the Universe and exoplanets
Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing—pinging your friends and associates—that we all brought them back into our live
Water ice could sustain small lunar communities for centuries, but supporting cities may require additional supplies or more efficient water use. Water ice in the Moon’s polar craters has given people planning lunar settlements a reason to think beyond short visits. With water available locally, residents could grow fo
New simulations suggest Webb’s Little Red Dots capture a rapid growth phase that could explain the early appearance of supermassive black holes. Little Red Dots, the small, extremely red objects spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe, may reveal how black holes grew so big, so quickly. Astronom
NASA’s $1.2 billion PRIMA will explore how galaxies evolve and how planets emerge from disks of gas and dust
New observations from NASA’s Juno mission are revealing that Jupiter’s bow shock behaves in more complex ways than its counterpart at Earth. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has captured the most detailed measurements yet of Jupiter’s bow shock, the vast boundary where the solar wind crashes into the planet’s magnetic environmen
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter helped uncover a 728-foot-wide crater that formed on the Moon in 2024 after a rare, powerful impact. What began as a routine check of lunar mapping data quickly turned into an unexpected discovery. Robert Wagner, a scientist working with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was
The robotic spacecraft that failed to rescue an aging NASA telescope plunged back to Earth on Friday less than three months after launching on the bold mission.
Ariel, one of Uranus’ moons, may once have contained a subsurface ocean more than 100 miles deep beneath its fractured icy shell. The finding, combined with similar evidence from Miranda, suggests the distant Uranian system could harbor multiple hidden ocean worlds.
A dead white dwarf with no detectable disk has somehow produced a powerful shock wave that appears to have persisted for at least 1,000 years. Its magnetic field may be partly responsible, but astronomers say an unexplained “mystery engine” may also be at work.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers led by the University of Maryland identified water, methane and ammonia in the atmosphere of HATS-6 b, a giant planet 500 light-years from Earth. The observations also revealed that HATS-6 b may be significantly cooler than standard calculations predict
Astronomers have discovered the first globular cluster stellar stream beyond the Milky Way, opening a new way to study dark matter in distant galaxies. These faint trails of stars trace a galaxy’s gravitational structure and could eventually help scientists map invisible matter across the universe.
What are the chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system? Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary science at Freie Universität Berlin, has published a study in Science Advances with an international team of researchers. They present new evidence that it is easier to determine the constituents of the o
Scientists have expanded the search for microscopic black holes at the Large Hadron Collider, looking for fleeting objects that could reveal hidden dimensions and clues to quantum gravity. Quantum black holes could give physicists a rare chance to study intense gravity on the scale of tiny particles. These hypothetical
SKA-Low is a radio telescope under construction in Western Australia. It will operate across a wide frequency range, from 50 to 350 MHz, and will be the most sensitive telescope of its kind ever built. The completed instrument will link 512 stations spread across an area roughly 75 km (47 miles) wide. Each station's an
A camping search on satellite maps led to the discovery of a massive 390-million-year-old impact crater hidden in the Quebec wilderness. An amateur astronomer searching satellite imagery for possible camping spots in Quebec ended up noticing something far more unusual: a previously unrecognized impact crater. Only abou
the Universe and exoplanets
Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing—pinging your friends and associates—that we all brought them back into our live
Water ice could sustain small lunar communities for centuries, but supporting cities may require additional supplies or more efficient water use. Water ice in the Moon’s polar craters has given people planning lunar settlements a reason to think beyond short visits. With water available locally, residents could grow fo
New simulations suggest Webb’s Little Red Dots capture a rapid growth phase that could explain the early appearance of supermassive black holes. Little Red Dots, the small, extremely red objects spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe, may reveal how black holes grew so big, so quickly. Astronom
NASA’s $1.2 billion PRIMA will explore how galaxies evolve and how planets emerge from disks of gas and dust
New observations from NASA’s Juno mission are revealing that Jupiter’s bow shock behaves in more complex ways than its counterpart at Earth. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has captured the most detailed measurements yet of Jupiter’s bow shock, the vast boundary where the solar wind crashes into the planet’s magnetic environmen
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter helped uncover a 728-foot-wide crater that formed on the Moon in 2024 after a rare, powerful impact. What began as a routine check of lunar mapping data quickly turned into an unexpected discovery. Robert Wagner, a scientist working with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was
The robotic spacecraft that failed to rescue an aging NASA telescope plunged back to Earth on Friday less than three months after launching on the bold mission.
Ariel, one of Uranus’ moons, may once have contained a subsurface ocean more than 100 miles deep beneath its fractured icy shell. The finding, combined with similar evidence from Miranda, suggests the distant Uranian system could harbor multiple hidden ocean worlds.
A dead white dwarf with no detectable disk has somehow produced a powerful shock wave that appears to have persisted for at least 1,000 years. Its magnetic field may be partly responsible, but astronomers say an unexplained “mystery engine” may also be at work.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers led by the University of Maryland identified water, methane and ammonia in the atmosphere of HATS-6 b, a giant planet 500 light-years from Earth. The observations also revealed that HATS-6 b may be significantly cooler than standard calculations predict
Astronomers have discovered the first globular cluster stellar stream beyond the Milky Way, opening a new way to study dark matter in distant galaxies. These faint trails of stars trace a galaxy’s gravitational structure and could eventually help scientists map invisible matter across the universe.
What are the chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system? Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary science at Freie Universität Berlin, has published a study in Science Advances with an international team of researchers. They present new evidence that it is easier to determine the constituents of the o
Scientists have expanded the search for microscopic black holes at the Large Hadron Collider, looking for fleeting objects that could reveal hidden dimensions and clues to quantum gravity. Quantum black holes could give physicists a rare chance to study intense gravity on the scale of tiny particles. These hypothetical
SKA-Low is a radio telescope under construction in Western Australia. It will operate across a wide frequency range, from 50 to 350 MHz, and will be the most sensitive telescope of its kind ever built. The completed instrument will link 512 stations spread across an area roughly 75 km (47 miles) wide. Each station's an
A camping search on satellite maps led to the discovery of a massive 390-million-year-old impact crater hidden in the Quebec wilderness. An amateur astronomer searching satellite imagery for possible camping spots in Quebec ended up noticing something far more unusual: a previously unrecognized impact crater. Only abou
