Space

It turns out that our galaxy looks the way it does today thanks to a run-in with something called the ‘Gaia Sausage’. As greasy as space is, we’re not talking cosmic processed foods here. Rather, astronomers have found signs that a small galaxy smashed into the Milky Way billions of years ago, leaving behind a

All the planets in the Solar System are more or less oriented the same as the Sun, with North and South pointed in the same direction. Not Uranus though. The blue planet’s north-south axis is tilted 98 degrees from the Sun’s orbital plane – it’s practically orbiting lying down. It’s so weird that there’s no

For the very first time, astronomers have captured an image of a baby planet as it carves a path through the disc of dust that surrounds its star, an orange dwarf 113.4 parsecs (370 light-years) away from Earth. The star is called PDS 70, and astronomers have long suspected the existence of the planet in

Although rocket launches can look effortless and even glamorous, launching things into space is a risky business. And occasionally, it all can go very, very wrong. A Japanese start-up company learnt this the hard way on June 30, when its rocket MOMO-2 spectacularly crashed back to Earth after spending only a few moments off the launch

Two exoplanets thought to be similar to Earth apparently are, at least when it comes to climate, researc†Kepler-186f is the first identified Earth-sized planet outside the solar system orbiting a star in the habitable zone. This means it’s the proper distance from its host star for liquid water to pool on the surface. The study,

Our atmosphere, proximity to the Sun, and countless other beautiful coincidences not only permit living things to survive and evolve but also thrive.  And yet, here we are, sitting at desks and in coffee shops and walking down the street like it isn’t some kind of extraordinary miracle. But all good things must come to an

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are getting ready to make room for 20 new rodent roommates. On Friday morning, a SpaceX Dragon spaceship blasted off from Florida carrying the mice. The rodent crew is expected to arrive at the ISS on Monday. Their record-breaking journey – this is the longest mice will be off the planet –

If we’re going to head out into interstellar space one day, we might want to go equipped with some heavy-duty degreaser. New research has found that the vast intervals of space aren’t always filled with dry dust, but often contain a mist of greasy molecules. And there’s a lot of space grease out there. The

The first known interstellar visitor to our Solar System, ‘Oumuamua, which buzzed past the Sun last September, has proven evasive to define. First it was a comet. Then it was an asteroid. Then it was maybe both. Now a new team of researchers led by the European Space Agency has delivered their verdict: ‘Oumuamua, according

The plumes of salty water shooting out of Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus have just ponied up one of the most significant ingredients for habitability: large organic molecules rich in carbon. It’s a discovery that suggests a thin, organic rich film atop the oceanic water table – very similar to the sea surface microlayer here on

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has long proselytized for the cause of interplanetary colonization. If Earth gets whacked by a giant space rock, a cataclysmic solar storm cripples human electronics, or we cleanse ourselves from the planet in nuclear fire (accidentally or otherwise), it could help to have a backup civilisation on a world

Ordinary matter may only make up 5 percent of the mass of the Universe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know where it all is. In fact, for 20 years, astronomers have been trying to figure out why there isn’t as much as there should be. Now an international team has put their heads together

A mysterious cataclysm in a neighboring galaxy was spotted in the sky above Hawaii last week, sending astronomers around the world scrambling to understand the source of the staggeringly brilliant flash. “I’ve never seen anything like this before in the local universe,” said Stephen Smartt, an astrophysicist at Queen’s University Belfast and a lead scientist

Several Russian cities had a fantastic light show last Thursday, as a bright meteor burst into a fireball over the landscape. And once again, no one saw it coming until it exploded. NASA’s fireball records show that the meteor exploded with 2.8 kilotons of force on June 21 at 01:16 UTC over a number of

July is shaping up to be an excellent month for astronomy fans. Overnight on July 27 and 28, skywatchers in the Eastern Hemisphere will be treated to the longest lunar eclipse set to occur in the 21st century, EarthSky reports. Astronomers expect the total eclipse to last for a full 1 hour and 43 minutes,

Former Microsoft executive, entrepreneur, and physics PhD Nathan Myhrvold is making some big claims: a lot of the data NASA has on distant asteroids is wrong. And those errors are standing in the way of serious asteroid science. Myhrvold’s claims first gained prominence a couple of years ago, but he is now back in the spotlight

Since the 1990s, astrophysicists have known that for the past few billion years, the Universe has been experiencing an accelerated rate of expansion. This gave rise to the theory that the Universe is permeated by a mysterious invisible energy known as ‘dark energy’, which acts against gravity and is pushing the cosmos apart. In time,

NASA’s 15-year-old Opportunity rover has had a rough couple of weeks on Mars. Back on May 30, a pretty big dust storm was spotted on the Martian surface, and Opportunity was right in its path. Since then, it’s only gotten bigger. On June 12, it had reached 35 million square kilometres (14 million square miles),

Black holes don’t just sit there munching away constantly on the space around them. Eventually they run out of nearby matter and go quiet, lying in wait until a stray bit of gas passes by. Then a black hole devours again, belching out a giant jet of particles. And earlier this year scientists announced they’d

The Fermi Paradox remains a stumbling block when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Named in honor of the famed physicist Enrico Fermi who first proposed it, this paradox addresses the apparent disparity between the expected probability that intelligent life is plentiful in the Universe, and the apparent lack of evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence

Those who enjoy sky gazing are most likely aware that Mars will soon come the closest to Earth that it’s been in 15 years. But that’s not all – as of June 28 the planet will go into ‘retrograde’ and appear to zig zag across our sky. Here’s what that means. Throughout the year, the Red

We don’t actually have a lot to be afraid of when it comes to asteroids. Sure, they might come pretty close from time to time, but they tend to buzz harmlessly by – after all, Earth is a pretty tiny target in the vastness of space. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared, though –

During the 1930s, astronomers came to realize that the Universe is in a state of expansion. By the 1990s, they realized that the rate at which it is expansion is accelerating, giving rise to the theory of “Dark Energy”. Because of this, it is estimated that in the next 100 billion years, all stars within

The curvature of empty space caused by an entire galaxy has now been pinned down with unprecedented precision, demonstrating Einstein’s theory of general relativity still rules on a super-sized scale. Not that anybody is seriously surprised. But on the off chance the results had failed to meet expectations, they might have provided insight into some

A stunning new photo of the Milky Way came about because of a flea-market purchase, a late night on a Chilean mountain range, and a dash of inspiration. The photo, taken by astronomer Juan Carlos Muñoz-Mateos, shows our home galaxy projected backward and upside-down through a crystal ball. Muñoz-Mateos focused his camera’s lens on the

It’s a strange and lucky irony that the worst solar storm in recorded history happened at a time when human civilisation wasn’t yet uniquely vulnerable to the Sun’s inescapable geomagnetic fury. The Carrington Event – aka the solar storm of 1859 – saw a huge solar coronal mass ejection unleashed at Earth’s protective magnetosphere, producing

Almost all the large vertebrates on Earth suddenly went extinct 66 million years ago – including dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. A city-size asteroid or comet is thought to be responsible for that mass extinction. The impact, called the Chicxulub event, triggered global cooling and volcanic eruptions that transformed Earth. In the 1980s, Richard Muller,

Astronomers have spotted what they think is a super-rare cosmic phenomenon: a type of medium-weight black hole proven so elusive that researchers thought it might not exist at all. There are a few different black hole size categories out there in the Universe. There are the stellar-mass black holes. Those are the ones whose collisions

Chris Hadfield, most widely known for his zero-gravity guitar-playing, has seen an impressive amount of space travel. Between his first spaceflight in 1995, his second in 2001, and a third in 2013, Hadfield has flown inside NASA space shuttles, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. Hadfield, who’s now retired, shares his expertise

A mysteriously fluctuating bulge observed in the atmosphere of Venus now has a more concrete explanation. According to a newly published study, the planet’s enormous mountain ranges are to blame for a massive gravity wave. Venus is often called Earth’s sister planet because of the similarities between the two. If it’s a twin, though, it’s

Mars will look brighter in the night sky over the next six weeks than it has appeared in 15 years. That’s because the red planet will be at its closest point to Earth since 2003 throughout June and July, as our planet passes between Mars and the Sun. On July 31, when Mars will be

In 2006, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) established orbit around the Red Planet. Using an advanced suite of scientific instruments – which include cameras, spectrometers, and radar – this spacecraft has been analyzing landforms, geology, minerals and ice on Mars for years and assisting with other missions. While the mission was only meant to last

A lunar meteorite, discovered in the desert of northwest Africa, holds strong evidence that there is an abundant supply of water on the Moon – maybe even enough for a future colony. Examining the meteorite, scientists from Tohoku University have determined that the other-worldly rock is made up of moganite, a mineral that requires water

As a Chinese microsatellite called Longjiang-2 slipped into orbit around the moon last month, the spacecraft looked back at Earth and snapped its first test photos. One of those images shows our blue-marble planet hanging in the void of space beyond the Moon. The images were taken on May 28 using an on-board camera funded

When a black hole tears apart a star, not all of it ends up sucked into oblivion. Some of the material gets to be blasted out in a spectacular jet – and now, for the first time, we have direct images of one of those jets forming and expanding. The event took place in a

When it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) in the Universe, there is the complicated matter of what to be on the lookout for. Beyond the age-old question of whether or not intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe (statistically speaking, it is very likely that it does), there’s also the question of

Mars is not a friendly place to be right now, especially if you’re an aging solar-powered rover. NASA says a global dust storm is forming. The storm is now about 10 billion acres in size, which is enough to cover North America and Russia, or more than one-quarter of Mars. Some regions of the Martian

In 1935, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen hypothesised the existence of wormholes – a sort of “bridge” connecting two regions of space, due to extreme gravitational warping of spacetime. The concept is theoretical, and wormholes are yet to be detected. But according to a new paper, those gravitational waves we’ve detected from colliding black holes?

Mars is currently being blasted with a dust storm the likes of which we’ve rarely seen. And at 1:30 pm EDT (5:30 pm UTC) this Wednesday, NASA will let us know just how this weather event will affect their ongoing operations. A week ago the storm was 18 million square kilometres (7 million square miles)

It was a Saturday, and Laura Murray was a 10-year-old girl hanging out with her nanny outside her family’s Cincinnati townhouse. Her mother, giddy with excitement, handed the little girl a small glass vial filled with light-gray dust. It was from the Moon, her mother told her. Along with it was a handwritten note: “To

Particles collected from Earth’s upper atmosphere, originally deposited by comets, are older than our Solar System, scientists say – and these fine bits of interstellar dust could teach us about how planets and stars form from the very beginning. These cosmic particles have lived through at least 4.6 billion years and travelled across incredible distances,

The source of a mysterious microwave glow detected across our galaxy eluded astronomers for decades. But now a crack team has finally pinpointed the source: nanoscopic particles of crystalline carbon, otherwise known as diamond dust. There are several environments across the Milky Way that produce a faint glow known as anomalous microwave emission (AME). Scientists

NASA has suspended science operations on its brave little Mars rover, Opportunity, as a huge dust storm rages over its location in the planet’s Perseverance Valley. First detected by NASA on June 1, the storm has worsened over the weekend, the intense dust darkening the sky over Mars and leaving Opportunity in the dark. And

In an exciting first, Indian scientists have discovered a sub-Saturn exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star around 600 light-years away. The planet has been named EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b and it’s big – around 27 times more massive than Earth. The find sees India join a small group of countries to have confirmed a planet outside our

During the 1970s, astronomer became aware of a massive radio source at the center of our galaxy that they later realized was a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) – which has since been named Sagittarius A*. And in a recent survey conducted by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers discovered evidence for hundreds or even thousands of black holes located in

Between 1971 and 1977, Apollo scientists conducting experiments on the Moon discovered that the surface of our li’l satellite buddy got mysteriously warmer. But the data from 1974 onwards went missing, and the strange warming phenomenon remained an enigma. Now a team of researchers from Texas Tech University has found and restored that data –

The search is heating up for a planet beyond Pluto – not just over the evidence, but also over the hypothetical world’s name. No one knows for sure if there really is a missing planet out there, since astronomers have yet to identify it in telescope images. However, they keep turning up indirect evidence that

For years, NASA’s Curiosity rover has patiently gathered samples on the surface of Mars. Today, scientists are announcing they’ve discovered conclusive evidence that several organic compounds are indeed found on the Red Planet. On top of that, after keeping close tabs on methane levels in the Martian atmosphere, scientists have finally confirmed something weird is