Space & Future
Will we know if TRAPPIST-1e has life?
The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift.
With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite...
There was a doomed comet near the sun during the eclipse
A surprise appearance of a new comet made the April 8th total solar eclipse all the more memorable.
Any dedicated ‘umbraphile’ will tell you: no...
How methane could be appearing and disappearing on Mars
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover has brought to light one of the most baffling discoveries on Mars—the presence of methane gas in Gale Crater.
This finding...
NASA’s Voyager 1 back in action, resumes sending data after five months
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has started sending back valuable information about its condition for the first time since November last year.
This development is a...
New study reveals the power of stellar superflares
A recent study has brought us closer to understanding the massive bursts of energy seen in stellar superflares, which are far more intense than...
James Webb Telescope spots possible aurorae on a distant brown dwarf
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made an intriguing discovery on a brown dwarf—a type of celestial object that is bigger...
Scientists discover radiating exoplanet in “perfect tidal storm”
Can tidal forces cause an exoplanet’s surface to radiate heat?
This is what a recent study accepted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as...
NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals a giant lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io
NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io in two recent flybys.
That’s close enough to reveal...
Astronomers discover a record-breaking black hole in our Milky Way galaxy
Astronomers have recently unveiled the most massive stellar black hole ever found in our Milky Way galaxy.
This enormous black hole, located just 2,000 light-years...
What’s the most effective way to explore our nearest stars
It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight.
Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic...
The giant planets migrated between 60-100 million years after the solar system formed
Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging.
Millions of objects of wildly different masses interacted...
NASA confirms that a piece of its battery pack smashed into a Florida home
NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit.
But what goes up must come down, and if whatever is coming down doesn’t burn...
Deep Space
Scientists find a new kind of stellar explosion called micronova
Astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion — a...
Scientists reveal the violent history of the big galaxy next door
The Milky Way is on a collision course with Andromeda in about four billion years.
So knowing what kind of a monster our galaxy...
Scientists inch closer than ever to signal from cosmic dark age
Around 12 billion years ago, the universe emerged from a great cosmic dark age as the first stars and galaxies lit up.
With a new...
Scientists find first giant planet around white dwarf
Researchers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star.
The planet...
Radio telescope confirms free-floating binary planets in the Orion Nebula
Planets orbit stars. That’s axiomatic.
Or at least it was until astronomers started finding rogue planets, also called free-floating planets (FFPs). Some of these planets...