Space & Future
How Jupiter May Have Helped Deliver the Building Blocks of Life to Earth
A new NASA-supported study suggests that Jupiter may have played a surprisingly important role in helping Earth acquire some of the key ingredients needed...
Astronomers Discover Missing Red Dwarf Stars in Ancient Star Cluster
Astronomers studying an ancient star cluster have discovered a strange gap where certain stars should exist but do not.
The finding provides new clues about...
Asteroid dirt is fluffier than we thought
The strength of gravity is different on every body in the solar system.
Whether it's the crushing weight of Jupiter or the miniscule pull of...
New laser-treated metal could help keep satellites cool in space
Keeping satellites cool in space is a major challenge. Unlike on Earth, where heat can escape into the surrounding air, space is a vacuum.
This...
Why lunar regolith could be the key to living on the Moon
The moon may look peaceful from Earth, but its surface is one of the harshest environments imaginable.
It is covered by a layer of fine...
Astronomers solve mystery of strange cosmic signals with rare two-star system
Astronomers have solved one of the biggest mysteries in radio astronomy by identifying the source of a strange type of cosmic signal that has...
How heavy can a neutron star get
The physics of neutron stars are almost too fantastic to believe. Something the weight of two Suns compacted to a sphere the size of...
Scientists get their best-ever look at distant planet’s surface
Astronomers have found thousands of worlds in faraway star systems, but one of the questions that’s been hardest to answer is the one that...
Is extracting oxygen from lunar soil the future of space exploration
A new race to the moon is emerging between the United States and China.
Unlike fifty years ago, the goal is no longer just about...
Everything we thought we knew about dark energy could be wrong
For nearly 30 years, scientists have believed that a mysterious force called dark energy is causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
But a...
The Sun is changing and we don’t know why
Put your ear to the ground in the right place and you can hear a train coming from miles away.
Long before it appears on...
How Giant Galaxies Burned Bright and Died Young In the Early Universe
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy is why some of the largest galaxies in the early universe stopped making stars surprisingly early in...
Deep Space
Scientists find new evidence of watery plumes on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Jupiter’s moon Europa is a fascinating world.
On its surface, the moon appears to be scratched and scored with reddish-brown scars, which rake across the...
If we could find them, Primordial black holes would explain a lot about the...
There are three known types of black holes in the Universe: supermassive black holes that lurk in the centers of galaxies, stellar-mass black holes...
Eris could be slushier than Pluto, shows study
In 2005, astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz announced the discovery of a previously unknown planetoid in the Kuiper...
Neptune’s vanishing clouds linked to solar cycle, study finds
For the first time in nearly 30 years of observations, Neptune's cloud cover has dramatically decreased, and researchers think the sun's solar cycle might...
Scientists find a ‘cold Neptune’ and two temperate super-Earths
A "cold Neptune" and two potentially habitable worlds are part of a cache of five newly discovered exoplanets and eight exoplanet candidates found orbiting...