Space & Future

Rare Meteorite from New Jersey Contains Clues to the Origins of Life, Scientists Find

A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey, has given scientists a rare look at the chemistry of...

Astronomers Uncover A Strange Nearby Planet System Unlike Anything In Our Solar System

Barnard’s Star is one of the most famous stars in the night sky for astronomers because it is so close to Earth. Located just under...

Astronomers find new features hiding in the Orion Nebula

As one of the most prominent features of the night sky, the Orion Nebula has been studied, probed, and imaged by almost every telescope...

Hidden fifth dimension could finally explain the mystery of dark matter, scientists say

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that holds galaxies together, may be connected to a hidden fifth dimension of space, according to a new theory...

Astronomers uncover long-lost black hole hidden among 10 million stars

Astronomers have discovered the first known stellar-mass black hole hiding inside the massive star cluster Omega Centauri, solving part of a mystery that has...

Hidden oceans? Common alien planets may be concealing vast oceans, study finds

Some of the most common planets in our galaxy may be hiding far more water than scientists can currently detect—even with the powerful James...

Scientists detect a sugar in deep space for the first time, offering new clues...

For the first time, scientists have discovered a sugar molecule floating in interstellar space, a breakthrough that could help explain how some of the...

Astronomers discover four dead stars in our cosmic neighborhood

Astronomers have uncovered four previously hidden white dwarfs surprisingly close to Earth, revealing that even our own corner of the galaxy still holds major...

Chemistry reveals the origins of an interstellar comet

Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy is an old star that has lost one of its comets. By some quirk of orbital mechanics, that frozen...

Scientists recreate a black hole energy trick in the lab without anything spinning

More than 50 years ago, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir Roger Penrose proposed an extraordinary idea. He suggested that it might be possible to extract energy...

Scientists capture the tiny ‘drift’ that signals the birth of a star

How does a new star begin? It is a question astronomers have been trying to answer for decades. Now, scientists have observed an important process that...

Most of moon’s water likely remains chemically bound in its deep interior

After decades of analyzing reams of lunar rocks back here on Earth, the canonical view of the Moon was that it was anhydrous; that...

Deep Space

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...

Why do some planets have moons? A physics expert explains why Earth has only...

On Earth, you can look up at night and see the Moon shining bright from hundreds of thousands of miles away. But if you went...

Vredefort crater asteroid was bigger than one that killed off dinosaurs

The impactor that formed the Vredefort crater, Earth’s largest, about two billion years ago, was probably much bigger than previously believed—and would have had...

Scientists find the 5000th exoplanet

Since the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system 30 years ago, thousands more have been found. At first, discoveries of these new...

Why collect asteroid samples?

China's Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3). The country could...