Universe Today
Astronomers Find a 3 Million Year Old Planet
There was Hot Water on Mars 4.45 Billion Years Ago
Mars formed 4.5 billion years ago, roughly the same time as the Earth. We know that water was stable on Earth since about 4.3 billion years ago, but when was it present on Mars? Researchers investigated a meteorite that originated from Mars and found zircon crystals that date back to 4.45 billion years ago. They believe this could be the oldest evidence for water on Mars. And not just water, but hot water welling up from hydrothermal systems beneath the surface.
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Axion Dark Matter May Make Spacetime Ring
Earth's Old Trees Keep A Record of Powerful Solar Storms
New Supercomputer Simulation Explains How Mars Got Its Moons
One mystery in planetary science is a satisfying origin story for Mars's moons, Phobos and Deimos. Were they chunks of Mars blasted into space by a meteor impact? Were they captured asteroids from the belt? A new supercomputer simulation found that a reasonable explanation could come from a massive asteroid passing just close enough to Mars that it was torn into pieces. Over time, chunks and debris would have settled into a disk around Mars and clumped into moons.
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The Early Universe May Have Had Giant Batteries of Dust
The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way
Here's What We Know About Earth's Temporary Mini-Moon
New Study Suggests Black Holes Get their "Hair" from their Mothers
Gaze at New Pictures of the Sun from Solar Orbiter
Here's How to Weigh Gigantic Filaments of Dark Matter
How Could Astronauts Call for Help from the Moon?
There Was a 15 Minute Warning Before Tonga Volcano Exploded
Main Sequence and White Dwarf Binaries are Hiding in Plain Sight
What a Misplaced Meteorite Told Us About Mars
Uranus is Getting Colder and Now We Know Why
How Scientists Repurposed a Camera on ESA's Mars Express Mission
SpIRIT CubeSat Demonstrates a Operational Gamma and X-Ray Detector
Sun-Like Stars Around Black Holes: What Gives?
Starship's Booster (and Donald Trump) Make a Splash With Sixth Flight Test
The Strange Pulsar at the Center of the Crab Nebula
The Biggest Black Holes May Start From The Tiniest Seeds
China's Proposed Cargo Shuttle, the Haolong, Has Entered Development
Up to a Third of Stars Ate Some of their Planets
The Large Magellanic Cloud Survived its Closest Approach to the Milky Way
The Large Magellanic Cloud is the closest, brightest dwarf galaxy to the Milky Way—20 times bigger than the full Moon in the sky. Astronomers think that the LMC just completed its closest approach to the Milky Way, blowing away the spherical halo of gas surrounding it. Smaller galaxies would have shut down star formation, but the LMC has enough material to keep forming stars. New observations from Hubble have helped astronomers measure its halo structure.
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The New Mars Landing Approach: How We'll Land Large Payloads on the Red Planet
Three More "Galactic Monster" Ultra-Massive Galaxies Found
James Webb Confirms Hubble's Calculation of Hubble's Constant
What Should Light Sails Be Made Out Of?
A Giant Meteorite Impact 3.26 Billion Years Ago Helped Push Life Forward
America's Particle Physics Plan Spans the Globe — and the Cosmos
Millions of Phones Could Map the Earth's Ionosphere
Detecting Primordial Black Hole Mergers Might be Within Our Grasp
One explanation for dark matter is that it's made out of primordial black holes, formed in the earliest moments of the universe. Although they've never been seen directly, asteroid-mass black holes could account for all the dark matter influence. It's believed that these low-mass black holes would be undetectable as they merged, releasing gravitational waves. But according to a new paper, if the conditions are ideal, there are instruments that might detect these mergers.
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What's Behind the Martian Methane Mystery?
Scientists Develop Technique to Create 3D Models of Cosmic Structures
The Best Way to Find Planet Nine Might Be Hundreds of Tiny Telescopes
Although the outer Solar System is mostly empty, there are icy objects drifting within the very limits of detection by our largest telescopes. But maybe small telescopes can be more successful. A new paper suggests that an array of 200 automated 40-cm telescopes spread across 1,000 km could be the best way to find them. They would watch for changes in brightness as objects pass in front of stars and could even find the hypothetical Planet Nine.
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It Takes Very Special Conditions to Create This Bizarre Stellar Spectacle
A New Look a the Most Ancient Light in the Universe
About 370,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe had cooled down so light could escape, traveling for billions of years to reach our telescopes. This is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, and the very last light released is known as "last scattering," when reflected, polarized light was released. New observations from the South Pole Telescope have completed a comprehensive survey of this polarized light, revealing more about the Universe's earliest history.
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Space Tourism: The Good, The Bad, The Meh
New Study Examines Cosmic Expansion, Leading to a New Drake Equation
Pentagon's Latest UFO Report Identifies Hotspots for Sightings
A New Way to Detect Daisy Worlds
Two Supermassive Black Holes on the Verge of a Merger
Researchers have been keeping an eye on the center of a galaxy located about a billion light-years away. Every few months, the galaxy center releases a flash of X-rays, which appears to be coming from a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting one another. They're only about a light-day apart and contain a combined 40 million solar masses. They take 130 days to orbit and are expected to collide in about 70,000 years.
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Interferometry Will Be the Key to Resolving Exoplanets
A New Mission To Pluto Could Answer the Questions Raised by New Horizons
Astronomers Map the Shape of a Black Hole's Corona for the First Time
The Sun is surrounded by the corona, a region of superheated gas above the surface that can be millions of degrees. Black holes have them too, but they can be billions of degrees. Astronomers have used NASA's IPXE mission to map the shape of a black hole corona for the first time. They found the corona matches the shape of the accretion disk feeding material into the black hole, and not a giant sphere that surrounds the region.
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Yes, Virginia, The Universe is Still Making Galaxies
Our Breathtaking Cosmos: New Zealand Astrophotography Winners Announced
Why are Some Quasars So Lonely?
Congressional Hearing Fuels Fresh Debate About UFOs
