Space

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 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 24th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have documented a comet that slowed its rotation to a complete stop and then began spinning in the opposite direction. That abrupt reversal shows how jets of escaping gas can overpower a small, icy nucleus and push it toward structural failure in a matter of years. P41's new rotation Archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope, taken in late 2017, captured the comet again after it had slipped from view earlier that year. Analyzing those frames, David ... [Read More]

Feb 24th, 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 24th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A new analysis has established that asteroid 2024 YR4 retains a measurable chance of striking the Moon in December 2032. If the impact occurs, it would generate a flash bright enough to see from Earth and trigger effects that extend far beyond a single burst of light. Timing of asteroid Current orbital calculations place the potential collision within a narrow window on December 22, 2032, as the 200-foot-wide (60-meter-wide) asteroid sweeps past the Earth-Moon system. By ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - One of the largest known stars in the universe underwent a dramatic transformation in 2014, new research shows, and may be preparing to explode. A study led by Gonzalo Muñoz-Sanchez at the National Observatory of Athens, published in Nature Astronomy today , argues that the enormous star WOH G64 has transitioned from a red supergiant to a rare yellow hypergiant – in what may be evidence of impending supernova. The evidence suggests we may be witnessing, in real time, a massive star ... [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 23rd, 2026 - By A galaxy so faint it escaped detection for as long as anyone has been scanning the sky has finally been found. Called CDG-2, this newly identified "ghostly" galaxy may be one of the most dark matter-dominated galaxies ever discovered, with a staggering 99% of its total mass made up of dark matter — a mysterious substance that cannot be seen, touched, or felt. The Hubble Space Telescope, now more than three decades into its mission, played a key role in revealing this cosmic phantom. ... [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 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 - Follow Earth on Google New observations show a small Saturn moon has generated electromagnetic waves that extend more than 313,000 miles behind it inside Saturn's magnetic field. That newly measured reach reveals a tiny icy world acting as a planetary-scale engine, reshaping how scientists understand the power of small moons. Cassini mapped the wake Cassini's instruments repeatedly encountered the same magnetic disturbance far downstream from Enceladus, tracing a vast electrical wake through ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - On Feb. 22, 1906, German astronomer Max Wolf made a discovery that adjusted astronomers' view of the cosmos and provided proof for the century-old predictions of Joseph-Louis Lagrange. A pioneer in the use of a comparator to examine astrophotographs side-by-side, Wolf had discovered 18 new asteroids within his first two years of searching. Wolf's 1906 discovery was an asteroid that appeared to be linked to Jupiter's orbit, remaining about 60 degrees ahead of it. The first Trojan asteroid to be ... [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]

Feb 21st, 2026 - In December 2018, a trio of astronomers –  Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, and Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University – set the record for the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. Because the small world is located about three times farther from the Sun than Pluto, the researchers dubbed it Farout. Not to be outdone (even by themselves), the same group of boundary pushers announced the ... [Read More]