Space & Future
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...
Galactic archaeologists find stars in the Milky Way came from another galaxy 12 billion...
Look up on a dark night and the Milky Way appears as a calm band of stars across the sky. But our galaxy has...
Astronomers Discover a Mysterious New Object Called a ‘Black Hole Star’
Astronomers may have discovered an entirely new kind of object in the early universe: something that looks like an enormous star but is powered...
Giant Planets May Be Born in the Shadow of Supermassive Black Holes
Black holes are often imagined as cosmic vacuum cleaners that simply swallow everything nearby.
But new research suggests the environment around supermassive black holes may...
Why Astronauts Get Constipated in Space: Their Blood Offers a Clue
Constipation is a surprisingly common problem for astronauts living in space.
Scientists have long known that digestion can change when people leave Earth, but exactly...
A Dry Martian Meteorite Reveals Where Water Once Hid on Mars
Mars may look like a dry, dusty world today, but billions of years ago, water interacted with its rocky surface.
Now, scientists have found new...
Deep Space
Iron and ice: Earth’s passage through the interstellar cloud
Iron-60 is a radioactive isotope of iron that's found in Antarctic ice and in deep-sea crusts.
It's only source is nucleosynthesis in the cataclysmic explosive...
Scientists discover Uranus has a dancing partner
In the vast expanse between Uranus and Neptune, a team of researchers have uncovered something really quite extraordinary, a minor planet that has been...
How giant black holes shut down star formation
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered powerful winds blasting out of some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, offering new clues about...
Unexpected chemical discovery on Titan could rewrite the rules of life’s origins
Scientists from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and NASA have made a surprising discovery on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, that challenges one of...
Pulsars could help uncover the mysteries of dark matter, shows study
In the grand theater of the universe, one of the most mysterious actors is something we can't even see.
It's called dark matter, and though...