Space

Nov 7th, 2025 - First look images made by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile confirm the detection of a massive stellar stream around Messier 61, a grand spiral galaxy located some 53 million light years away. The images demonstrate Rubin's unprecedented ability to detect galactic stellar streams in a way that has heretofore eluded astronomers. And they are just a preview of the unique 8.4-meter telescope's coming attractions, says the lead author of a paper detailing the images in This stream ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Saturn's Enceladus moon might be capable of supporting life, according to data collected by NASA's Cassini mission and compiled in a new study in the Science Advances journal. The moon is one of the most promising for supporting extra-terrestrial life among Saturn's 274 moons, and data show it is capable of long-term stability that would enable life to develop, the University of Oxford announced Friday. Researchers from Oxford, the Southwest Research Institute and the Planetary ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. A supermassive black hole appears to have generated a record flare after gobbling a star at least 30 times more massive than the sun. The event has yet to be confirmed as a tidal disruption event (TDE), which happens when a black hole devours a star (or similar object) that strays too close to ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, November 7 With a bright Moon still in the sky, we're a bit limited in what we can observe. But Hercules is home to a bright globular cluster visible during the evening hours: 6th-magnitude M13. Slowly setting in the west after dark, you have a few hours to catch this cluster before it gets too low. By 6 P.M. local time, M13 is still nearly 40° high in the west, located along one edge of the Keystone of Hercules between the stars ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. A researcher has captured comet 3I/ATLAS glowing green and hiding its tail in a new image from the Lowell Observatory's powerful Discovery Telescope as we enter a critical observation phase for the interstellar visitor. A new image of comet 3I/ATLAS has revealed that the interstellar visitor ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - So it's confession time: I've been lying to you. I've said on many occasions that our Milky Way galaxy has a flat disk (like in this column or this one ). But it's not really flat—not even for a reasonable definition of the term. Now, in my defense, I wasn't lying per se; I was simplifying . That's a perfectly acceptable and even advantageous thing to do in science. When you have some complex thing that you're trying to understand or explain, it helps to make it as simple as possible so ... [Read More]

Nov 7th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A NASA satellite has helped scientists trace the main power source of a weird, switching pulsar named J1023 to a fast, particle packed wind smashing into nearby gas. The crucial clue is that X-ray light and optical light line up in the same polarization angle, pointing to a single engine behind both. The full name of this object is PSR J1023+0038, a so-called transitional millisecond pulsar that flips between radio quiet and radio loud behavior. The most important number ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - For decades, scientists believed that gold and other heavy elements were born from the cataclysmic collision of neutron stars. These rare events, observed across the cosmos, seemed to provide the intense conditions required to forge such elements. However, and the European Space Agency suggest that another, far more frequent process might have played an even greater role. Evidence drawn from two decades of space observations points to highly magnetised neutron stars, known as magnetars, as a ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - Reading time 4 minutes After the Big Bang, our universe began to expand at an exponential rate, an acceleration scientists have long attributed to a mysterious force known as dark energy. This idea—which earned its discoverers the Nobel Prize in 2011—has largely defined our understanding of cosmic growth for decades.  But new research is starting to challenge this long-held assumption. A team of researchers has uncovered new evidence suggesting that the universe may already be ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Astronomers have spotted a "rogue" planet gobbling gas and dust at a record rate, and they can't explain its baffling behavior. Although many rogue planets, which float freely through space without orbiting a star, have been discovered before, this one — known as Cha 1107-7626 — ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Based on a new astrophysics model, scientists are making a bold claim. A handful of extremely massive stars, each more than 1,000 times the mass of the Sun, may have shaped the chemistry of the universe's oldest star clusters. These colossal stars could explain the unusual elemental patterns astronomers see in ancient stellar systems. The team's framework connects how these clusters formed to the unusual mix of elements we measure in their surviving stars, a link ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - Building-sized asteroid won't hit Earth, but has a 4% chance of striking the Moon in 2032 Stefan Milovanovic 3 min read Asteroid 2024 YR4 as captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope using both its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) | ©Image Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI For once, Earth isn't the one in the crosshairs. NASA scientists have confirmed that a fast-moving asteroid first spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers piece together the story of our expanding universe, and whether or not that expansion is accelerating, by studying how bright certain stellar explosions look from Earth – Type Ia supernovae. These massive cosmic eruptions are a great measurement tool because all reach nearly the same peak brightness and follow predictable patterns as they flare up and fade away. By analyzing each supernova's color and light curve, scientists can adjust for those details ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - Reading time 2 minutes The Sun is currently in the active phase of its 11-year cycle and is slowly waking up from a prolonged slumber. And it's showing no signs of wanting to slow down. Over the past 12 hours, our host star has unleashed three violent solar flares—intense, concentrated bursts of electromagnetic radiation—two of which were classified as X-class flares. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center flagged both instances as R3 events—relatively powerful solar events ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - The moon is still an extremely interesting place to study. The structure of the moon has perplexed astronomers for centuries before the advent of spacecraft. In the early 20th century, scientists were debating whether the moon was just a rocky object similar to Martian moons, or whether it had a more complex inner geology. Now, the debate has finally been settled. According to the latest mathematical models, the moon has a fluid outer core and a solid inner core, similar to Earth's. The inner ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers report the first detection of water with two deuterium atoms replacing hydrogen, also known as doubly-deuterated water (D₂O, or "heavy water"), in a planet-forming disk around V883 Ori, a young star. The signal points to water that formed before the star and survived into the disk in a young system that is about 1,300 light years away. Heavy water on V883 Ori Water sits in a planet-forming disk, which is a gas and dust ring around a young star. There it ... [Read More]