put your ear to the ground in the right place and you can hear a train coming from miles away.
Long before it appears on...
How Giant Galaxies Burned Bright and Died Young In the Early Universe
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy is why some of the largest galaxies in the early universe stopped making stars surprisingly early in...
Red Dwarf Stars Caught Devouring Earth-Like Planets
Astronomers have discovered some of the clearest evidence yet that stars can consume their own planets.
In a new study published in the journal Monthly...
Something just passed between us and a distant star
On the night of 18 December 2019, a star in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, briefly got brighter.
Not dramatically nor explosively, just...
Ancient “Cosmic Cities” Were Already Shaping Galaxies Soon After the Big Bang
Astronomers have discovered that galaxies were already being shaped by their surroundings just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than scientists...
Black Hole “Gold Rush” Reveals Hundreds of Hidden Cosmic Collisions
Astronomers have unveiled the largest collection yet of gravitational wave detections, marking a major leap forward in our understanding of black holes and the...
The Sun just did something nobody expected and it kept going for 19 days
The Sun is not known for being quiet!
It blasts out energy equivalent to 100 billion nuclear bombs every single second, routinely hurls billion tonne...
Ancient Region Near Jupiter May Have Created Six Types of Meteorites
Scientists have discovered that a region just outside Jupiter’s orbit may have acted like a giant “planet factory” in the early solar system, producing...
Deep Space
Astronomers unveil new and puzzling features of mysterious fast radio bursts
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun’s annual output.
More than 15 years after the...
Earth may have formed closer to home than scientists thought
For many years, scientists believed that Earth was built from a mix of materials coming from both the inner and outer parts of the...
How aliens might detect Earth: A new study on our signals to space
A team of scientists led by Dr. Sofia Sheikh from the SETI Institute has investigated a fascinating question:
If there were an alien civilization with...
Dwarf-sized double-named starburst galaxy NGC 178
Have you ever heard of the galaxy NGC 178? It may be small, but it sure is mighty!
At only around 40,000 light-years across, it's...
Scientists discover a fast-spinning red giant star orbiting a silent black hole
Astronomers have uncovered the unusual history of a distant red giant star by “listening” to tiny vibrations rippling through it.
These vibrations, known as starquakes,...