Space

Sep 7th, 2024 - The universe is an infinite abyss filled with curiosities that have been puzzling humankind since we first craned our necks to the moonlit sky. Among these mysteries, the origins and mergers of supermassive black holes hold a special place. Imagine a celestial entity with mass a million times that of the sun, tucked away in the center of a galaxy. That's not just any old space mystery – it's one of the grandest enigmas of the cosmos. Black hole merger events Researchers from the Nevada ... [Read More]

Sep 7th, 2024 - A nearby galaxy is shining with star formation in a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope . The spiral galaxy Messier 33 (M33), also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, after the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and our own Milky Way . Measuring only 60,000 light-years across, M33 is about half the size of the Milky Way . Located nearly 3 million light years from Earth, the Triangulum Galaxy is regarded as a "hotbed of starbirth," forming stars ... [Read More]

Sep 7th, 2024 - Ever had that moment when you throw a rock into a pond and observe the ripples moving away from the spot? Now, imagine something similar happening, but on a much bigger scale – in space. That's what happened when NASA's DART spacecraft made history by altering the path of a gigantic space rock hurling through the cosmos. DART mission makes history In 2022, DART made more than just ripples, it made waves of debris in space. It strategically collided with the Dimorphos asteroid, causing a ... [Read More]

Sep 7th, 2024 - The past year has been littered with can't-miss space phenomena: the  solar eclipse  and  Aurora Borealis , for example. It isn't rare to witness some cosmic events. Others, like Halley's Comet or the Great Conjunction , are so rare that they only come along once in a lifetime. That's why it's such big news that T Coronae Borealis, also known as the Blaze Star or T CrB, is headed toward a cosmic explosion that'll shine brighter than the North Star. It's an event we may only ever ... [Read More]

Sep 7th, 2024 - Scientists have ventured to the far reaches of the solar system, at least virtually, to gather the most precise measurements of the faint glow that fills the universe. The combined light from all sources outside of the Milky Way galaxy is known as the cosmic optical background. In a recent study, published in The Astrophysical Journal , experts analyzed data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015 and is now nearly 5.5 billion miles from Earth.  Faint light of a ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - Solution to a cosmic mystery—the eccentric orbits of trans-Neptunian objects New evidence suggests that billions of years ago, a star may have passed very close to our solar system. As a result, thousands of smaller celestial bodies in the outer solar system outside Neptune's orbit were deflected into highly inclined trajectories around the sun. It is possible that some of them were captured by the planets Jupiter and Saturn as moons. These findings come from a team of astrophysicists ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - The solar system's largest moon, , which orbits the largest planet, , was hit by an asteroid four billion years ago that shifted on its axis, new research suggests. The asteroid was about 20 times larger than the Chicxulub asteroid, which is thought to have , estimates Naoyuki Hirata, a planetologist at Kobe University in Hyogo, Japan, in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal " Ganymede, which is 50% larger than our own moon, has an ocean beneath its icy surface – up to 60 miles deep ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - "China is likely to become the first country to return samples from Mars." China plans to launch two heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets with elements of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission in 2028, the mission's chief designer said Thursday. In a presentation at a Chinese space exploration conference, the chief designer of China's robotic Mars sample return project described the mission's high-level design and outlined how the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface. Reports ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - New findings show lunar volcanic activity occurred as recently as 120 million years ago. We know that the moon once had a lot of volcanic activity. The most common rock on the moon's surface is basalt , a well-known igneous rock . However, a new study suggests that this volcanic activity might have continued far longer than we previously thought. Researchers analyzing samples collected by China's Chang'e-5 mission say they were "surprised" and "excited" to find evidence of volcanism as recently ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - M ars is a place of mysteries. Was it ever—or is it now—home to life? Why did it lose its magnetic field, allowing the solar wind to claw away its once-abundant atmosphere? And then there's the riddle of the lost Martian water. As dry riverbeds, deltas, and ocean basins attest, the Red Planet once fairly sloshed with water—until three billion years ago, when it began turning into the desert world it is today. Two principal theories prevail for where all the water went: it ... [Read More]

Sep 6th, 2024 - The discovery of a strange wobbling planet has left astronomers confused but could reveal the secrets of planet formation. The new exoplanet, named TOI-1408 c, is situated about 455 light-years from our solar system and orbits its star in a bizarre shimmying waltz with another planet, according to a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. TOI-1408 c seems to vary in the length of time it takes to orbit its star, TOI-1408, and also orbits within the orbit of another planet previously ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2024 - An international team of astronomers, including scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the PlanetS National Center of Competence in Research, has identified the presence of iron winds in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76 b. This planet with its extreme conditions —over 2,000 degrees Celsius—is a prime target for researchers, who for several years have been dissecting the slightest physical mechanisms at work in its atmosphere. The presence of a ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2024 - An asteroid that was detected only hours earlier was seen crashing to Earth in a large fireball in videos taken from the Philippines. The videos show the 3-foot-wide asteroid falling in a bright streak of light before flaring and fading away into the dark of the night as it burned up. The asteroid, named 2024 RW1, crashed into the atmosphere just east of Luzon Island in the Philippines at about 12:46 p.m. ET on Wednesday. It was detected by NASA a few hours before it hit the planet, making it ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2024 - The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has successfully completed its fourth of six gravity assist flybys at Mercury, capturing images of two special impact craters as it uses the little planet's gravity to steer itself on course to enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026. The closest approach took place at 23:48 CEST (21:48 UTC) on 4 September 2024, with BepiColombo coming down to around 165 km above the planet's surface. For the first time, the spacecraft had a clear view of Mercury's south ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2024 - New measurements taken with the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) have deepened the scientific controversy of the Hubble tension — suggesting it may not exist at all. For years, astronomers have found that the universe appears to be expanding at different speeds depending on where they look, a conundrum they call the Hubble tension. Some of the measurements agree with our best current understanding of the universe, while others threaten to break it . When JWST came online in 2022, one ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2024 - NASA's New Horizons Kuiper Belt search has revealed a population of objects in the outer solar system which suggest the solar system formed from a much larger protostellar disc than originally thought. The Kuiper Belt is a region beyond Neptune populated by ancient remains of planetary building blocks. It was first discovered in the 1990s. Among the icy objects in the Kuiper Belt are dwarf planets such as Pluto and Quaoar . Such belts are common around stars with planetary systems around the ... [Read More]