Space dust provides more than just awe-inspiring pictures like the Pillars of Creation. It can provide the necessary materials to build everything from planets to asteroids. But what it actually looks like, especially in terms of its “porosity” (i.e. how many holes it has) has been an area of debate for astrochemists for decades. A new paper from Alexey Potapov of Friedrich Schiller University Jena and his co-authors suggest that the dust that makes up so much of the universe might be “spongier” than originally thought.
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Back in 2009, astronomers using the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope noticed that there was a lot more gamma-ray light coming from the center of the Milky Way than might otherwise be expected given the objects there. Since then, two theories have appeared to explain this Galactic Center Excess (GCE) as it’s become known. One theory posits that the extra gamma rays are created by thousands of unseen milli-second pulsars (MSPs) in the Galactic center, while the other suggests that dark matter annihilating itself could also be the source. A new paper from Moortis Muru and hisco-authors at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) hasn’t necessarily solved the conundrum, but does level the playing field between the two theories again.
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An international team of researchers, led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), has shed light on a decades-long debate about why galaxies rotate faster than expected, and whether this behaviour is caused by unseen dark matter or a breakdown of gravity on cosmic scales.
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The ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) recently captured images of streaks formed from a dust avalanche on the slopes of Apollinaris Mons the night before Christmas in 2023. A new study reveals that these types streaks are largely the result of seasonal factors, rather than meteoroid impacts.
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It’s almost become expected that many space telescopes and probes can have “extended missions”. Both Voyagers are still sending data back 40+ years after their 5-year primary mission ended. But figuring out what to do with those spacecraft after their primary mission takes some negotiation. One such craft that will reach its end-of-mission in 2030 is Euclid, which is currently on a mission to map the “dark universe” of dark energy and dark matter. According to a new paper from Luigi “Rolly” Bedin of the Astronomical Institute of Padova, which is available in pre-print form on arXiv, for its second act we could turn Euclid into the most powerful astrometric telescope ever made.
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Using its high-resolution camera, China's Tianwen-1 orbiter has successfully observed the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS at a distance of about 30 million kilometers, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
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We're only starting to awaken to the passage of interstellar objects through our inner Solar System. So far we know of three, but there are bound to be many more. Do they pose an impact threat to Earth?
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The planets in our Solar System host hundreds of moons, so it seems likely that planets in other solar systems do, too. New research examines the likelihood of rocky planets around M dwarfs having exomoons, and it doesn't look good. They don't last long enough for them to give life a helping hand like Earth's moon has.
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Conditions on Venus’ surface have largely remained a mystery for decades. Carl Sagan famously pointed out that people were quick to jump to conclusions, such as that there are dinosaurs living there, from scant little evidence collected from the planet. But just because we have little actual data doesn’t mean we can’t draw conclusions, and better yet models, from the data we do have. A new paper from Maxence Lefèvre of the Sorbonne and his colleagues takes what little data has been collected from Venus’ surface and uses it to valid a model of what the wind and dust conditions down there would be like - all for the sake of making the work of the next round of Venusian explorer easier.
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New study reveals, for the first time, a tidal disruption event (TDE), where a black hole tears apart a star, occurring outside the center of a galaxy that produced exceptionally strong and rapidly evolving radio signals. This rare discovery shows that supermassive black holes can exist and remain active far from galactic cores, challenging current understanding of where such black holes reside and how they behave. The event’s delayed and powerful radio outbursts also suggest previously unknown processes in how black holes eject material over time.
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There are no mini-Neptunes in our Solar System, yet they seem to be one of the most common types of exoplanets out there. Previous research shows that these planets are magma oceans. But new research based on JWST data shows that many of them may actually have solid surfaces.
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The Euclid Space Telescope found some stars hiding in thick gas and dust in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. They're inside a so-called dark cloud named LDN 1641.
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A spooky bat has been spotted flying over the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal site in Chile, right in time for Halloween. Thanks to its wide field of view, the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) was able to capture this large cloud of cosmic gas and dust, whose mesmerising appearance resembles the silhouette of a bat.
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Trapped in a gravitational push and pull between Jupiter and other Jovian moons, Io is constantly being stretched and compressed. Heat generated by these contortions has melted pockets of the moon's interior so much that Io is our solar system's most volcanically active body. New research shows how its atmosphere is shaped both by volcanoes and by Jupiter's overpowering magnetosphere.
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When neutron stars collide, neutrinos can play a significant role in the outcome. Even more so when you take flavor mixing into account.
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A new study proposes how we could look for signs of self-replicating (Von Neumann) probes that would prove that the Solar System has been explored by an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).
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Rocky exoplanets orbiting red dwarfs are in a tough spot. Their stars are known for violent flaring that can destroy their atmospheres. But it's possible that asteroid impacts could later recreate their atmospheres.
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If we take out all the matter, neutrinos, dark matter, cosmic rays, and radiation from the deepest parts of the voids the only thing left is empty space.
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Cosmic inflation helps black holes grow quickly, but it can't explain how supermassive black holes grew to billions of solar masses in less than 500 million years.
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A new report outlines the benefits and obstacles to a lunar telescope. It comes from the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and presents an idea for a lunar optical interferometer. The authors say it could outperform powerful space telescopes.
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Sometimes space exploration doesn’t go as planned. But even in failure, engineers can learn, adapt, and try again. One of the best ways to do that is to share the learning, and allow others to reproduce the work that might not have succeeded, allowing them to try again. A group from MIT’s Space Enabled Research Group, part of its Media Lab, recently released a paper in Space Science Reviews that describes the design and testing results of a pair of passive sensors sent to the Moon on the ill-fated Rashid-1 rover.
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With unprecedented detail, a team of astronomers led by MPE have imaged the youngest disks around new-born stars. Astronomers used to think that planet formation followed star formation. But these glowing, chaotic disks are hotter and heavier than expected, hinting that planets may start forming much earlier than previously thought.
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An international team of astronomers using the combined powers of space-based and ground-based observatories, including the W.M. Keck Observatory and Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, have discovered a brown dwarf companion orbiting a nearby red dwarf star, providing key insight into how stars and planets form.
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Before a supernova finally explodes, its progenitor ejects massive amounts of gas into its surroundings. When the doomed star finally explodes, its blast wave slams into this material. This is one of a supernova's signatures, and researchers have figured out how to detect it.
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The cosmic voids of the universe are empty of matter. But we all know there’s more to the universe than just matter.
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Star formation has a lot of complex physics that feed into it. Classical models used something equivalent to a “collapse” of a cloud of gas by gravity, with a star being birthed in the middle. More modern understandings show a feature called a “streamer”, which funnels gas and dust to proto-stars from the surrounding disc of material. But our understanding of those streamers is still in its early stages, like the stars they are forming. So a new paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters by Pablo Cortes of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and his co-authors is a welcome addition to the literature - and it shows a unique feature of the process for the first time.
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Modeling supermassive black holes is hard, but it's a bit easier if you use a non-singular model.
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There is a limit to how big we can build particle colliders on Earth, whether that is because of limited space or limited economics. Since size is equivalent to energy output for particle colliders, that also means there’s a limit to how energetic we can make them. And again, since high energies are required to test theories that go Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) of particle physics, that means we will be limited in our ability to validate those theories until we build a collider big enough. But a team of scientists led by Yang Bai at the University of Wisconsin thinks they might have a better idea - use already existing neutrino detectors as a large scale particle collider that can reach energies way beyond what the LHC is capable of.
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Now that we have tools to find vast numbers of voids in the universe, we can finally ask…well, if we crack em open, what do we find inside?
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Astronomers found a 3 billion-year-old white dwarf actively accreting material from its former planetary system. This discovery challenges assumptions about the late stages of stellar remnant evolution.
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A research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) examined samples returned by the Chang'e-6 mission from the far side of the Moon. They identified minerals that appear to be from a carbonaceous chondrite meteor, which are known to contain water and organic molecules. These findings support the theory that water and the ingredients for life were delivered by asteroids and comets to Earth billions of years ago.
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To answer that question of what’s inside a void, we have to first decide what a void…is.
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Researchers from Keio University have made the most precise measurement yet of the cosmic microwave background radiation's temperature from seven billion years ago, finding it was approximately 5.13 K, roughly twice today's temperature of 2.7 K. By analysing archived data from the ALMA telescope in Chile, the team confirmed a key prediction of Big Bang model, that the universe cools as it expands, meaning it was hotter in the past. This highly accurate measurement provides strong support for the standard cosmological model and helps scientists better understand the thermal history of our universe.
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Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has undergone dramatic brightening as it approached its closest point to the Sun. Researchers have been using solar monitoring satellites to track it during a period when Earth based observations were impossible due to the comet's position behind the Sun. Analysis of data from STEREO-A, SOHO, and GOES-19 spacecraft revealed the comet brightened at an unexpectedly rapid rate between mid September and late October 2025, with its light showing a distinctly blue colour indicating significant gas emission rather than just reflected sunlight from dust. The comet's unusual behaviour and the cause of its steep brightening remain mysteries that ground based observers will now investigate as it emerges into dark skies.
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Scientists at MIT have discovered over 100 different molecules in a stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1, making it the most chemically diverse interstellar cloud ever observed. Using over 1,400 hours of telescope time, the team found mostly hydrocarbons and nitrogen rich compounds, along with 10 ring shaped aromatic molecules similar to those found in coffee, vanilla, and DNA. This discovery helps solve a decades old mystery about complex organic molecules in space and provides key insights into the chemical conditions that existed before our own Solar System formed.
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For the first time, astronomers have mapped the three-dimensional atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star, revealing temperature variations and distinct atmospheric regions across an alien world 400 light years away. Using the James Webb Space Telescope to track minute changes in brightness as the scorching gas giant WASP-18b passed behind its star, scientists created a weather map of an exoplanet, transforming these distant worlds from featureless dots into environments we can actually study layer by layer. This new technique could soon map hundreds of other similar hot Jupiters, finally bringing alien atmospheres into focus as real places with their own geography and weather patterns.
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Every kilogram of rocket fuel is dead weight once it’s burned, yet conventional spacecraft must carry hundreds, sometimes thousands of tons of propellant to reach even nearby planets. This fundamental limitation has confined humanity to our own Solar System for decades. But a new generation of propulsion concepts promises to break free from this constraint entirely, harnessing radiation pressure, solar wind, and planetary gravity to accelerate spacecraft without carrying a single drop of fuel. These elegant systems could finally make interstellar exploration feasible…if engineers can overcome their formidable technical challenges.
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How does water form on exoplanets and what could this mean for the search for life beyond Earth? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of scientists investigated the processes responsible for exoplanets producing liquid water. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth, and specifically which exoplanets could be viable future targets for astrobiology.
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NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto has forced astronomers to rewrite their textbooks — but that’s not all: In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, space scientist Les Johnson explains how New Horizons forced him to rewrite "Pluto," the final novel in Ben Bova's Grand Tour series.
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Black holes are usually described as having an event horizon and a singularity, but there are alternative models that don't have these bothersome mathematical paradoxes.
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So where do we go after years of empty searches for dark matter? We haven’t learned nothing.
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How could the principle of “radical mundanity” proposed by the Fermi paradox help explain why humans haven’t found evidence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations (ETCs)? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a lone researcher investigated the prospect for finding ETCs based on this principle. This study has the potential to help scientists and the public better understand why we haven’t identified intelligent life beyond Earth and how we might narrow the search for it.
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The Vera Rubin Observatory saw first light in June 2025. Its images from that time are called the Virgo First Look images because they focus on the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. M61 is one of the galaxies in that cluster, and the VRO has detected a stellar stream of stars around the distant spiral galaxy in Rubin's images.
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Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia have created a stunning new radio colour image of the Milky Way. By mapping different radio frequencies to RGB colours, the image reveals large-scale astrophysical phenomena and gives researchers a new tool to understand the lifecycle of stars.
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What if I told you that while you can’t see dark matter, maybe you can hear it?
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We successfully plugged the hole in the ozone layer that was discovered in the 1980s by banning ozone depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But, it seems we might be unintentionally creating another potential atmospheric calamity by using the upper atmosphere to destroy huge constellations of satellites after a very short (i.e. 5 year) lifetime. According to a new paper by Leonard Schulz of the Technical University of Braunschweig and his co-authors, material from satellites that burn up in the atmosphere, especially transition metals, could have unforeseen consequences on atmospheric chemistry - and we’re now the biggest contributor of some of those elements.
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Why is it important to know about exoplanets having their atmospheres stripped while orbiting F-type stars? This is what a recent study submitted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of scientists conducted a first-time investigation into atmospheric escape on planets orbiting F-type stars, the latter of which are larger and hotter than our Sun. Atmospheric escape occurs on planets orbiting extremely close to their stars, resulting in the extreme temperature and radiation from the host star slowly stripping away the planet’s atmosphere.
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The gas giant’s early growth carved rings in the protoplanetary disk that surrounded our Sun billions of years ago. This process set the architecture for the inner Solar System and prevented Earth from spiraling into the Sun.
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New research from Tel Aviv University reveals that the first stars in the Universe formed in binary systems. These stars played a vital role in the evolution of early galaxies, giving rise to black holes and seeding the Universe with the ingredients for life.
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A tiny dim satellite galaxy of the Milky Way doesn't have enough stars to hold itself together. Its properties suggest that its dark matter halo is holding it together, but new research counters that. Researchers say that it's not dark matter but a massive black hole that's keeping the dwarf galaxy intact.
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