Space & Future
Ancient Meteorite Dust Reveals Magnetism May Have Helped Build Our Sun
About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system looked nothing like it does today. Instead of a sun surrounded by planets, it began as...
Astronomers Discover 4 Strange Planets Around One of Our Closest Stars
Astronomers have taken their most detailed look yet at a fascinating group of small planets orbiting Barnard’s Star, one of the closest stars to...
Why a Planet’s Slow Spin Could Turn It into a Scorching World Like Venus
Why did Earth become a comfortable home for life while its similar-sized neighbor Venus turned into a scorching world with a crushing atmosphere?
Scientists think...
Astronomers Find a Flaw in a Cosmic Yardstick Used for 50 Years
For more than half a century, astronomers have relied on a basic assumption when estimating the number of stars inside distant galaxies: stars of...
Dry Martian Meteorite Reveals Early Water in Mars’s Crust
Billions of years ago, Mars was hypothesized to have been a habitable world with flowing liquid water and the potential for life.
But directly studying...
Mysterious Gravitational Waves May Be Echoes of Ancient Dark Stars
A faint gravitational-wave signal spreading across the universe may contain clues about mysterious stars that existed more than 13 billion years ago, according to...
Hidden Stars Reveal Early Galaxies Were Far Bigger Than We Thought
Some of the earliest massive galaxies in the universe may be hiding enormous numbers of small, faint stars, suggesting they contain much more mass...
One Giant Asteroid Impact May Have Reshaped Mars’ Tiny Moon Deimos
A single asteroid impact may have dramatically reshaped Deimos, the smaller of Mars' two moons, creating both a huge depression near its south pole...
Dying Galaxies Reveal What Happens After Black Hole Jets Switch Off
Astronomers have discovered a group of faint "dying" radio galaxies that could change our understanding of what happens after supermassive black holes stop producing...
Mars Dust Could Threaten Astronauts’ Lungs, NASA Warns
Future astronauts exploring Mars will face a danger that may be much harder to avoid than extreme cold or radiation: dust.
NASA has released a...
Hubble Discovers a Lost Galaxy Swallowed by the Milky Way 11.8 Billion Years Ago
The Milky Way has not always been the enormous spiral galaxy we see today. Like many large galaxies, it grew partly by swallowing smaller...
Scientists Solve Key Mysteries Behind Supernovae and X-Ray Bursts
Scientists have made two important nuclear measurements that could help explain what happens inside some of the most powerful explosions in the universe.
In two...
Deep Space
Scientists find exotic matter in the sun’s atmosphere
Scientists from Ireland and France announced a major new finding of how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the Sun's atmosphere.
The scientists used...
NASA’s spacecraft touches the Sun for the first time!
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere –...
Early black holes fed 40x faster than should be possible
The theory goes that black holes accrete material, often from nearby stars.
However the theory also suggests there is a limit to how big a...
Ancient galaxy shakes up dark matter theory
In a recent groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have observed a massive galaxy from over 11 billion years ago, hosting stars far older than theories of...
Scientists find the remnant of an ancient globular cluster
Scientists discovered a stellar stream composed of the remnants of an ancient globular cluster that was torn apart by the Milky Way's gravity 2...