Astronomy
What are the Odds of Life Emerging on Another Planet?
A new study by Prof. Kipping of Columbia University indicates that extraterrestrial life should be statistically significant, even if intelligent…
Barred Spiral NGC 3895 Captured by Hubble
NGC 3895 is a barred spiral galaxy in the Ursa Major constellation. It's about 145 million light years away from…
New Simulations Show How Black Holes Grow, Through Mergers and Accretion
One of the most pressing questions in astronomy concerns black holes. We know that massive stars that explode as supernovae…
How to See This Friday’s Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
Eclipse season resumes on June 5th, with a fine penumbral lunar eclipse.
Black Hole Seen Blasting Out Jets at Close to the Speed of Light
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has spotted a distant black hole shooting out jets of material, at close to the speed…
Huge Stars Can Destroy Nearby Planetary Disks
Westerlund 2 is a star cluster about 20,000 light years away. It's young—only about one or two million years old—and…
Rare “Ring Galaxy” Seen in the Early Universe
Astronomers have discovered a collisional ring galaxy that existed when the Universe was just 3 billion years old, a find…
Mars Doesn’t Have Much of a Magnetosphere, But Here’s a Map
Even though Earthling scientists are studying Mars intently, it's still a mysterious place. One of the striking things about Mars…
A New Kind of Supernova Explosion has been Discovered: Fast Blue Optical Transients
For the child inside all of us space-enthusiasts, there might be nothing better than discovering a new type of explosion.…
On Mars, mud flows like lava
One of the most striking features on Earth are the curious flows of lava as it cools, forming undulating ropes…