The universe has always held secrets that seem just beyond our reach, but in the past year, NASA’s cutting-edge laboratories across the United States have been working overtime to unlock mysteries that would have been pure science fiction just decades ago. From potential signs of ancient life on Mars to revolutionary discoveries about black holes ...
The universe’s most ancient stars have held their secrets for over 13 billion years, but recent research is forcing astronomers to completely rethink what those earliest celestial beacons were actually like. For decades, scientists believed these primordial giants were uniformly massive monsters that burned bright and died young. Now, cutting-edge computer simulations and unexpected molecular ...
Imagine a mysterious force making up approximately 68% of everything that exists, yet remaining completely invisible and impossible to directly detect. This isn’t science fiction – it’s one of the greatest puzzles in modern physics, a cosmic enigma that’s keeping scientists awake at night and challenging everything we thought we knew about the universe. Dark ...
In the space of a heartbeat, a radio telescope can catch a shout from billions of light-years away – and then silence. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are among astronomy’s most electrifying puzzles: millisecond flashes that can outshine entire galaxies in radio light before vanishing again. Each new detection deepens the intrigue, sketching a ...
For centuries, humanity gazed upward, believing it understood the grand mechanics of the cosmos. But in the past few years, discoveries from distant galaxies, dying stars, and even the edges of our solar system have turned those beliefs upside down. From black holes that shouldn’t exist to planets where life might thrive in unimaginable conditions, ...
The last few years have been a blur of jaw-dropping space science, the kind that forces you to rewrite old notes and scrap comfortable assumptions. Telescopes peered deeper, probes flew braver, and data sets quietly whispered new truths about the cosmos. As a science journalist, I’ve watched seasoned researchers blink in surprise as theories bent ...
The extraordinary features of a rapidly moving celestial object are scintillating astronomers’ interest. Upon initial discovery, A11pl3Z was given a name but recently NASA has confirmed it as 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object out of four comets or asteroids discovered. Unlike the comets or asteroids which are bound to the sun’s asteroid belt and viewable ...
Jupiter-sized exoplanets which emerge as a proxy for accelerating self-sabotage by instigating tremendous outbursts from their parent stars seem as violations to the conventional structure of planetary systems; astronomers have identified such a diabolic planet, HIP 67522 b. Located within its parent star’s magnetic field, HIP 67522 b’s orbital position subjects it to flare beams ...
Behind clouds of interstellar dust, a cosmic drama is playing out deep in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon. The Chamaeleon I dark cloud is one of the closest places to Earth where stars are born. It is only 550 light-years away. In this “stellar nursery,” newborn stars break through the darkness and light up huge ...
For most of human history, the night sky has been a place where stars, planets, and faraway galaxies can be seen. But what was there before the first stars came to life? Was the universe full of light when it was young, or was it a dark void? The answer is much more interesting than ...
