AI is a powerful tool in scientific research. It can be used to find patterns in vast quantities of data. But it also generates false positives, as most of us know. This is an "Achilles Heel" according to researchers who tested a neural network's ability to detect life.

Despite their depiction as massive monsters that simply suck in everything, including light, astronomers know black holes actually spin. And they spin really, really quickly at that. Determining just how quickly is key to understanding how they impact their immediate vicinity, but also the galaxies that surround them. A new paper by Tegan Thomas of the University of Virginia and her colleagues, available in pre-print on arXiv, has some good news and bad news on that front. The bad news is we currently can’t determine how fast black holes are actually spinning. The good news is that, hopefully in the next few years, we will have a new tool that will allow us to.

A team of researchers used the world's largest single-dish telescope and an interferometer to uncover previously hidden structures within the Orion Nebula. The project produced the sharpest maps ever made of neutral hydrogen in Orion, the closest region of massive star formation. The findings expose the complex relationship of star-forming regions with their environment and suggest that the Orion Nebula has been shaped by multiple episodes of stellar feedback rather than a single expanding bubble.

It’s hard hunting down the oldest stars in the universe. These behemoths, known as Population (or Pop) III stars, are a missing link in cosmology between the primordial soup that was the early universe and the complex, “metal”-rich cosmos we’re familiar with today. But we’re slowly getting a better idea of where to look for them, and a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Alessandra Venditti of the University of Texas at Austin and her co-authors, highlights some of the recent advances and potential new surveying techniques that could eventually help us definitively find these massive, bright, early sparks in the universe.

A recent study out of the Planetary Science Institute notes that the close passage of the star HD 7977 may have triggered a cascade, sending long-period comets sunward. What’s more, the same uptick in long-period comets may still be underway today. The study was recently presented at the American Astronomical Society Division on Dynamical Astronomy.

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center have demonstrated a new approach to wave amplification through interaction with rotating bodies. Rather than mechanically rotating matter, however, the team engineered a radio-frequency device with properties modulated in space and time to mimic spinning.

Engineers have just upgraded the software running a spacecraft 140 million kilometres away, then held their breath through two full reboots with an eight minute delay on every command. The prize for getting it right is a close up look at an asteroid humanity has already changed forever, and the answer to a question nobody has been able to answer since 2022, what did we actually do to it?

Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy is an old star that has lost one of its comets. By some quirk of orbital mechanics, that frozen nucleus of ice and dust got kicked out of its home system and into a long and winding trajectory across space. It entered our Solar System sometime in the distant past and traveled somewhat near to Earth on October 30, 2025, on its way through the system.

There are parts of the universe that are extremely hard to see, even for our most advanced telescopes. Gas and dust don’t emit any light, and are only visible by the light that they happen to block from stars and galaxies. Magnetic fields are even harder since regular light typically passes right through them. However, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv, by Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney and their co-authors, we’re currently commissioning a potentially game-changing new tool that could use a particularly violent astronomical phenomenon to provide new insight into these hard to see places.

Astrobiology has long been split into two camps: a search for "biosignatures" and a search for "intelligence." These look for very different things, but they also leave a huge gap in between. It took 3.5 billion years for us to go from the first microbe to a civilization that sent radio waves out into the cosmos. Detecting life in between those stages is a relatively untouched aspect of astrobiology—which is also the focal point of a new paper, "Signs and Signatures of Intelligence", available in pre-print on arXiv, by astrobiologist Julia DeMarines.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have caught an extreme, tidally locked exoplanet in the act of showing two very different faces at once, a fierce, wind battered hemisphere and a comparatively gentler half. The discovery not only reveals a planet with a genuine weather system violent enough to tear water apart, it hints at a missing ingredient in how scientists model alien atmospheres altogether.

Buried a kilometre underground in Japan, one of the world's most sensitive detectors may have caught its first faint trace of a sound scientists have been straining to hear for decades, the combined whisper of every supernova that has ever exploded across the universe. It is not yet a confirmed discovery, but if it holds up, it could rewrite how we trace the life and death of stars.

Aside from an unknown quantity of water in the Moon’s permanently shaded polar craters, the lion’s share of what water the Moon may have is likely chemically bound in its deep interior.

On Friday, July 10th, China achieved a major milestone as its Long March-10B completed a its maiden test flight, which included the retrieval of its first stage booster.

Wally Funk, an aviation pioneer who was the oldest woman to launch into space, has died. She was 87.

The black hole at the centre of a nearby galaxy is growing exceptionally fast, and is producing a burst of radio emission that has never been observed before. With characteristics that are expected in the early Universe, this unique galaxy provides important insights into the processes that governed the growth of the first black holes.

Swinburne University of Technology and CSIRO have combined telescope and gravitational wave data in an attempt to unlock the true value of the Universe's expansion. Existing measurements of the Hubble Constant have split cosmologists for more than a decade.

When a massive star reaches the end of its life, it explodes as a supernova that can light up the sky for months. But some supernovae stay luminous for much longer, and astrophysicists have wondered what causes their extended brightness. New research points to binary stars, where one star expels material right before the explosion that creates a cocoon of circumstellar medium.

How do you capture the mood of the 1960s space race in a fictional universe where the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon? The production team for Apple TV's "Star City" series rose to the challenge.

Ptolemy and al-Sufi were keen ancient astronomers, one in Greece and one in Persia, whose observations were separated by almost a thousand years. They both noted that the star Theta Eridani was far brighter than it is today. Now we know why.

Astrophysicists working tirelessly to tackle the growing impact of satellite constellations have pioneered a new ultra-black coating as one possible way to mitigate the problem.

Shielding astronauts from the killer radiation they face is a central challenge facing any designer of a deep-space crewed mission. Even relatively low levels of exposure for long periods of time can lead to everything from central nervous system damage to cancer. But current solutions, such as passive water shells or active superconducting magnets, have their own limitations. To get around those, a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Valerio Parisi and a team of researchers from Italy and Germany, looks at the feasibility of using a permanent magnet (and its associated permanent magnetic field) to potentially block some of that deadly radiation without the costs of competing technologies.

NASA is serious about going back to the Moon. Ongoing missions like the recently completed Artemis II trip around the Moon are just one such sign. But perhaps more importantly, NASA is recognizing how much additional work will have to go into funding technology development if we hope to stay on the lunar surface permanently. To reflect that understanding, the agency recently released a request for public feedback on what it calls the Lunar Enabling Infrastructure Accelerator - which might have been named after a Star Wars fan, since its acronym is LEIA.

We’ve talked plenty of times here about the infeasibility of launching a mirror big enough to directly image exoplanets using current rocket fairings - at least as long as we’re not sending them 500+ AU away to a gravitational lensing point. We’ve also talked at length about the potential solution to that problem - interferometry, where multiple smaller satellites link up precisely, but are spaced far enough apart to act as one gigantic mirror. The problem is, from a technical standpoint, it’s really hard to build these kinds of systems. But the field has taken another step forward with a new paper from researchers at Xidian University and the Beijing Institute of Control Engineering, published in Space: Science & Technology, which describes a system to both control and calibrate a free-floating interferometer.

Scientists at UCF have found that the harsh conditions of spaceflight, radiation and weightlessness combined, can trigger changes in the liver that closely resemble accelerated ageing, and remarkably, the same genetic fingerprints show up in real astronaut blood samples. The discovery could shape how we protect future Mars explorers, and might just hold clues to slowing ageing back here on Earth too.

When a fireball streaked across the Alaska sky in broad daylight, the cameras meant to capture it saw nothing useful. Undeterred, scientists turned to sound waves too low for human ears and faint tremors picked up by earthquake sensors, piecing together an extraordinary account of the object's final seconds. What they discovered points to a surprising new way of tracking dangers falling from space, whether we can see them coming or not.

Scientists in Japan have built a low power device that pulls nitrogen straight from the air and turns it into fertiliser, then used it to successfully grow rice in simulated lunar soil. Along the way, they stumbled on an unexpected bonus that could make crops both healthier and better suited to life in space, one with surprising promise for farms back on Earth too.

A five year survey by the South Pole Telescope has produced a catalogue of more than seven thousand galaxy clusters, some dating back nearly eight billion years, giving astronomers their most detailed map yet of the universe's largest structures. Hidden inside the data is something even the researchers did not expect, a discovery that is quietly reshaping how we think star formation unfolded across the history of the universe.

The Outer Space Treaty from 1967 prohibits weapons in space. But a satellite launched by Russia has generated suspicion. Despite claims that it's a normal satellite, some things about it suggest otherwise. New research proposes a way to detect atomic weapons in space, helping enforce the treaty.

A new result using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows that the outer spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy may reach wider than previously thought. This finding may lead astronomers to adjust their understanding of our home galaxy’s structure.

With its ability to observe the red-shifted light from early galaxies, the JWST has revealed some surprises. Many massive galaxies in the early Universe had ceased star formation and were already quenched hundreds of millions of years sooner than thought. By examining their morphology, new research shows that mergers that were previously hidden from view are responsible.

JAXA's Hayabusa 2 has completed its flyby of asteroid Torifune. The spacecraft came within about 800 meters of the asteroid's surface. Though the spacecraft is travelling very rapidly, making navigation challenging, it was still able to capture clear images of the asteroid's boulder-strewn surface. Based on ground-based observations, scientists suspected that Torifune was a contact binary asteroid, and these images confirm it.

Euclid is only 1.5 years into its Euclid Wide Survey and has found 31 new quasars from the Universe's first 800 million years. Though the Survey isn't specifically aimed at finding ancient quasars, it's proving to be remarkably effective at it. This large sample of quasars will help with the study of ancient galaxies and supermassive black holes.

Mergers are a part of a galaxy's life in this Universe. Though clear signs of these mergers fade over hundreds of millions of years, evidence is still present, yet obscured, in the galaxies that experience them. The powerful JWST has made it possible to find this evidence, and it did so recently for Centaurus A.

Combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with advanced image-processing techniques to produce the sharpest X-ray view yet of the relativistic jet from M87's supermassive black hole.

As part of NASA's Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) 2026 Academic Innovation Challenge, a University of Michigan team proposed an actuated, pressurized tunnel system that would save countless hours of work and preparation by connecting the astronaut's habitat with other surface elements.

Astronomers have discovered an extremely low-mass and dim dwarf galaxy around Andromeda. Called And 35, it's an Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy (UFDG) and so far, the researchers have detected only 46 of its stars. Lambda-CDM predicts that there should be many UFDGs around galaxies like Andromeda and the Milky Way, so finding more of them is important.

Where does the Solar System end and interstellar space begin? That's a question scientists have been working to answer using spacecraft traveling out beyond the Sun's influence. A team of researchers from the Southwest Research Institute led by Heather Elliott, is using the Solar Wind around Pluto instrument onboard New Horizons to track the solar wind in the outer reachers of the Solar System.

We’ve reported on all kinds of wacky ideas for capturing and deorbiting space debris safely. From electric tethers to lasers, engineers and scientists have been trying everything they can think of to deal with the ever-increasing orbital debris problem. But one simple design keeps popping up over and over again - a net. A new paper from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China details one of the most advanced net concepts yet - but whether we can actually build one remains to be seen.

With new technologies come new opportunities. And that is especially true in astronomy - with every new advanced telescope we have the potential to see (or in some cases, listen) further and more clearly than we ever have before. That is certainly the case for the new Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which is currently undergoing a multi-year roll out phase. Despite that drawn out process, astronomers are already excited about its potential, and a new book chapter from Dr. Chenoa Tremblay and her co-authors details how this new technology could be used to answer one of the most fundamental questions - are we alone?

Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have taken a closer look at a nearby exoplanet and discovered it may be more Earth-like than previously thought.Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have taken a closer look at a nearby exoplanet and discovered it may be more Earth-like than previously thought.

An international team involving over ten institutions, with a strong participation from ESO and INAF, has characterised TOI-201 c, the transiting brown dwarf with the longest period for which mass has been measured. The study, published today in Nature, reveals a compact, coplanar system in which the presence of a massive, eccentric object redefines the stability boundaries for the inner planets

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are using a solar wind forecasting method combined with analytic and numerical heliosphere models to find out where the first plasma boundary of the outer heliosphere lies as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward this mysterious region of space.

A study led by the University of Bonn presents new data that calls the existence of Dark Matter - a fundamental pillar of the current cosmological model - into question.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has captured evidence of a Jupiter-like world orbiting another star, using a trick straight out of Einstein’s relativity: gravitational microlensing. The technique marks a first for TESS, and opens up the possibility of a whole new category of planets the spacecraft might uncover.

Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times the math just doesn’t sit well with our brains that evolved to capture and process data about the world around us rather than groking the complexities of stellar dynamics and galaxy mergers. But every once in a while astronomers find something that, if we can wrap our heads around the numbers, gives a sense of just how big the universe is. That is precisely what a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv from a group of astronomers led by Z.L. Wen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, hopes to do when it describes a merger of not one, not two, but six supermassive galaxies and the active dynamics they’re subject to.

Some planets can survive when their main sequence stars "die" and evolve into red giants. Astronomers have found several of them. One of them in particular is orbiting extremely close to its star, providing an opportunity to study it with the JWST to determine how it got there.

New research shows that repeated impacts on Earth during the Hadean eon prevented thick and stable crustal material from forming. The heat from these impacts penetrated deep into the planet, and along with radiogenic heating, delayed the formation of a solid crust.

Some of the most massive galaxies in the Universe appear to be missing a lot of stars. That seems unusual, since birthing stars is one of a galaxy's main tasks as it grows. According to Xin "Cindy" Xiang of the University of Michigan, something is suppressing or quenching the births of stars in these and she thinks that black holes might be the culprit.

Every muscle in the human body is, in a sense, in constant conversation with gravity, sensing load and responding accordingly to stay strong. Remove that conversation, as happens to astronauts in orbit, and the consequences unfold at a molecular level long before they become visible. New NASA-supported research is tracing exactly how that breakdown happens, using a purpose-built model that mimics weightlessness here on Earth. The surprising twist is where else this knowledge might apply