Space

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]

Nov 5th, 2025 - You might think astronomers have seen it all, but the universe still throws us occasional new mysteries to keep us on our toes. On July 2, 2025, observers around the world were alerted to a new gamma-ray burst (GRB), GRB 250702B , detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. GRBs are extremely energetic explosions that rank among the most powerful astrophysical events in the universe , so luminous they can be seen from billions of light-years away. They're most commonly caused by either ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 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. They're big, they appear early in the history of the universe and where they come from has long been a mystery. Ever since astronomers first detected the existence of supermassive black holes at the center of most galaxies, it has been difficult to fully explain their origin. But a recent ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - If you're gonna blow up, at least make it big. In 2018, a patch of sky 11 billion light-years away suddenly exploded with light. Researchers thought the galaxy looked pretty ordinary, with a supermassive black hole at its center quietly feeding on cosmic gas. But the outburst made it 40 times brighter almost overnight. Now, in a study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers have pieced together what might have happened, and it's not what they expected. The first suspect, a supernova, was ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - Researchers have discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets in our Milky Way. Of these, the sub-Neptune class, which are smaller than Neptune and more massive than Earth, are the most common. These planets also have atmospheres rich in hydrogen and rocky interiors. Now, new research published in  Nature by Carnegie Institution for Science's Francesca Miozzi and Anat Shahar shows that these worlds could also have large quantities of liquid water. "Our rapidly increasing knowledge about the ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - This distant, magnified glow might be the universe's first star cluster Astronomers have chased the first stars for decades, squinting at the early universe for any hint of their brief, brilliant lives. Now a tiny, lensed speck coined LAP1-B may be the clearest glimpse yet. In a multi-university analysis of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters , led by the University of Toledo and Columbia University, researchers argue that LAP1-B behaves exactly ... [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 - Follow Earth on Google Scientists keep returning to one star: Proxima Centauri. It's the nearest neighbor to our Sun, just over four light-years away, and already home to a rocky planet. That planet, Proxima b, sits close enough to its red dwarf star for liquid water to be possible. Yet curiosity doesn't stop there – what if another, smaller world hides nearby? A recent study published in the journal Icarus  explores that question with help from the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ... [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 4th, 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. Recent observations of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS show that it has developed a faint blueish hue, hinting at a potential color change. This is the third time experts have seen the comet's coloring shift since it was discovered. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be developing a blueish hue ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have, for the first time, mapped magnetic fields inside a planet-forming disk and seen how those invisible forces shape the gas and dust into distinct patterns. The new study reveals a magnetic field about 10 milligauss in strength, gently guiding material around the young star TW Hydrae. The observations came from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) in Chile, a network of high-precision radio antennas that captures faint signals from ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA's US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990. En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure . Thankfully, the launch went better than expected , and we could finally breathe again. Six months later, Webb's first images were ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers stitched together a radio color map of the Milky Way that targets the southern stretch of its crowded midline. It captures low frequency structure across about 3,800 square degrees with crisp detail. The work comes out of Western Australia, where an international team processed mountains of data from the Murchison Widefield Array ( MWA ). They turned it into a public image and a matched catalog for scientists, students, and the simply curious. Radio color map ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - SETI's 'Noah's Ark' – a space historian explores how the advent of radio astronomy led to the USSR's search for extraterrestrial life As humans began to explore outer space in the latter half of the 20th century, radio waves proved a powerful tool . Scientists could send out radio waves to communicate with satellites, rockets and other spacecraft, and use radio telescopes to take in radio waves emitted by objects throughout the universe. However, sometimes radio telescopes would pick up ... [Read More]

Nov 2nd, 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. Quick facts What it is: M82, an edge-on spiral starburst galaxy Where it is: 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major When it was shared: Oct. 23, 2025 If you own a small backyard telescope , there's a good chance you've seen the Cigar Galaxy (M82) with your own eyes. Not ... [Read More]

Nov 2nd, 2025 - Origin stories have a special way of capturing our imaginations. Whether it's a particular species of plant or animal, or a favourite fictional character, knowing how they came to be makes for captivating stories. It's no different in space. Especially the small corner of it we live in: the Solar System. How did it form and why does it look the way it does today? How does it compare to other solar systems and is the one we're part of special or just like all the others? In recent years, ... [Read More]