Space & Future

New Mars rock discovery could reveal secrets of the red planet’s ancient past

Scientists have discovered a completely new type of rock from Mars and, for the first time, identified the mineral garnet in a Martian sample. The...

More than 30 giant dust devils spotted twisting through ancient Martian canyons

The European Space Agency (ESA) has captured remarkable new images of dozens of giant dust devils swirling across an ancient canyon system on Mars. The...

Ancient black holes may be triggering exploding stars across the universe, study finds

Scientists are exploring a fascinating idea: some of the brilliant stellar explosions seen across the universe may have been triggered by tiny black holes...

Lava planet has hydrogen-rich, active atmosphere

It’s 2158, and you’re chugging away on your PhD in Planetary Volcanology from the University of Utopia Planitia on Mars. Graduate students still get...

Astronomers detect the fuel for star formation in some of the universe’s earliest galaxies

Astronomers have made a major breakthrough by directly detecting the gas that fueled star formation in some of the universe’s earliest galaxies. The discovery offers...

Ancient stellar debris is still falling on Earth after 100 million years, study finds

Tiny traces of material from a giant cosmic explosion are still falling to Earth more than 100 million years after the event occurred, according...

Astronomers discover Sun-like star that likely swallowed one of its planets

A team of astronomers has found strong evidence that a star similar to our sun may have eaten one of its own planets. The star,...

A star’s death throes involves a lot of kicking

When stars like our Sun age, they puff up into red giants. Their bubbling outer mass gradually escapes into space, and their remaining cores contract...

The best place to look for alien megastructures might be moon dust

Our search for technosignatures - clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth - takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which...

A tiny lab-made universe may help solve the mystery of time

Time seems like one of the most basic parts of everyday life. We use clocks to measure it, plan our days around it, and...

Consciousness may exist beyond humans, animals, and even Earth

Could consciousness exist in alien life forms that look nothing like us? Could it even appear in machines? According to a new paper by philosophers...

Cosmic “galaxy-killing wind” may explain why some galaxies died so young

Astronomers have discovered a powerful “galaxy-killing wind” in the early universe that may help solve one of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy: why...

Deep Space

Scientists discover a super-hot exoplanet that has quartz clouds

A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters used data obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to identify...

Apollo mission rocks shed light on the moon’s early history

Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the moon, a new...

Black hole collisions reveal deeper secrets of the universe

A groundbreaking study published in Nature has set a new standard in understanding some of the universe's most extreme events: the collisions of black...

ESA’s Gaia sees strange stars in most detailed Milky Way survey to date

Gaia is ESA's mission to create the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. This allows astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy's...

When Mars may have had water

Scientists on NASA’s Perseverance mission made a surprising discovery about the composition of rock in Jezero Crater, one that will help them get a...