Universe Today
Does Life Really Need Planets? Maybe Not
Tidal Steams of Interstellar Objects May Flow Through the Milky Way Like Braided Rivers
Interstellar objects visit our solar system all the time. A new study shows they likely come in streams of sibling objects from the same star system.
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An Interstellar Visitor Helped Shape the Orbits of the Planets.
A Commercial Tie-Up Bring High-Energy Nuclear Electric Propulsion Closer to Reality
New Technique for Spotting Dyson Rings Unveiled.
High Velocity Clouds Comprise Less of the Milky Way's Mass Than We Thought
A survey of high velocity clouds in the galactic halo of the Milky Way finds that they make up less of our galaxy's mass than we had previously thought.
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Has the Universe Been Designed to Support Life? Now We Have a Way to Test it!
Webb Sees a Supercluster of Galaxies Coming Together
Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar
Do We Really Know What Becomes a Type Ia Supernova?
Type Ia supernovae are crucial to our understanding of cosmology. But we still don't fully understand what causes them.
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A Cheap Satellite with Large Fuel Tank Could Scout For Interplanetary Missions
Our Strategy to Catch the 2024 Geminid Meteors
Observations by DESI Open the Door to Modified Gravity Models
Observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggest that the rate of cosmic expansion may be changing over the time. While this wouldn't rule out general relativity, it opens the door to modified gravity models, which may better match the data.
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Using Jupiter as a Dark Matter Detector
Space Telescopes Could See a Second Life With a Servicing Mission
Other Liquids Could Be Forming Minerals on Mars
Jared Isaacman is Trump's Choice for NASA Administrator
NASA Pushes Human Moon Landing Back to 2027
Advanced Civilizations Could be Indistinguishable from Nature
Cosmology is at a Crossroads, But New Instruments are Coming to Help
Thanks to Hubble, JWST, and the Planck mission, we're starting to see cracks in the current ideas in cosmology, expressed by the Hubble Tension, the Cosmic Shear Tension, and the role dark energy plays in the expansion of the Universe over time. Good news: powerful new instruments are already surveying the Universe and should measure any deviations from the widely held cosmological models. It's a fun time to be an astronomer.
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A 3U CubeSat Could Collect Data During an Asteroid Flyby
China Plans to Retrieve Mars Samples by 2031
Here's How Interstellar Objects and Rogue Planets Can be Trapped in the Solar System
MeerKAT Confirms the Gravitational Wave Background of the Universe in Record Time
Astronomers are collecting evidence for the gravitational wave background of the Universe, caused by merging supermassive black holes. Now, the MeerKAT radio telescope has confirmed the discovery first made by the NANOGrav experiment, but in a third of the time. For the last five years, MeerKAT has monitored dozens of millisecond pulsars once a week, detecting subtle changes in their radio emissions as gravitational waves flow by.
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Could We Use An Asteroid to Shield Astronauts On Their Way to Mars?
Maybe Venus Was Never Habitable
The planetary science community argues back and forth about when Venus was last habitable. Did it lose its oceans billions of years ago, or more recently? A new paper suggests that Venus has been a hellscape for its entire history. No oceans, ever. This result comes from the ratio of atmospheric chemicals and how quickly they're replenished by volcanic outgassing. On Earth, volcanic eruptions are mostly steam from interior water, but on Venus, they're 6% water at most.
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Astronauts on Long Missions Will Need Personal AI Assistants
Could Primordial Black Holes Be Hiding in Plain Sight?
NASA Wants Students' Help Designing Missions to Other Moons
Antarctica Has Gotten 10 Times Greener in 35 Years
White Dwarfs Could Have Habitable Planets, Detectable by JWST
White dwarfs are dead stars like our Sun. Although they're no longer performing fusion in their cores, they're still hot and putting out radiation that could support life. A new paper calculates that a white dwarf could support planets in a new habitable zone for 7 billion years, providing the right temperature and radiation to support a biosphere. They're also small and dim, which makes it easier to study planets in orbit around them for potential biosignatures.
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Catch Jupiter at Opposition 2024 This Coming Weekend
Dragonfly is Going to Titan on a Falcon Heavy
A New Reconfigurable Structure Could Be Used to Make Space Habitats
What's Inside Uranus and Neptune? A New Way to Find Out
Uranus and Neptune are "ice giants," containing chemicals like methane and ammonia, but compressed under intense pressure. This is just speculation from a couple of flybys with Voyager 2 and telescope observations. A new paper suggests that Uranus and Neptune have distinct layers, which don't easily mix and could explain their unusual magnetic fields. Below the cloud layers is a deep ocean of water and then a compressed fluid of carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen.
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Just Built a Giant, Next Generation Planet Hunting Space Telescope? Here's Where to Point It
NASA Is Seeking Ideas for Rescuing an Astronaut from the Moon
A CubeSat Mission to Phobos Could Map Staging Bases for a Mars Landing
Interstellar Objects Can't Hide From Vera Rubin
When the Vera Rubin Observatory comes online in a few months, it'll be the most effective asteroid and comet hunter ever built. And not just the homegrown variety, Rubin will discover interstellar objects like Oumuamua and Borisov passing through the Solar System. A new paper suggests the kinds of machine learning algorithms that will have the best chance of uncovering these fast-moving objects as they move through the field of view from night to night.
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The Early Earth Wasn't Completely Terrible
Globular Clusters Evolve in Interesting Ways Over Time
A Superfast Supercomputer Creates the Biggest Simulation of the Universe Yet
How Much Are Asteroids Really Worth?
Euclid Could Find 170,000 Strong Gravitational Lenses
Uranus's Wobbling Moons Could Point to Oceans Under the Ice
Stem Cells Grown in Space Could Revolutionize Medicine Here on Earth
Magnetic Tornado is Stirring up the Haze at Jupiter's Poles
Is There Seismic Activity on Venus? Here's How We Could Find Out
The Holiday Fireplace Video We Needed
An AI Chemist Made A Catalyst to Make Oxygen On Mars Using Local Materials
