Space & Future
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...
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...
Deep Space
Astronomers find 116,000 new variable stars
Ohio State University astronomers have identified about 116,000 new variable stars, according to a new paper.
These heavenly bodies were found by The All-Sky Automated...
Earth-like planets may be more common than we thought
A new study from Rice University is giving scientists fresh hope that more Earth-like planets may exist in the universe.
Researchers Sho Shibata and Andre...
Scientists discover a warped disc torn apart by stars in a triple Tatooine-like system
A new study has revealed the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-forming disc, leaving it warped and with...
What are the chances of asteroid Bennu striking Earth in next 300 years?
Even Harry Stamper would probably like these odds.
Recently NASA updated its forecast of the chances that the asteroid Bennu, one of the two most...
Binary stars form lots of exoplanets, but many of them are ejected as rogue...
Astronomers don't have to work hard to find binary stars in the Milky Way.
They're common, even abundant. For a long time, they thought that...