The Sun’s poles have long been a cosmic mystery buried from Earth’s perspective by the simple fact that our planet, along with every other spacecraft, orbits within the equatorial plane. Thanks to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft, however, mankind has now seen the solar south pole in history. Captured in March 2025, ...
A cosmic leviathan stirs across the great, quiet expanse of the early universe. About 12 billion years old, a supermassive black hole has unleashed a jet of energy so strong it defies understanding illuminated not by starlight but by the fading echo of the Big Bang itself. Three times the width of our Milky Way, ...
Astronomers have discovered a cosmic goldmine in the whirling disk of a young star 330 light-years away, rare isotopes of methanol molecules possibly holding the key to the beginnings of life. The discovery of HD 100453, a star hardly a million years old, provides an unparalleled window into the chemical soup that generates planets and ...
At the core of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), a cosmic behemoth is challenging preconceptions. Renowned for being the first black hole ever directly photographed, the supermassive black hole M87 has just exposed another amazing secret: it devours matter even faster and spins at a blistering 80% of the maximum speed in the universe. Using ...
The first time NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has observed a big magnetic burst in the sun’s corona, this event could fundamentally alter our understanding of solar storms and their impact on Earth. Against expectations, the spacecraft “touches” the sun’s atmosphere in daring close passes and finds a great surge of energy flinging high-speed plasma towards ...
When the most influential tech billionaire in the world and the U.S. president square off in a high-stakes game of political brinkmanship, what results? The response appears to compromise America’s supremacy in space. An explosive conflict between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump over a tax bill descended into threats last week that might compromise ...
Cosmologists have believed for a long time that dark energy the mysterious factor that accelerates the expansion of the universe–was a constant, indestructible presence. However, the latest information obtained from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) indicates this is not the situation. Instead, the impact of dark energy may diminish as time passes, a finding ...
Astronomers have been narrating a dramatic tale about the fate of our galaxy for more than a century: the Milky Way is relentlessly on collision with Andromeda, its enormous neighbor. Once judged unavoidable within 4–5 billion years, the cosmic smash-up would destroy spiral galaxies and create a new, shapeless elliptical galaxy known as “Milkomeda.” But ...
Mars’s rust-colored desserts, towering volcanoes, and tantalizing prospect of ancient life have enthralled people for millennia. Benevolent on its surface, though, lurks a far stranger secret rife with rotten eggs. Recent discoveries in science imply that the Martian core is not only an iron and nickel molten ball like that of Earth. Rather, it might ...
Mercury’s moon Scientists have long been enthralled with Europa as one of the most likely locations to find life other than Earth. Now, ground-breaking James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations show that its icy surface is far more dynamic than first thought shifting, cracking, and recrystallizing in a few weeks. These quick changes imply that ...
Esther Evangeline, MSc Zoology
Jen Fitschen, Author, BSc Computer Science and Oceanography
