Universe Today
Nuclear Detonations Could Deflect Dangerous Asteroids Away from Earth
Unloading Cargo on the Moon
How Does the Milky Way Compare to Other Galaxies?
Looking out into the universe, astronomers have identified countless spiral galaxies similar to the Milky Way. But is our home galaxy normal? A 10+ year survey called Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) has been measuring galaxy systems like the Milky Way, including the companion satellite galaxies that surround them. They found that the Milky Way has fewer satellite galaxies than others with roughly the same size and mass.
Continue reading
Space Perspective Completes a Test Flight, Sending a Balloon to 30 km
Europe Simulates the Moon on Earth
Martian Clay Could Be Hiding the Planet's Atmosphere
We know that Mars was once a warmer, wetter world with a thicker atmosphere, but now it has 1% of the atmospheric density of Earth. Where did it all go? One theory is that billions of years of interaction with the solar wind have buffeted it off into space. New research suggests that the atmosphere might still be there, just bound up in the clay-covered material that forms the crust of Mars. Trickling water could have drawn CO2 out of the atmosphere and locked it away.
Continue reading
Astronomers Find a Strange Lopsided Planet
Another Building Block of Life Can Handle Venus' Sulphuric Acid
Dark Matter Could a Have Slight Interaction With Regular Matter
Dark matter seems to be an invisible particle that only interacts with regular matter (or itself) through gravity. But in a new study, based on data gathered by Hubble, researchers think they've found evidence of interactions with regular matter beyond just gravity. They recorded the structure of a low-mass galaxy, measured the concentrations of dark matter, and then compared that to simulations where dark matter only interacts through gravity and found a discrepancy.
Continue reading
A New Rover Design Could Crawl Across the Moon for Decades Harvesting Water
Space Travel Weakens the Heart, New Study Finds
Will Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Shine Brighter Than Expected?
Now is the time to catch Comet A3-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS at dawn.
Continue reading
Biosignatures Can be Made in the Lab. No Life Needed.
Astrobiologists continue to search for their ideal biosignatures. A chemical or collection of chemicals that would give a clear indication of life on an exoplanet. The problem is that natural processes can produce all the same chemicals that life can generate. Now, researchers have produced dimethyl sulfide in the lab, a chemical made by marine microbes. They used light and gases found in many planetary atmospheres. The search for biosignatures continues.
Continue reading
How a Nearby Supernova Left its Mark on Earth Life
SpaceX Recovers the Super Heavy Booster from Flight 4
Shape-Shifting Robots Mimic Muscle Movements
What Happens to the Climate When Earth Passes Through Interstellar Clouds?
From Frozen to Sweltering: Earth's Climate Over the Last 485 Million Years
Those Aren't Dyson Spheres, They're HotDOGs
Earlier this year, researchers claimed that they had found infrared signatures for candidate Dyson Sphere megastructures in archival WISE data. Astronomers were skeptical, suggesting that these objects might just be stars visually close to highly luminous "Hot Dust-Obscured Galaxies (HotDOGS)." The number of candidates matches the expected frequency of these chance alignments. This new paper puts a limit on the number of Dyson Spheres in our galactic neighborhood.
Continue reading
A New Catalog Charts the Evolution of the Universe Over Time
This Might Be the Best Gravitational Lens Ever Found
High-Resolution Images of the Sun Show How Flares Impact the Solar Atmosphere
Researchers Mimic Extracting Energy From Black Holes in the Lab
As black holes spin, they drag space-time along with them, and scientists have proposed that this could be a source of energy for an advanced civilization, harvesting momentum from material ejected from this twisting spacetime. The concept has been generalized, and it's theoretically possible to extract energy from anything spinning. Now, researchers have mimicked the process in the lab, beaming electromagnetic waves at a spinning object and extracting energy.
Continue reading
Advanced Civilizations Will Overheat Their Planets Within 1,000 Years
Astronomers Find the Longest Black Hole Jets Ever Seen
Second Generation Starlinks are 32 Times Brighter in Radio Wavelengths
There's Water All Over the Moon
Io's Volcanoes are Windows into its Hot Interior
Could Stars Hotter Than the Sun Still Support Life?
Astronomers have several classifications for stars: the Sun is a G-type star. As you go up the list, the next hotter stars are the F-type, with surface temperatures in the range of 6200–7200 K. Could these stars have habitable zones where planets might support life? According to a new study, there have already been planets discovered within the habitable zones of F-type stars, which also lie outside the region where there is too much ultraviolet radiation.
Continue reading
Slime Mold Can Teach Us About the Cosmic Web
Plants Would Still Grow Well Under Alien Skies
The Polaris Dawn Crew is Back on Earth
Building a Worldwide Map of Light Pollution
Life Might Thrive on the Surface of Earth for an Extra Billion Years
Exoplanets Could be Hiding Their Atmospheres
One of the most intriguing planetary systems is TRAPPIST-1, with several Earth-sized worlds orbiting a red dwarf star, and astronomers have already scanned planets to search for evidence of an atmosphere. The first two worlds appear to be airless super-mercuries, and the hope lies on the next few planets, which orbit in the star's habitable zone. But what if the planets are hiding their atmospheres? A new paper suggests that night-side clouds can mimic an airless world.
Continue reading
Actually, Ceres Might Have Formed in the Asteroid Belt After All
Metal Part 3D Printed in Space for the First Time
NASA Watches a Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Drift Past Earth
Did Mars Once Have a Third, Larger Moon?
The Early Universe Had a Lot of Black Holes
SETI Scientists Scan TRAPPIST-1 for Technosignatures
If there's an advanced civilization in the TRAPPIST-1 system living on multiple worlds, there's a way to eavesdrop on their conversation from world to world. Researchers directed the Allen Telescope Array at the TRAPPIST-1 system during times of "planet-planet occultations," when two of the worlds in the system are aligned with Earth and their star. Communications directed at the planet could spill over and be detectable from Earth. No signals were detected.
Continue reading
A Star Was Kicked Out of a Globular Cluster by an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole
Astronomers Have Found a Star with a Hot Jupiter and a Cold Super Jupiter in Orbit
Future Gravitational Wave Observatories Could See the Earliest Black Hole Mergers in the Universe
Could You Find What A Lunar Crater Is Made Of By Shooting It?
There are Plenty of Uses for Powerful Lasers in Space. But Where Should We Put Them?
There Could be a Way to Fix Spacecraft at L2, Like Webb and Gaia
Could We Find Primordial Black Holes in the Solar System?
One possible explanation for dark matter is primordial black holes. These are lower-mass black holes formed in the first moments of the universe when the conditions were hot and dense. If there are asteroid-mass black holes floating through the cosmos, a few might be here in the solar system. The only way to detect them would be to measure their gravitational interactions with planets and other asteroids. Is our current technology up to the task?
Continue reading
Earth Might Have Had Rings Half a Billion Years Ago
Earth Will Have a Tiny New Mini-Moon for a Few Months
