Around midday on June 13 last year, my colleagues and I were scanning the skies when we thought we had discovered a strange and exciting new object in space. Using a huge radio telescope, we spotted a blindingly fast flash of radio waves...
A newly discovered radio halo, 10 billion light-years away, reveals that galaxy clusters in the early universe were already steeped in high-energy particles. The finding hints at ancient black hole activity or cosmic particle collisions...
New research published in Physical Review Letters suggests that superconducting magnets used in dark matter detection experiments could function as highly precise gravitational wave detectors, thereby establishing an entirely new...
A surprising discovery from a tiny grain of asteroid Ryugu has rocked scientists' understanding of how our Solar System evolved. Researchers found djerfisherite—a mineral typically born in scorching, chemically reduced conditions and...
Scientists may have found a new way to detect some of the universe's most mysterious objects, primordial black holes (PBHs), using Hawking radiation. This groundbreaking approach relies upon watching for their radiation signatures as...
According to the latest studies led by Heidelberg University astronomers, low-mass stars quite often host Earth-like planets. Data collected as part of the CARMENES project were the basis of this finding. By analyzing the data, an...
The LSST camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its jaw-dropping first images, each capturing 45 times the area of the full moon in one shot. Over the next ten years, this cosmic giant will scan the southern sky in...
Population III (PopIII) stars represent astronomy's ultimate prize: the first generation of stars born from the pristine hydrogen and helium created in the Big Bang. These theoretical giants, potentially hundreds of times more massive...
One of the most perplexing discoveries in modern astronomy has been finding supermassive black holes, some weighing billions of times more than our sun, in galaxies that formed less than 750 million years after the Big Bang. They appear...
Astronomers have uncovered a vast cloud of energetic particles—a "mini halo"—surrounding one of the most distant galaxy clusters ever observed, marking a major step forward in understanding the hidden forces that shape the cosmos.
We know black hole mergers occur because we can detect the resulting gravitational waves. But when trying to piece together the history of black hole mergers in the Milky Way, astronomers need another tactic. They need to perform some...
When two stars orbit one another in such a way that one blocks the other's light each time it swings around, that's an eclipsing binary. A new paper from NASA's Eclipsing Binary Patrol citizen science project presents more than 10,000 of...
Disk galaxies, like our own Milky Way galaxy, commonly consist of both a thick and thin disk of stars—each with different features, including stellar population and movement. Three major theoretical scenarios have been proposed to...
The earliest light in the universe has been traveling across space since just after the Big Bang. Known as the cosmic microwave background, it is imperceptible to the human eye. But if scientists can capture it, using some of the most...
An international team of astronomers has employed various satellites and ground-based telescopes to perform multiwavelength observations of a supernova remnant known as SNR J0450.4−7050. Results of the observational campaign, published...
The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years. Astronomers use Andromeda to understand the structure and evolution of our own spiral,...
Detecting exoplanets is one thing, but imaging them is another thing entirely. Astronomers can detect them by the way they block their star's light and by the way they make their stars wobble, and from that they can infer a lot. But...
Imagine printing your Martian home from dust, sunlight, and a bit of biology. A new synthetic lichen system uses fungi and bacteria to grow building materials directly from Martian soil, completely autonomously and without human help.
Using the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, astronomers have performed a chemical study of a globular cluster known as ESO 280-SC06. As a result, they found that ESO 280-SC06 is a tidally disrupted cluster that...
In a recently published paper in Physical Review Letters, scientists propose a comprehensive theoretical framework indicating that gravitational wave signals from black hole mergers are more complex than earlier anticipated.
Lichen from the Mojave Desert has stunned scientists by surviving months of lethal UVC radiation, suggesting life could exist on distant planets orbiting volatile stars. The secret? A microscopic “sunscreen” layer that protects their...
Imagine a star so dense that a teaspoon of its material would weigh as much as Mount Everest, spinning hundreds of times per second while beaming radio waves across the universe. These are pulsars, the collapsed cores of massive stars....
Southwest Research Institute has delivered the novel Compact Dual Ion Composition Experiment (CoDICE) instrument for final integration into NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft. Scheduled to launch in late...
Everything in space—from Earth and the sun to black holes—accounts for just 15% of all matter in the universe. The rest of the cosmos seems to be made of an invisible material astronomers call dark matter.
Chinese astronomers have employed NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe an eclipsing binary of the Algol-type, designated V455 Car. Results of the observational campaign are published in the journal New Astronomy.
Identifying the formation period of planetary systems, such as our solar system, could be the beginning of the journey to discover the origin of life. The key to this is the unique substructures found in protoplanetary disks—the sites of...
A study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics by a researcher from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has provided new insights into the phenomenon of "pulse nulling"—a sudden cessation of the...
Iron is one of the most abundant heavy elements in the universe. Its spectral features stand out in many astronomical spectra, especially in those of stars and galaxies. As a dominant emitter in many X-ray sources, iron ions have been...
If a huge asteroid smashes into the moon in 2032, the gigantic explosion would send debris streaming toward Earth that would threaten satellites and create a spectacular meteor shower, according to researchers.
A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in Australia has found that a mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected last year originated not from a distant source, but from one circling the planet—a...
This portrait from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope puts the nearby galaxy NGC 4449 in the spotlight. The galaxy is situated just 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). It is a member of...
Professional astronomers don't make discoveries by looking through an eyepiece like you might with a backyard telescope. Instead, they collect digital images in massive cameras attached to large telescopes.
NASA will soon launch a one-of-a-kind instrument, called Arcstone, to improve the quality of data from Earth-viewing sensors in orbit. In this technology demonstration, the mission will measure sunlight reflected from the moon— a...
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers from Canada and Switzerland have discovered a new galaxy, which received designation COSMOS2020-635829. The newfound object appears to undergo a ram pressure stripping of gas and...
An international team, led by Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) researcher Ângela Santos, has made the first measurement of the magnetic field of β Hydri, a nearby aged solar analog subgiant star. This result, published...
Scientists are peering into the universe's mysterious Cosmic Dawn using the faint whispers of hydrogen radio waves emitted over 13 billion years ago. These signals, particularly the elusive 21-centimeter signal, offer rare insights into...
A stunning breakthrough in solar physics reveals ultra-fine magnetic structures on the Sun's surface, thanks to the NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope. Researchers captured never-before-seen bright and dark stripes—called striations—within...
Astronomers have uncovered a colossal, searing-hot filament of gas linking four galaxy clusters in the Shapley Supercluster a discovery that could finally solve the mystery of the Universe s missing matter. This giant thread, 10 times...
Astronomers have produced the most detailed map yet of the Sculptor Galaxy, revealing hundreds of previously unseen celestial features in stunning color and resolution. By combining over 50 hours of observations using the European...
Astronomers have identified a new kind of cosmic explosion extreme nuclear transients so powerful they outshine typical supernovae by orders of magnitude and stay bright for years. Triggered when massive stars are torn apart by...
When Apollo astronauts stumbled across shimmering orange beads on the moon, they had no idea they were gazing at ancient relics of violent volcanic activity. These glass spheres, tiny yet mesmerizing, formed billions of years ago during...
For the first time in history, we re seeing the Sun from an angle no one ever has: from above and below its poles. Thanks to the European Space Agency s Solar Orbiter and its tilted orbit, scientists have captured groundbreaking images...
At the heart of our galaxy lies a cosmic puzzle: although the Galactic Center is packed with star-making material, massive stars form there surprisingly slowly. Using NASA's retired SOFIA observatory, scientists captured rare...
A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes scientists from Penn State. The unusual...
Astronomers using ALMA have uncovered how gas and dust in planet-forming disks evolve separately an insight that reshapes our understanding of how different types of planets form. While dust lingers, gas dissipates quickly, narrowing the...
A team of international astronomers has uncovered what may be a gas giant planet forming around a distant young star. Using the powerful Very Large Telescope in Chile, they captured dazzling near-infrared images of a spiral-armed disk,...
Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, could solve a long-standing mystery: why...
An international team of scientists has unveiled the largest and most detailed map of the universe ever created using the James Webb Space Telescope, revealing nearly 800,000 galaxies stretching back to almost the beginning of time. The...
Astronomers have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects are likely to be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this year.
Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would otherwise take decades and billions to pursue.