Space

Dec 4th, 2025 - Astronomers have found what could become the first target for a crucial test of NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a soon-to-launch observatory that serves as a pathfinder mission for discovering Earth-like worlds around other stars. In a pair of new studies, an international research team has revealed two newfound objects around nearby stars: a gas-giant exoplanet orbiting the star HIP 54515 and a brown dwarf around the star HIP 71618 . It is the latter of these, the brown ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Astronomers in India say their discovery of a massive galaxy from when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old challenges our understanding of how galaxies were formed in the early period after the . Simply put, if the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, it means we're seeing a galaxy from 12 billion years ago when the cosmos was only one-tenth of its current age. Scientists say galaxies that formed so early were found to be mostly irregular in shape and chaotic. But when researchers Rashi ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Some of the hottest known planets look far too scorched to hold water. Yet their atmospheres keep flashing unmistakable chemical hints that water is present – and sometimes abundant. A new study offers a surprising solution. Deep inside these worlds, molten rock and hydrogen may be reacting to create water outright. In effect, these planets could be forging oceans from within instead of inheriting them from ancient ice. Led by Harrison Horn of Arizona State ... [Read More]

Dec 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. The most prolific meteor shower of the year is about to deliver more "shooting stars" than any other in near-perfect conditions for skywatchers. The annual Geminid meteor shower starts Thursday (Dec. 4), and remains active for the next two weeks. But this year's peak will be the night to ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - If you look across space with a telescope, you'll see countless galaxies, most of which host large central black holes, billions of stars and their attendant planets. The universe teems with huge, spectacular objects, and it might seem like these massive objects should hold most of the universe's matter. But the Big Bang theory predicts that about 5% of the universe's contents should be atoms made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Most of those atoms cannot be found in stars and galaxies ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Time actually runs slightly faster on Mars. This temporal lag is a direct consequence of Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The rule is simple: the weaker the gravity, the faster time passes. Mars's surface gravity is a weakling, approximately five times weaker than Earth's. That deficit speeds up time. Four hundred seventy-seven microseconds sounds minuscule. It's about one-thousandth of the time it takes you to blink. But for the advanced communication networks of the future, ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have found a way to measure the hot corona around a distant supermassive black hole. The black hole sits in the quasar RX J1131, about 6 billion light years from Earth, and it glows with intense energy as it pulls in nearby gas. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) in Chile, the team watched how the black hole's signal changed over several years. Those subtle flickers revealed the size and brightness of the gas halo. This approach ... [Read More]

Dec 3rd, 2025 - Reading time 6 minutes In 2025, NASA faced unprecedented uncertainty as it grappled with sweeping layoffs , looming budget cuts , and leadership switch-ups . Despite all of that, the agency somehow still managed to do some seriously astonishing science. The insights we gained from NASA researchers, robots, telescopes, and spacecraft this year underscore the importance of protecting the agency's core mission: to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and ... [Read More]

Dec 3rd, 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 giant rotating filament of the cosmic web may be the largest spinning structure ever seen, and could help reveal how galaxies form. Astronomers have spotted what is likely the "largest spinning object" ever discovered, and its rotation could hold important clues about how galaxies develop. ... [Read More]

Dec 3rd, 2025 - Early this year, a surprise space rock made headlines around the globe when the International Asteroid Warning Network sounded its highest alarm since its creation in 2013. Threat levels for the newly discovered asteroid, named 2024 YR 4 , were steadily increasing rather than waning, and experts estimated that the superyacht-sized rock had as much as a 1-in-33 chance of hitting Earth in just eight years. Its relatively long four-year orbit meant it would not be detectable again until 2028 on ... [Read More]

Dec 3rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers using NASA's NuSTAR X-ray telescope have confirmed that a compact star named M82 X-2 shines about 10 million times brighter than the Sun, apparently pushing past a long trusted brightness limit in physics. The object sits in the nearby galaxy M82, about 12 million light years away, roughly 70 quintillion miles, and its fierce X-rays have puzzled observers for years. Now researchers have shown that this source really does exceed the usual cap on how bright a ... [Read More]

Dec 3rd, 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 "super-puff" exoplanet is leaking a lot of helium into space, new observations show — and may be in the process of losing a lot of its atmosphere. A large plume of helium gas was spotted evaporating from the giant planet, known as WASP-107b, according to research based on observations ... [Read More]

Dec 2nd, 2025 - There is a fuzzy orb with a long, glittering tail that's keeping millions of eyes hooked ever since it arrived in our solar system this July. Named 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar comet is currently about 186 million miles away from Earth. After having a brief meeting with Mars, followed by one with the Sun, it is now heading towards Jupiter . This cosmic interloper seems to be the first and last of its kind. Scientists have churned out legions of studies, both eager and curious to document every ... [Read More]

Dec 2nd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astrophysicists have detected a repeating burst of radio waves from a nearby red dwarf, signals that rise and fall in step with a tiny planet named YZ Ceti b orbiting just 12 light-years away. The pattern points to something scientists have long hoped to find beyond the solar system: evidence of a magnetic field around a rocky exoplanet. Researchers at the University of Colorado say YZ Ceti b may be interacting with its star in a way that only a magnetic shield can ... [Read More]

Dec 1st, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes In September, NASA officially confirmed the existence of a whopping 6,000 exoplanets—a feat so impressive that it's bizarre to think that, by contrast, the number of confirmed exomoons tallies up to, well, zero. But that imbalance may shift soon if a new proposal by astronomers ends up being as effective as they claim. An upcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics paper describes how astronomers devised and utilized a novel, alternative approach for identifying exomoons, ... [Read More]

Dec 1st, 2025 - A tiny sample from asteroid Bennu just revealed a fragile amino acid never before seen beyond Earth. The question of how life started on Earth is rife with speculation, some ending with a delivery truck from space. Panspermia suggests that life or prebiotic molecules — the chemical building blocks required for life — appeared on other planets and were simply imported by passing asteroids or comets. Scientists have found some of these prebiotic ingredients in fallen meteorites ... [Read More]