What Caused Eta Carinae’s 1840 “Great Eruption?”
n 1840, a seemingly innocuous star, Eta Carinae, suddenly brightened to become one of the brightest stars in the sky…
Could Modified Gravity Be the Answer to Planet 9?
As students advance to higher and higher physics courses, they eventually learn that the simple Newtonian dynamics they learned about…
Parker Makes its Closest and Fastest Solar Flyby
The Parker Solar Probe is the little engine that just keeps going and going by the Sun. On September 27th,…
Those Impossibly Massive Early Galaxies Might Just Be Surprisingly Bright
A new series of simulations from Northwestern shows that those impossibly large galaxies were actually just very, very bright!
Can JWST Tell the Difference Between an Exo-Earth and an Exo-Venus?
As of this month, astronomers have discovered 5,506 exoplanets orbiting other stars. That number is growing daily, and astronomers are…
Europa and Enceladus are the Perfect Targets for a Lightsail Mission
There's always a need for new technologies or for novel uses of existing technologies to lower the cost of space…
A Star Threw Off a Sun’s Worth of Material. And Then it Exploded!
What happens just before a massive star explodes as a supernova? To figure that out, astronomers need to look at…
Magnetic Fusion Plasma Engines Could Carry us Across the Solar System and Into Interstellar Space
In a recent paper, Leiden Professor Florian Neukart describes a Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD) that could revolutionize space exploration.
Will Solar Panels Work at Proxima Centauri?
Solar panels are the perfect way to provide electricity for spacecraft operating near the Sun. Spacecraft as far out as…
Arrokoth is Covered in Bizarre Mounds
When New Horizons flew past Arrokoth in 2019, it revealed close-up images of this enigmatic Kuiper Belt Object for the…