Space

Mar 13th, 2026 - A new comet has been discovered by astronomers that could put on a pretty impressive sky show in the next few weeks. Officially called C/2026 A1 (MAPS), the object might even turn into an "Easter comet" if it survives the flyby past the scorching Sun. It was first photographed on January 13 at the AMACS1 Observatory in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Four French astronomers, Alain Maury, Georges Attard, Daniel Parrott, and Florian Signoret, discovered the space rock . Together, they run a program ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Frame-dragging may explain an odd pattern seen in the brightest supernovae. Some of the most extreme explosions in the universe are Type I superluminous supernovae. "They are one of the brightest explosions in the Universe," says Joseph Farah, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For years, astrophysicists tried to understand what exactly makes superluminous supernovae so absurdly powerful. Now it seems like we may finally have some answers. Farah and his colleagues ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - 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. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - French astronomer Charles Messier did not intend to be remembered for his discoveries of galaxies, nebulae, and stars clusters when he looked to the sky in the 1750s. Dubbed the "Ferret of Comets" by French King Louis XV after Messier's acceptance into the French Academy of Sciences in 1770, he discovered 13 comets and observed many more, expecting to be remembered for his comet work. One night while searching the sky to recover Halley's Comet on its predicted return in 1758, he came across a ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - This artist's concept shows a runaway supermassive black hole plowing through intergalactic space. Newborn stars trail in its wake, formed from the black hole's compression of tenuous gas in front of it. There is something inherently terrifying about a supermassive black hole hurtling through space at an excess of three million kilometers per hour. Normally these behemoths squat at the centers of galaxies and for good reason; they're usually the single most massive objects in their host galaxy ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - A violent collision between two young planets offers clues to Earth's own chaotic origin story. Astronomers have captured a rare, real-time view of a planetary cataclysm 11,000 light-years away. While monitoring a stable, sun-like star called Gaia20ehk, deep in the constellation Puppis, researchers watched its light suddenly flicker and plunge as a massive cloud of hot debris drifted in front of it. This was the smoking gun that told them two planets had smashed into each other. It's a highly ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes The Sun has been a powerful source of energy fueling the solar system for billions of years, but our host star may have had rough beginnings. A new study suggests the Sun migrated away from the center of the Milky Way, settling into a more comfortable place in the galaxy that allowed life on Earth to thrive. A team of researchers from Tokyo, Japan, created a catalog of thousands of stellar twins—stars born around the same time as the Sun that share similar ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - The world's first commercial space science telescope, Mauve, just sent back data from low-Earth orbit, achieving "first light" — and signaling a potential new era for low-cost observation. Launched Nov. 28, 2025, aboard SpaceX's Transporter-15 , Mauve was created by British space company Blue Skies Space to observe stars in ultraviolet light and help astronomers study how stellar flares affect whether exoplanets can support life. The small, suitcase-sized satellite and its 5-inch-aperture ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google An asteroid can shift its orbit with even the smallest push. That became clear when a spacecraft slammed into a small asteroid moon in September 2022 and nudged more than just a local orbit. It also slightly changed the path of two asteroids around the Sun. This shows something that people have talked about for years but had never measured this way before. A human-made object can alter the motion of a celestial body around the Sun. The shift was tiny, just a fraction of a ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - 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. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Although we may be loath to admit it, there sometimes appears to be a little magic in science. By magic, I refer to an overwhelming sense of wonder that accompanies surprising outcomes. Events over time — perhaps billions of years — can be folded together to produce a fascinating story. This is one of those stories. It begins in the early solar system, when violent impacts shaped a small world — and ends with those same forces leaving their mark on Earth, in ways that would ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have confirmed a supernova from a star that exploded 13 billion years ago, making it the earliest stellar explosion ever directly observed. The finding places a single dying star into view from a time when the Universe was only about 730 million years old. Tracking the ancient burst A brief burst of high-energy light first marked the location of the ancient explosion, sending astronomers toward a distant galaxy where the event occurred. By analyzing the light ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - These confusing planets have shown that the trick to becoming huge lies in accretion. The universe rarely makes things easy to understand. For decades, researchers thought they had the recipe for a solar system figured out. You put a star in the middle, scatter some rocky crumbs nearby for things like Earth, and let the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn sweep up the leftovers in the cold, dark suburbs. It was neat, tidy, and, as it turns out, probably wrong — or at least very incomplete. ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have created the most detailed three-dimensional map yet of faint hydrogen light filling the universe roughly 9 to 11 billion years ago. Instead of showing galaxies as isolated points, the map reveals a vast web of diffuse glow stretching between them – light that has remained largely invisible in previous surveys. The discovery offers a new way to trace how matter gathered and how galaxies formed during one of the most active periods of cosmic history. ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Mars took a direct hit from a powerful solar storm. The eruption from the Sun was one of the strongest recorded in more than two decades. The same storm struck Earth and triggered bright auroras that spread unusually far south, glowing in skies as far down as Mexico. Around Mars, spacecraft recorded something far more turbulent. Radiation levels spiked and the planet's upper atmosphere filled with charged particles. For a short time, the normally thin layers above the Red ... [Read More]

Mar 10th, 2026 - Sixty-six light-years away, an Earth-sized exoplanet completes an orbit in under six hours, skimming around its star at nearly one-hundredth the distance that Mercury orbits the Sun. This planet is on the edge of destruction.  Astronomer Fei Dai of the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy and his team combined data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Keck Planet Finder (KPF) to officially verify the world, called TOI-6255 b, as an exoplanet. The find enables ... [Read More]