Space & Future
The universe’s famous ‘pink planet’ has salty clouds in its sky
Astronomers have discovered an unexpected surprise on the famous “Pink Planet,” a strange world known as GJ504b.
Using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST),...
New Mars rock discovery could reveal secrets of the red planet’s ancient past
Scientists have discovered a completely new type of rock from Mars and, for the first time, identified the mineral garnet in a Martian sample.
The...
More than 30 giant dust devils spotted twisting through ancient Martian canyons
The European Space Agency (ESA) has captured remarkable new images of dozens of giant dust devils swirling across an ancient canyon system on Mars.
The...
Ancient black holes may be triggering exploding stars across the universe, study finds
Scientists are exploring a fascinating idea: some of the brilliant stellar explosions seen across the universe may have been triggered by tiny black holes...
Lava planet has hydrogen-rich, active atmosphere
It’s 2158, and you’re chugging away on your PhD in Planetary Volcanology from the University of Utopia Planitia on Mars. Graduate students still get...
Astronomers detect the fuel for star formation in some of the universe’s earliest galaxies
Astronomers have made a major breakthrough by directly detecting the gas that fueled star formation in some of the universe’s earliest galaxies.
The discovery offers...
Ancient stellar debris is still falling on Earth after 100 million years, study finds
Tiny traces of material from a giant cosmic explosion are still falling to Earth more than 100 million years after the event occurred, according...
Astronomers discover Sun-like star that likely swallowed one of its planets
A team of astronomers has found strong evidence that a star similar to our sun may have eaten one of its own planets.
The star,...
A star’s death throes involves a lot of kicking
When stars like our Sun age, they puff up into red giants.
Their bubbling outer mass gradually escapes into space, and their remaining cores contract...
The best place to look for alien megastructures might be moon dust
Our search for technosignatures - clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth - takes many forms.
Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which...
A tiny lab-made universe may help solve the mystery of time
Time seems like one of the most basic parts of everyday life. We use clocks to measure it, plan our days around it, and...
Consciousness may exist beyond humans, animals, and even Earth
Could consciousness exist in alien life forms that look nothing like us? Could it even appear in machines?
According to a new paper by philosophers...
Deep Space
New black hole discovery shakes up what we know about galaxy formation
Once upon a time, at the very start of the universe nearly 14 billion years ago, there were these incredible cosmic monsters known as...
Scientists unveil a 5.7 terapixel global image of Mars
A planet-spanning online image of Mars created at a scale of 5 meters per pixel was unveiled today.
The image is freely available to the...
The lunar surface remelted, obscuring an easy answer to its true age
How old is the Moon?
Astronaut-gathered samples from the lunar surface put its age at about 4.35 billion years. However, other evidence suggests it’s much...
NASA thinks it knows why Ingenuity crashed on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter sent its final signals to Earth in the earlier part of the year.
Engineers have been studying these and have started to...
Radio telescope confirms free-floating binary planets in the Orion Nebula
Planets orbit stars. That’s axiomatic.
Or at least it was until astronomers started finding rogue planets, also called free-floating planets (FFPs). Some of these planets...