Space

An explosion that took place in a galaxy 180 million light-years away is challenging our understanding of how stars die, appearing to represent the flattest explosion of its kind on record. The monumental kaboom named AT2018cow belonged to an extremely rare class of cosmic blasts known as fast blue optical transients, or FBOTs. Unlike the

An object lurking in the foggy dawn of the Universe has just given astronomers a big surprise. Observations collected through the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed an active supermassive black hole 10 million times the mass of the Sun – one that is actively growing as it slurps up matter from the space around

A powerful solar flare flashed at Earth on Tuesday, sending an eruption of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation to our planet at the speed of light. It was an “X-class” flare – the most powerful kind – and it caused a radio blackout for about one hour on the day side of Earth, in parts of

A baby Jupiter, still hot from its gestation, could have blasted its four largest moons with light so intense, it vaporized water and stripped them of volatiles. According to new research, this irradiation could explain why the Galilean moons have the compositions they do, from the hellacious volcano-world Io, closest to Jupiter, to ice-crusted Europa,

Shine bright like a… gamma-ray? A gamma-ray burst that recently hit our Solar System was so bright, it temporarily blinded gamma-ray instruments in space, according to a NASA release. Scientists say the gamma-ray burst (GRB), the most powerful type of explosion in the Universe, was 70 times brighter than any previously recorded event. They dubbed

Astronomers have just found a cosmic cannonball. Around a star some 730 light-years away orbits an exoplanet the size of Jupiter, but with a density that boggles the mind. Astronomers have determined that the world, named TOI-4603b, has a mass of nearly 13 Jupiters. That means it’s nearly 3 times the density of Earth, and

The bending of light as its path veers around a giant, invisible mass has revealed the presence of one of the biggest black holes yet detected in the Universe. In a galaxy at the center of a massive cluster named Abell 1201, some 2.7 billion light-years away, lurks a cosmic colossus. Not content with being

An Earth-sized exoplanet in perhaps the most promising alien system for signs of life is not likely to be habitable to life as we know it. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the innermost world of the TRAPPIST-1 system, an exoplanet named TRAPPIST-1b with 1.4 times the mass and 1.1 times

We know there’s water on the Moon, but questions remain about how it got there, where it’s stored, and how it moves around. In a new study, scientists from China have identified tiny glass beads in the lunar soil as potential places where water could hide. And we’re talking about a lot of water too,

A giant ‘hole’ has appeared on the surface of the Sun, and it could send 1.8 million-mph solar winds toward Earth by Friday. It follows the discovery of a coronal hole on the Sun 30 times the size of Earth. As this first ‘hole’ begins rotating away from us, a new giant coronal hole –

Every so often, a strange signal from outer space hits our detectors here on Earth. Known as fast radio bursts (FRBs_, these signals are extremely short, just milliseconds in duration, and are detected only in radio wavelengths. Yet in those milliseconds, and in those wavelengths, they can discharge as much energy as 500 million Suns

We may not have found many planetary systems like our own Solar System. Still, there’s one thing they do seem to have in common: They appear to be made out of good ol’ ordinary baryonic matter – you know, the stuff our planetary system is made of. But what if there are planets out there

There might be some hidden oceans lurking around Uranus. New evidence suggests that one or two of the gas giant’s 27 known moons might be harboring liquid oceans beneath their crusty rock-and-ice exteriors. The possible culprits for seeding the space around Uranus with plasma are Miranda and Ariel, one or both of which might be

A large asteroid will safely zoom between Earth and the Moon on Saturday, a once-in-a-decade event that will be used as a training exercise for planetary defense efforts, according to the European Space Agency. The asteroid, named 2023 DZ2, is estimated to be 40 to 70 meters (130 to 230 feet) wide, roughly the size

A newly proposed propulsion system could theoretically beam a heavy spacecraft to outside the confines of our Solar System in less than 5 years – a feat that took the historic Voyager 1 probe 35 years to achieve. The concept, known as ‘pellet-beam’ propulsion, was awarded an early-stage US$175,000 NASA grant for further development earlier

NASA revealed a new prototype of the spacesuit destined to adorn the next astronauts on the Moon. But the look is a little misleading. In an event on March 15, NASA and its new spacesuit contractor, Axiom Space, walked out their first iteration of the uniform for the Artemis generation of lunar astronauts. Called the

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa. This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA

Skies across the northernmost US states could be graced with stunning displays of the Northern Lights on Friday, blown into view by a giant ‘hole’ on the Sun. The aurora borealis might appear in skies from Washington to New York, lighting up the night with beautiful colors, as a stream of electrically charged particles called

An interstellar object that is currently on its long journey back out of our Solar System has a completely natural explanation, in spite of its odd quirks. The peculiar acceleration of ‘Oumuamua, new research confirms, can be fully attributed to the release of molecular hydrogen gas. This, according to astrochemist Jennifer Bergner of the University

A sample extracted from an asteroid far from Earth has confirmed that RNA nucleobases can be found in space rocks. Analysis of dust ferried home from asteroid Ryugu has been found to contain uracil – one of the four nucleobases that make up RNA – in addition to niacin, a form of the vitamin B3,

Our planet hides its scars well. It’s a shame, actually, as evidence of previous asteroid strikes might help us better plan for the next catastrophic impact. In fact, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center chief scientist, James Garvin, thinks we might have been misreading traces of some of the more serious asteroid strikes that have occurred

Astronomers on Monday warned that the light pollution created by the soaring number of satellites orbiting Earth poses an “unprecedented global threat to nature”. ​The number of satellites in low Earth orbit have more than doubled since 2019, when US company SpaceX launched the first “mega-constellation,” which comprise thousands of satellites. ​An armada of new

Don’t miss the planet parade taking place at the end of March. Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus, and Mars are set to align in an arc formation on the nights of March 25 through 30, alongside the Moon. Jupiter may sink into the sunset and get lost in sunlight after the 28th, though, so aim to

We don’t know what a galaxy named RAD12-B did, but it must have been something heinous. That’s because its companion galaxy has blasted a hot plasma jet right at it, in what seems (if we’re going to be anthropomorphic about it) like a targeted attack. Discovered during observations by a team led by astronomer Ananda

Most of the light streaming through the Universe is invisible to human eyes. Beyond the mid-range wavelengths we can see, there’s a whole cosmos shining in high- and low-energy radiation. But we humans are clever little animals and have managed to build instruments that can see the light we cannot. One of these is NASA’s

Creating rocky planets is a messy, dangerous, hot business. Planetesimals accrete together, which creates heat and pressure on the newborn world. The nearby adolescent star bombards them with intense radiation. That likely “bakes off” any surface oceans, lakes, or rivers, which is a disaster if you’re looking for places where life might arise or exist.

Europa is the smoothest solid object in our Solar System, thanks to its thick shell of ice. Yet beneath its smooth exterior, Jupiter‘s fourth-largest moon seems to harbor secrets – namely a deep, salty ocean with intriguing potential for alien life. That ocean makes Europa a prime target for scientific study, including two separate orbiter

Earth, currently, is our only blueprint for planetary habitability. There may be life elsewhere out there in the big, wide galaxy, but ours is the only world on which we know, for a certainty, that it has emerged. The problem is that we’ve found nothing out there that’s exactly like our own planet: of the

Don’t be alarmed, but as you read this, an asteroid roughly the size of a house is about to zoom past Earth. Depending on your location, the newly found asteroid 2023 EY will pass by our planet late Thursday night or Friday morning at a distance of just 240,000 kilometers (149,000 miles) – a little

The Sun has been spitting out some pretty powerful eruptions in the last few weeks, but one that took place a few days ago is a real doozy. On March 12, Sun-monitoring spacecraft recorded a huge amount of material blasting away from the far side of the Sun from a coronal mass ejection. Detected as

There’s scintillating beauty to be found in cosmic death. In a new image from the JWST, the spectacular final throes of a star nearing the end of its life are revealed in all their intricate detail. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, the star WR 124 is what’s known as a Wolf-Rayet, which are rarely seen

NASA and Axiom Space Inc. provided a first, limited look at the new spacesuits that will be worn by the next astronauts to land on the Moon. The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that will be worn for the Artemis missions was only partially revealed at an event at Johnson Space Center in Houston,

We have exciting new evidence that Venus is geologically active. Using radar images taken by the Magellan spacecraft during the early 1990s, scientists have found a volcanic vent that changed shape and grew over an eight-month period in 1991. It’s one of the most compelling clues yet that volcanism is still active on Venus, shaping

Compared to Earth, the Moon doesn’t have much going on. Where our planet’s surface features an impressive mix of windswept plains, ice-carved ravines, and volcanic mountain peaks, the lunar surface has impact craters. Lots of impact craters. Earth’s satellite is pocked and scarred from being pummeled with space shrapnel over billions of years, without the

Venus may be one of the brightest and most beautiful objects in our night sky, but don’t be fooled. Our neighboring planet is deeply inhospitable to life as we know it – a toxic, scorching world on which humans will never be able to tread. In spite of the differences in habitability, though, Venus shares

A mysterious exoplanet just 138 light-years from Earth could be in the process of transforming. An analysis of an exoplanet named HD-207496b reveals that the world, clocking in at 6.1 and 2.25 times the mass and radius of Earth, respectively, either has a gaseous atmosphere, a global ocean, or a mixture of both – and

It’s the classic social faux pas. You’re in a happy clique, surrounded by all your friends – and one by one, you subsume them, absorbing them into yourself, until you’re all alone, a grotesque agglomeration alone in what was once a crowded environment. That seems to be what happened to a galaxy 9.2 billion years

Seen from space, regions of Mars around the south pole have a bizarre, pitted “Swiss cheese” appearance. These formations come from alternating massive deposits of CO2 ice and water ice, similar to different layers of a cake. For decades, planetary scientists wondered how this formation was possible, as it was long believed that this layering

According to the experts, a newly spotted asteroid called 2023 DW is one to keep an eye on. The rock, with a diameter of almost 50 meters (164 feet), has a chance of slamming into Earth on 14 February 2046. Admittedly that chance is currently rated as “very small” by NASA and around 1 in

NASA fixes malfunctioning spacecraft the same way you fix your troublesome laptop When faced with a potentially mission-ending problem with NASA’s 15-year-old Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, engineers performed a time-honored procedure to fix it: They turned it off and then turned it back on again. Success! IBEX is now fully operational again. Actually, they

A purported exoplanet orbiting a star in the constellation of Eridanus associated with Star Trek‘s fictional Vulcan homeworld may have just been a figment in the star’s spectrum – a spectral specter. Analysis of the discovery data on several exoplanets across the galaxy has revealed that several detections were actually false positives: light fluctuations emitted

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong took that first fateful step onto the Moon. The exact moment occurred just as our planet’s standard universal time hit 2.56 am. But what time was it for Neil? There’s currently no answer to that question, but with plans in place to inhabit the Moon, that may need to

A star 1,300 light-years from Earth might have just revealed one of the Solar System’s best-kept secrets. It’s called V883 Orionis, a young star surrounded by a huge disk of material that will one day coalesce into orbiting planets. It’s in that disk that scientists have made an unambiguous detection of water vapor, swirling around

A Japanese company has put out the call for passengers who’d be willing to pay more than US$175,000 for an hours-long ride in a balloon-borne capsule that will rise as high as 15 miles (25 kilometers). Technically, that’s nowhere near the boundary of outer space, but it’s high enough to get an astronaut’s-eye view of

As our catalog of planetary systems in the Milky Way grows, it becomes increasingly clear how very different our Solar System could have been. In fact, of the nearly 4,000 planetary systems identified to date, none of them reflect the order and arrangement of planets orbiting our own Sun. That could be because Solar System

NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped the first clear picture of Sun rays on Mars, which looks like a ghostly white-tinged sunset. The rover took the ethereal photo on February 2, as the Sun set behind a group of twilight clouds. These clouds hang at an unusually high altitude, which suggests they are probably made of carbon

Space probes designed to study the Sun are the last places you’d expect to have a moisture problem. Yet a recent investigation has found aluminum filters on two different satellites are degrading as water corrodes their surfaces. The filters help detect extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emissions, so any kind of clouding is bound to affect their

Make a note of the newly discovered comet with the lengthy name of ​​C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS): as it gets closer to the Sun and our planet, it could shine brighter in Earth’s night sky than many stars. The comet’s nearest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, won’t be until September 28, 2024, before hitting its