Astronomy
The Same Technology Could Search for Microbes in Mars Rocks or Under the ice on Europa
NASA's SHERLOC and WATSON, two spectrometers designed to look for biosignatures, could answer if there's life on Mars on inside…
Gaia Finds 12 Examples of Einstein Crosses; Galaxies Being Gravitationally Lensed so we see Them Repeated 4 Times
After examining data from the Gaia Observatory, a team of researchers found 12 more examples of the rare phenomenon known…
OSIRIS-REx Did One Last Close Flyby of Asteroid Bennu. It’s Almost Time to Come Home
After more than two years in orbit around asteroid Bennu, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is ready to come home. It's bringing…
Jupiter Could Make an Ideal Dark Matter Detector
So, you want to find dark matter, but you don't know where to look? A giant planet might be exactly…
Roman Telescope Could Turn up Over 100,000 Planets Through Microlensing
Recently we reported on a haul of 2,200 new exoplanets from the 2 year primary mission of the Transiting Exoplanet…
Satellites Have Brightened the Skies by About 10% Across the Entire Planet
New research has found that as the number of satellites in Earth orbit continues to increase, their accumulated light pollution…
The Closest Star Cluster to Earth is Being Dismantled in Front of our Eyes
Star clusters are interesting inhabitants of the sky. They vary in sizes, distances, and number of stars, but almost all…
Simulating the Universe a Trillionth of a Second After the Big Bang
The Big Bang remains the best way to explain what happened at the beginning of the Universe. However, the…
Newly Forming Stars Don’t Blast Away Material as Previously Believed. So Why Do They Stop Growing?
We thought we understood how stars are formed. It turns out, we don't. Not completely, anyway. A new study, recently…
A Very Powerful Solar Storm Hit the Earth Back in 1582
"A great fire appeared in the sky to the North, and lasted three nights," wrote a Portuguese scribe in early…