Space

Feb 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Uranus has always been the oddball of our solar system. It spins on its side. Its seasons last for decades. Its magnetic field refuses to line up neatly with its rotation. For years, much of what happens high above its blue-green clouds stayed out of reach. Now that has changed. For the first time, astronomers have mapped the vertical structure of Uranus's upper atmosphere. Teams tracked how temperature and charged particles shift with height, building a three-dimensional ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - NASA has released new images from the James Webb Space Telescope showcasing the Exposed Cranium Nebula, officially designated Nebula PMR 1. This cloud of space dust and debris may capture a moment in the final stages of a star's life. The images reveal distinct regions capturing different phases of the nebula's evolution. It features an outer shell of gas, blown off first, that consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure containing a mix of different gases. A dark ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 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]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Largest ever image obtained by specialist telescope in Chile represents scientific and aesthetic breakthrough Scientists have captured a beautiful image in unprecedented detail of the vast Milky Way galaxy, of which our own solar system is a part. The stunning image is the largest ever obtained by the specialist telescope in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) radio telescope, according to the group behind the project. The picture not only serves to stir the ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have observed a distant supernova, known as SN 2025wny or "SN Winny," whose light was bent by the gravity of two foreground galaxies, producing five visible images. Because each of the images brightens at a slightly different time, scientists can use the delays between them to measure how fast the universe is expanding today. In a high-resolution color image, SN 2025wny appears five times around a pair of foreground galaxies that bend its light into separate ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T he universe began with a bang, and for the first few hundred million years, there was nothing but hydrogen and some helium atoms moving through the void. Then something happened. Somehow, in the roiling soup of plasma and free electrons suffusing the Big Bang's embers, clouds of molecular hydrogen drew close enough together to ignite. The first stars were born. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Just to imagine such objects blinking ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes The Vera C. Rubin Observatory spent the night staring at the dark cosmos, alerting astronomers of ongoing changes in the skies in real-time. The observatory fired off its first wave of notifications from its new alert system on Tuesday night, sending 800,000 alerts to astronomers' computers around the world. The Alert Production Pipeline, a software developed at the University of Washington, is designed to eventually produce up to 7 million alerts per night, documenting ... [Read More]

Feb 25th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers enjoy it when the universe throws a curveball, and this object does exactly that. Working in two teams, they have found the largest, most distant stash of water ever seen in the cosmos. APM 08279+5255 is a quasar – an active galaxy whose central supermassive black hole feeds on gas and releases huge amounts of light. It contains about 140 trillion times the amount in all of Earth's oceans – swaddling a ravenous, supermassive black hole (a quasar) ... [Read More]

Feb 25th, 2026 - Earth and the rest of the solar system's planets live inside the heliosphere , a protective bubble that is blown up by our sun's winds. Other stars also have such bubbles, which astronomers call astrospheres. Now NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured a very young sunlike star blowing up its bubble some 120 light-years away. Called HD 61005, this star has about the same mass and temperature of the sun but is just 100 million years old—our home star is about five billion years old. ... [Read More]

Feb 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 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]

Feb 24th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google The Sun has reached the most active phase of its regular 11-year cycle, with dark spots and powerful bursts now appearing more often on its surface. That increase in activity means a higher chance of solar storms that can interfere with satellites, GPS signals, radio communications, and even parts of Earth's power grid in the months ahead. Tracking the solar peak On October 15, 2024, a televised briefing from NASA and NOAA made that call public. Using decades of sunspot ... [Read More]

Feb 24th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes Space is full of odd light sources astronomers don't quite understand, like double supernovas , weird blue flashes , random Venn diagrams , and more. And just when we thought we'd seen it all, there's a new addition to the list—a natural "space laser" from the universe's early days. Researchers using the MeerKAT radio telescope spotted an extremely bright, laser-like beam of microwave radiation—a "maser"—which they tracked back to a violent galaxy ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - Time is a crucial concept driving the plot. The lead character, Matthew McConaughey's Cooper, embarks on the space mission to save Earth fully knowing that he'll miss years with his kids — and possibly never return. The events occurring near the black hole, where time passes a lot more slowly than on Earth, end up breaking Cooper's heart. Gargantua's massiveness seems inescapable. How did scientists photograph a black hole? looked like the Gargantua design, we had no way of knowing how ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - Arrokoth hangs out around a billion miles out from Pluto. Deep within the Kuiper belt , some small worlds look like they were assembled from two mismatched snowballs pressed together. The poster child is Arrokoth , the "contact binary" visited in 2019 by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft . Its twin lobes share similar colors and volatile ices, and its surface shows relatively modest cratering. What still needed tightening was the how. Did Arrokoth start as two separate bodies that spent eons ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 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. A stunning new Hubble image reveals the most detailed look yet at the Egg Nebula, the youngest and closest pre-planetary nebula to Earth. 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 ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 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]