Space & Future

Scientists discover strange “toothpaste-like” space effect deep in Mars’s atmosphere

Scientists studying Mars have discovered a surprising atmospheric phenomenon that was previously only known to exist around Earth. The discovery could change how researchers understand...

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...

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede may still be building its heart of metal

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is already famous for being the largest moon in the solar system. At more than 3,200 miles wide, it is even...

Scientists find a new way to listen to the “ringing” of black holes

When two black holes crash into each other, the event is one of the most violent and powerful collisions in the universe. The two objects...

Astrophysicists use ‘space archaeology’ to trace the history of a spiral galaxy

Billions of years ago, a young spiral galaxy began to grow in a crowded part of the universe. It pulled in gas and small companion...

Scientists solve a cosmic mystery hidden inside the Perseus galaxy cluster

An international team of scientists has uncovered new clues about how stars lived and died billions of years ago by studying one of the...

Scientists may have detected signs of dark matter in black hole collisions

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in modern science. Astronomers believe it makes up most of the matter in the universe, yet nobody...

Ancient Martian mega-flood carved a valley as long as Italy

A massive valley on Mars may hold some of the strongest evidence yet that enormous floods once rushed across the red planet billions of...

Astronomers finally capture how turbulent space warps light across the galaxy

Astronomers have directly observed how turbulent gas and charged particles floating between stars can bend and distort light traveling across the galaxy. The discovery gives...

Astronomers discover violent past hidden inside a “calm” galaxy cluster

A giant galaxy cluster once thought to be one of the calmest places in the universe is now revealing signs of a violent past. Astronomers...

Stardust trapped in Antarctic ice reveals tens of thousands of years of solar system’s...

When you think of outer space, you're likely picturing stars, planets and moons. But much of space is filled with clouds of gas, plasma...

How one tiny star change can transform an entire galaxy

A galaxy may look calm and stable from far away, but new research suggests it can actually behave in surprisingly chaotic ways. Scientists at Leiden...

Deep Space

Can planets around white dwarfs support life?

For years, scientists believed that planets orbiting white dwarf stars couldn’t support life. These stars, the remains of sun-like stars that have burned out, were...

How small planets can form ‘sandwiched’ in between two larger planets

Scientists at the University of Warwick have uncovered a fascinating new explanation for how small planets might form.

Astronomers find wandering massive black holes in dwarf galaxies

Astronomers seeking to learn about the mechanisms that formed massive black holes in the early history of the Universe have gained important new clues...

Galaxy mergers in the early universe could limit star formation

Astronomers have looked nine billion years into the past to find evidence that galaxy mergers in the early universe could shut down star formation...

Supermassive black holes have masses of more than a million suns, but their growth...

Black holes are remarkable astronomical objects with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape them. The most gigantic ones, known as “supermassive”...