Space

Dec 11th, 2025 - Regular, alternating layers in Gale Crater may have been deposited as the result of tides raised by a moon at least 18 times the mass of Phobos, a study says. Thin layers of sedimentary rock in Mars's Gale Crater suggest that the planet once had a moon much larger than the two that orbit it today,  according to work  to be presented at AGU's Annual Meeting 2025 on 17 December. Unlike the current Martian moons  Phobos  and  Deimos , the gravitational pull of the ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Astronomers have mapped the turbulent edge of the Sun where solar matter manages to escape the Sun's fierce magnetic grip. Reading time 2 minutes Stars are lively, often unpredictable parts of the universe, and many aspects of their physics remain poorly understood. That includes our own Sun, whose fickle weather patterns regularly tamper with Earth's magnetic fields. But a new, first-of-its-kind map of the solar boundary may hint at some answers to the Sun's many mysteries. Astronomers led by ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Back in the summer this year, scientists were studying unusual objects hovering around Earth. ATLAS, one of the telescopes in NASA's planetary defense network, displayed something that left them scratching their heads. When they first spotted it, the  mysterious interstellar comet was travelling at about 137,000 miles per hour. After getting pulled by Sun's gravity, in October, it sped up at 153,000 miles per hour. Eventually, they realized that the comet, named 3I/ATLAS , was too fast to ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - and look to the eastern sky. You'll see a single, dazzling point of light rising into the night — so bright it outshines every star around it. Is it the legendary "Star of Bethlehem"? The explanation is simpler, more predictable and, in many ways, just as impressive. That brilliant "star" is the planet Jupiter, which is now reaching its biggest, brightest and best of the year. Jupiter As The 'Christmas Star' The idea of a "Christmas Star" comes from the Gospel of Matthew, where it's ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes Earlier this year, a powerful gamma-ray burst traveled through space from a very distant source in the cosmos. The explosion was traced back to the early universe, just millions of years after the Big Bang, but its origin remained unknown. By pointing the Webb telescope toward the ancient mystery, astronomers were able to identify the earliest known aftermath of a star's tragic death. The Webb space telescope observed a supernova that took place when the universe was 730 ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 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. Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope spotted huge stars leaking nitrogen in an early galaxy, hinting that such 'monster stars' might have been the source of ancient supermassive black holes. Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) have spotted the first evidence of ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade. Maven, an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, abruptly stopped communicating with ground stations on Dec. 6. NASA said this week that it was working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. Launched in 2013 and having entered Mars' orbit in September 2014, Maven began studying the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers are now using the first generations of stars and galaxies to understand what really fills most of space. These systems formed when the universe was only a few hundred million years old and they carry clues in their light. The new work looks at galaxies seen by the James Webb Space Telescope and compares them with detailed computer models. By matching real galaxies to simulated ones, scientists find that both cold and relatively heavy warm dark matter ( WDM ) ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - A sampling of aging Sun-like stars demonstrates that they likely eat their closest planets. Our Sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world's fate. Using data from the  TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Stars are bright. Extremely, intensely bright. This intense glare can sometimes make it harder to view other celestial objects creeping around it. That's why scientists designed an instrument called coronagraph in the early 1930s. Coronagraph, as NASA describes, is inspired by solar eclipse, where the disk of the Moon overshadows the light of the Sun. Nicknamed "starglasses," coronagraphs use a cool system of disks, mirrors, and masks to suppress the overwhelming glare of the stars and ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the heavyweight champions of cosmic fireworks – brief, blistering flashes of high-energy light that typically flare and vanish within seconds or minutes. They are so short-lived that catching one in action often feels like cosmic luck. But on July 2, 2025, that script unraveled. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a GRB that simply refused to stop, firing in repeating pulses for more than seven hours. The event – now ... [Read More]

Dec 9th, 2025 - NEW YORK (AP) — It's time for one of the strongest meteor showers of the year. The Geminids peak this weekend and are visible through mid-December, according to the American Meteor Society . The meteors tend to be yellow in color and can be seen across the globe, but the best viewing happens in the Northern Hemisphere. Skygazers could see up to 120 meteors per hour under dark skies during the peak Saturday night into Sunday's predawn hours, according to NASA. Meteor showers appear when ... [Read More]

Dec 9th, 2025 - NASA crew will be the first astronauts to work with a robot on a celestial body other than Earth. B-9 had Will Robinson. Twiki had Buck Rogers. And, of course, C-3PO and R2-D2 had Luke Skywalker. Now, in a scenario straight out of science fiction, MAPP will have whoever NASA names to the crew of the second Artemis mission to land on the moon. The space agency has selected Lunar Outpost's Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, to become the . Although its tasks will be far simpler than ... [Read More]

Dec 9th, 2025 - Reading time 2 minutes In the early 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope picked up something odd in the local clouds that surround our solar system. An unusually large number of electrons had been ripped apart from the atoms found in the clouds of gas and dust, a process known as ionization. Now, researchers have traced the ionization of the local interstellar cloud to a close encounter between the Sun and two hot, fast, and massive stars. In a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, a ... [Read More]

Dec 9th, 2025 - Earth, though seemingly huge for us, is just a Lilliputian blue-green ball swimming around in the infinite lagoon of dark space. The fathomless darkness of this space often makes scientists stay up at night and question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Science fiction has jostled our imaginations with pictures of humans venturing on interstellar adventures and encountering aliens , of magical worlds hiding far away, and of robots that save humanity. In reality, however, no astronaut has ... [Read More]

Dec 8th, 2025 - Some of the elements used by living systems are far more abundant in Cassiopeia A than we thought, hinting that some parts of our galaxy might be more suitable for life than others Hidden within Cassiopeia A, the youngest known exploded star in our galaxy, astronomers have found surprisingly high levels of chlorine and potassium. These elements carry an odd number of protons in their atomic nuclei, and though they are thought to be less abundant in the universe, they are essential for planet ... [Read More]