The Milky Way's Black Hole is Spinning as Fast as it Can
Is the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way (SagA*) spinning? And how fast? It's tricky to…
JWST Confirms the Formation of Heavy Elements in a Kilonova
A recent study published in Nature investigates recent observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ground-based telescopes of…
What a Mess. When the Milky Way and Andromeda Merge, it'll Look Like This
No need to panic, but the Andromeda Galaxy is barreling towards us. It is due to begin merging with the…
JWST Takes a Detailed Look at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede
Nature doesn't conform to our ideas of neatly-contained categories. Many things in nature blur the lines we try to draw…
Mars Still Has Liquid Rock Near its Core
Why doesn’t Mars have a magnetic field? If it did, the planet would be protected from cosmic radiation and charged…
An Exo-Neptune Beat the Odds and Kept its Atmosphere
As planet-hunting scientists find more and more planets, they've encountered some puzzles. One of them concerns the lack of Neptune-size…
What’s Inside the Carina Pillars? Massive Protostars and Newly-Forming Planets!
Star-forming nebulae are busy places. Unfortunately, clouds of gas and dust usually hide the action. To cut through the dust…
Io has 266 Active Volcanic Hotspots Linked by a Global Magma Ocean
Jupiter's Io stands apart from the Solar System's other moons, with its numerous volcanoes and its surface dominated by lava…
After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos?
NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) slammed into asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, changing its orbital period. Ground and…
This Photonic Crystal Bends Light Like a Black Hole
One of the first observational tests of general relativity was that the path of light bends in the presence of…