Space

Jan 27th, 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 Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter A six-year survey covering 669 million galaxies has revealed insight into dark energy , the mysterious phenomenon driving the universe's ... [Read More]

Jan 27th, 2026 - An early black hole feeds too fast—yet still blasts X-rays and radio jets. Twelve billion years ago, long before our sun was even a cloud of dust, a young galaxy flared with a light that shouldn't exist. At its heart sits ID830—a supermassive black hole caught in the middle of a growth spurt that defies standard physics. It is swallowing gas so quickly that, by standard theory, its own radiation should push much of that fuel away. And yet the quasar is also unusually bright in ways ... [Read More]

Jan 27th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes The universe is filled with innumerable astrophysical objects, each one different from the last. But even amid this vast diversity, some stand out as truly bizarre. A pair of astronomers recently discovered hundreds of these cosmic weirdos buried in archival Hubble Space Telescope data. These objects have waited years for researchers to catalog and investigate their unusual characteristics, and thanks to AI, they finally have. "Archival observations from the Hubble Space ... [Read More]

Jan 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers watching a seemingly ordinary, middle-aged star saw something unexpected unfold. For nearly nine months, the star faded to a small fraction of its normal brightness as a vast cloud drifted across its face – a cloud threaded with fast-moving, vaporized metals. The prolonged eclipse offered a rare look inside a mature planetary system that should have been quiet by now. Instead, the observations point to violent activity long after planets are thought to ... [Read More]

Jan 26th, 2026 - "These are just the difficulties of designing a spacesuit for the lunar environment." Crew members traveling to the lunar surface on NASA's Artemis missions should be gearing up for a grind. They will wear heavier spacesuits than those worn by the Apollo astronauts, and NASA will ask them to do more than the first Moonwalkers did more than 50 years ago. The Moonwalking experience will amount to an "extreme physical event" for crews selected for the Artemis program's first lunar landings, a ... [Read More]

Jan 26th, 2026 - This new map is not only the most detailed view of the universe's invisible scaffolding to date, it also allows astronomers to look deeper into cosmic history. Reading time 3 minutes —the invisible scaffolding thought to hold galaxies together—is arguably the most elusive substance in the universe. Nearly a century of research hasn't yet led to a confirmed direct detection , but scientists have learned to observe it indirectly . Now, one team has used those observations to produce ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2026 - Three weeks after the Spirit rover touched down on Mars, its twin rover , Opportunity, landed on the opposite side of the Red Planet. Its descent was known at NASA as the "six minutes of terror," during which it had to employ a parachute and retrorockets to decelerate almost completely from 11,800 mph (18,900 km/h) before impacting the surface. The touchdown was successful, though: Encased protectively in airbags, Opportunity hit the surface, bounced 26 times, and came to rest. Completely by ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Fast radio bursts are some of the strangest signals we pick up from space. They last just a few thousandths of a second, but they can outshine whole galaxies in radio light while they're happening. For years, one big question kept hanging around: what kind of object can make something that loud and fast – and sometimes do it again and again? Now, a long set of telescope observations has added a major piece to the puzzle. The key idea is simple. Some of these ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 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 Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Quick facts What it is: The Helix Nebula (also called NGC 7293 and Caldwell 63), a planetary nebula Where it is: 655 light-years away, in the ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Comets have a reputation for being cold, dirty snowballs lingering far from the Sun. Yet for years, astronomers have puzzled over one strange fact. Many comets contain crystalline silicates – minerals that form only under intense heat. That reality clashes with life in the deep freeze at the edge of a solar system. The puzzle has lingered for decades. How do materials that need extreme heat end up locked inside objects that spend most of their lives in bitter cold? ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes It's difficult to overstate the significance of NASA's upcoming Artemis 2 mission . For the first time in over 50 years, astronauts will fly by the Moon on the first crewed test of the rocket and spacecraft that will eventually enable humanity's long-awaited return to the lunar surface. But Artemis 2 won't just test spaceflight systems and hardware. This mission will also put NASA's in-space science operations to the test. During their 10-day trip around the Moon, the ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2026 - Inside an incredibly bright cluster of galaxies, a long-dormant supermassive black hole has come back to life. Radio images captured a one-million-light-year-long stream of star-forming particles and gas emanating from the black hole at the center of the galaxy J1007+3540—which apparently is erupting for the first time in about 100 million years. "Although some 'restarted' radio galaxies are known in the literature, J1007+3540 stands out," says lead study author Shobha Kumari of Midnapore ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - The northern sky's greatest galaxy gets its familiar name from the northern constellation where it resides, Andromeda the Princess. This star system is our nearest large spiral galaxy, and it sits at the far end of the Local Group of galaxies. Observations Observers have described M31 as something other than starlike as far back as 964. In that year, Persian astronomer Abdal-Rahman Al-Sufi called it a ''little cloud'' in his  Book of Fixed Stars . German astronomer Simon ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Earth's atmosphere may feel permanent, but it is slowly leaking into space. New research suggests some of that lost air does not disappear. Instead, it drifts outward and settles onto the Moon, quietly accumulating in lunar soil over billions of years. That process matters for both science and exploration. The Moon may preserve a chemical record of Earth's ancient atmosphere, and those same materials could one day support future lunar missions. Using computer simulations, ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - The biggest explosions in the universe, ranked The universe is exploding. Or parts of it are. The night sky may seem calm, even serene, but that masks events of a catastrophic and nearly unimaginable scale. Across the galaxy and even the cosmos itself, immense outbursts of energy occur that could easily vaporize our planet. Happily, space is vast, and the terrible distance between these events and us diminishes what we see to a faint glow—usually. It's very rare for our Earth to be ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, January 23 Pluto reaches conjunction with the Sun at 5 A.M. EST. Also this morning, the Moon passes 4° north of Saturn at 8 A.M. EST and passes 4° north of Neptune at 11 A.M. EST. You can catch the trio in the southwestern sky after sunset. Earlier is better — around 6:30 P.M. local time, they are still 40° high, affording clear views of Neptune through binoculars or a telescope before it gets too close to the more ... [Read More]