Space

Sep 16th, 2025 - A young and giant star that is forming on the outer edge of our Milky Way just made itself known in spectacular fashion – by beaming a huge jet of gas across 8 light-years of interstellar space. That's almost twice the distance from our Sun to Alpha Centauri, the next closest star system. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) happened to catch the event in action, and what it saw has scientists buzzing. The eruption, which tears through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - Scientists in Japan now believe that liquid water once flowed through the heart of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, after researchers detected something unusual in the samples of the space rock that were returned to our planet five years ago . The surprising findings also have potential implications for how Earth acquired its own water, the researchers say. 162173 Ryugu is a roughly 3,000-foot-wide (900 meter) asteroid that orbits the sun every 474 days on a trajectory that frequently overlaps ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - I n 2016 billionaire Yuri Milner hosted a press conference at One World Observatory, the atrium topping the slick skyscraper at the center of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. Milner had grown rich investing in tech start-ups, and now he wanted to spend some of that money on sending a spaceship to the stars . He called the plan Breakthrough Starshot : a project that would eventually take human technology to another solar system. The idea was that high-powered lasers would propel tiny ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - The sun has become more and more active over the last 16 years, in a turn that surprised scientists and could affect space weather and technology on Earth, NASA announced  this week. A new research, conducted by two NASA scientists and published earlier in September in the peer-reviewed  Astrophysical Journal Letters , shows that solar activity has ramped up after 2008 — an unexpected reversal following a decades-long decline that was initially thought to foreshadow a period of ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - A planet more massive than Mercury could be lurking beyond the orbit of Pluto. It's been nearly 2 centuries since a planet was discovered in the solar system. But now scientists think they've uncovered evidence of a newcomer that just might usurp that honor from Neptune. Following an analysis of the orbits of bodies in the Kuiper Belt, a team has proposed that an unseen planet at least 25 times more massive than Pluto might reside there. These results were published in  Monthly Notices of ... [Read More]

Sep 15th, 2025 - New research using the powerful JWST telescope has identified a planet 41 light-years away which may have an atmosphere. The planet is within the "habitable zone" , the region around a star where temperatures make it possible for liquid water to exist on the surface of a rocky world. This is important because water is a key ingredient that supports the existence of life. If confirmed by further observations, this would be the first rocky, habitable zone planet that's also known to host an ... [Read More]

Sep 15th, 2025 - A long, narrow mirror could help astronomers detect life on nearby exoplanets Astronomers are rethinking one of their oldest tools: the telescope's mirror. A new study led by Dr. Heidi Newberg of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposes an unorthodox but remarkably efficient design for the next generation of space telescopes: a long, narrow rectangular mirror, rather than the traditional circular kind. Their research, published September 1 in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences , ... [Read More]

Sep 15th, 2025 - Scientists have measured the recoil velocity from a cataclysmic collision between two black holes for the very first time. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time first proposed to exist by Albert Einstein, and detected for the first time in 2015 . Another first came in 2019, when scientists picked up a gravitational wave signal resulting from a violent merger between vastly different sized black holes . The size imbalance caused the newborn black hole to ricochet off into the universe in ... [Read More]

Sep 15th, 2025 - By Europlanet Share Deflecting an asteroid isn't just a matter of smashing into it with a spacecraft. If the strike happens in the wrong place, it could nudge the space rock into a tiny gravitational "keyhole," a hidden gateway that steers it back onto a collision course with Earth. Building on lessons from NASA 's DART mission, researchers are now creating detailed maps of asteroid surfaces to find the safest spots for impact. By aiming precisely, they hope to ensure humanity can push ... [Read More]

Sep 14th, 2025 - Researchers in China have conducted the most thorough search yet for alien radio signals in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system, which may harbor potentially Earth-like planets. TRAPPIST-1 is a red dwarf star located about 40 light years away that hosts seven Earth sized rocky planets, with at least three orbiting in the habitable zone where liquid water could potentially exist. This makes it one of the most Solar System like exoplanet systems discovered, with TRAPPIST-1e considered among the best ... [Read More]

Sep 13th, 2025 - By Laurence Tognetti, Universe Today Share Stellar migration may greatly increase the number of habitable planets in the Milky Way . Future ESA missions will test these predictions with detailed exoplanet observations. What can the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ)—the region of a galaxy where complex life is thought most likely to arise—reveal about identifying stars that might host habitable planets? A recent study, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics , set out to ... [Read More]

Sep 13th, 2025 - Earlier this year, astronomers watched a burst of high-energy light that kept roaring back for nearly a full day. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are usually sorted into short and long events, and they generally last from milliseconds to a few minutes. In a new study, researchers describe a signal named GRB 250702B that fired three distinct times over a few hours, with soft X-rays flaring even earlier. The team also reported evidence that the source lies beyond our galaxy. Lead researchers Antonio ... [Read More]

Sep 13th, 2025 - By University of Bern Share Early Earth lacked life's essentials until a collision with Theia added them. This chance event made life possible. After the Solar System formed, it took no more than three million years for the proto-Earth to finish developing its chemical composition, according to a new study from the Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of Bern . At that stage, however, the young planet contained almost none of the key ingredients for life, such as water or carbon ... [Read More]

Sep 12th, 2025 - ) and a smaller cluster (right). The hot gas seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in magenta, and the mapped dark matter in blue. Note the dark matter surrounds the two clusters, whereas the hot gas lies between them. For astronomers studying dark matter , the Bullet Cluster is one of the greatest laboratories in the universe. It was discovered almost by accident, a blip of x-rays in the sky that was detected by NASA's Einstein Observatory in 1992 and given the designation 1E 0657-56. ... [Read More]

Sep 12th, 2025 - Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third ISO ever detected. It was discovered by the (ATLAS) station on 1 July 2025. It's traveling through the inner solar system at about 220,000 km/h and will make its closest approach to the sun in late October. Multiple telescopes have observed it, including the JWST, and will continue to observe it. Interplanetary missions like the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and Mars Express will also get a crack at it in the future. NASA's Juno may even observe it from its ... [Read More]

Sep 12th, 2025 - Astronomers examining data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) say they've spotted a contender for the most distant galaxy ever seen, Capotauro. The galaxy looks like nothing more than a tiny smudge. Yet its light appears to have set out when the universe was only about 90 million years old. The team has nicknamed the object "Capotauro," but they're the first to admit it might turn out to be something else entirely. Capotauro surprises scientists Distance in cosmology is measured by ... [Read More]