Astronomers Catch Black Hole Spewing Matter After Feeding

Black holes are some of the most awe-inspiring and mysterious celestial objects in the universe. This is primarily because astronomers still don’t understand the underlying mechanisms that drive black holes, including its formation, evolution, and end. As their name implies, black holes can’t be viewed directly since they blend into the background of the vastness of space. Therefore, astronomers are limited to “seeing” black holes when they consume other celestial objects, most notably stars. When this happens, the astronomers see the light from the star being violently consumed by a nearby black hole in a spectacular display. However, astronomers are still puzzled regarding what happens after the consumption.

Quantum Physicist Takes Aim at the Universe's Mysterious Arrow of Time

Scientists and philosophers have argued over the nature of time since … well, since time immemorial. Is time real, or is it a convenient illusion? Why does time seem to flow in just one direction? In a new book called “On Time,” British physicist Jim Al-Khalili lays out what he thinks is the answer to such questions.

Martian Astronomy: Percy Sees a ‘Phobos Eclipse’ From Mars

Sure. It’s just another image of Phobos crossing the disk of the Sun, as seen from the surface of Mars. Like so much of the modern space era, these images, once amazing, are now almost routine. But there’s some real science behind tasking the Mars rovers to conduct a little ‘Martian astronomy.’

ESA JUICE probe targets dark Jovian moon Kallichore in 2031

The planet Jupiter hosts more than 100 moons with the majority of attention going to the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This is primarily due to their active geology, including Io being the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system and Europa having a vast subsurface liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust. However, Jupiter’s smaller and lesser-known moons could provide astronomers key insights into the history of the solar system since they’ve remained largely unchanged, unlike the Galilean moons.

Gardening the Moon's Cosmic Archives

When a meteoroid hits the Moon's surface, it does more than just dig up a little dirt. It actually excavates a little bit of cosmic history that recorded a long-ago supernova explosion. Scientists at the University of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology have come up with a way to decode that history and learn something about such energetic events in the Universe.

Roman Rises! Five Things to Know About NASA's New Space Telescope

NASA's newest eye on the sky, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has begun its journey to unravel the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and Earthlike planets — months ahead of schedule.

Ancient Dust Grains Hold Magnetic Clues to the Sun's Birth

Those little dust grains that fall to Earth during meteor showers or end up as part of larger meteorites found on Earth may hold surprising clues to the formation of the Sun. That's because they record the state of the magnetic field in the protostellar nebula from which Earth (and ultimately the planets) formed.

NASA Announces Next Steps for Swift Rescue Mission

Due to an ongoing commercial spacecraft attitude control issue, NASA and Katalyst Space announced Wednesday the LINK spacecraft will attempt to conduct rendezvous and proximity operations with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to demonstrate key capabilities for the future of space exploration.

Measuring the Mass of the Universe Isn't As Simple as Astronomers Thought

How do scientists know the mass of the Universe? Measuring it has traditionally relied on knowing how many stars there are in galaxies, as well as clouds of gas and dust, and associated dark matter. Astronomers generally use the mass of the brightest stars to estimate the mass of an entire galaxy. That means the rest of a galaxy's stars and its dark matter are essentially invisible. For decades, astronomers estimated the number of small, unseen stars in clusters and galaxies using a mathematical rule that assumed stars formed in roughly the same mass proportions everywhere in the Universe. That tool is called the initial mass function (IMF). It describes how many stars of each size there are in a given cluster or galaxy. However, there are challenges with the way it's currently applied because of assumptions it contains.

Interstellar Travel V: Warp Drives, Wormholes, and Halo Drives

In our fifth installment, we explore the most exotic proposals for interstellar travel, including the Alcubierre Warp Metric, wormhole travel, the Halo Drive, and other truly advanced concepts.

Spaceflight Leaves Heart Muscle Cell Strength Intact

Since the dawn of human space exploration, astronauts, scientists, and engineers have examined the short- and long-term effects of microgravity (often mistakenly called zero-gravity) on the human body. This includes the distribution of fluids to the upper body (called “puffy face”), an increase in height from the spine slightly extending, how solar and cosmic radiation impacts humans at the genetic level, and skeletal and muscle loss. However, arguably all these aspects pale in comparison to how the microgravity from spaceflight impacts the heart, and specifically heart muscle cells.

Astronaut Microbes Might Survive at Moon's Pole, NASA Warns

One of the primary objectives of space exploration that often gets overlooked is the intense effort that goes into ensuring Earth microbes don’t contaminate planetary objects, also called forward contamination. This is done to prevent contaminating any potential life that might be present could get killed off my Earth microbes and scientists don’t want to make false discoveries. While space radiation and extreme temperatures often kill off any pesky microbes that hitch a ride on spacecraft, there remains a longstanding knowledge gap regarding whether microbes could survive the lunar polar regions due to its deep craters and varying topography.

Some Comets are Naked, and One Just Got Caught Photo-Bombing

Japanese researchers got lucky when a comet they wanted to study was found photo-bombing archival images from Japan's Subaru Telescope. The Subaru, with its 8.2 meter mirror, happened to image comet 28P/Neujmin from just the right angle to accurately characterize its surface. Their work is part of the ongoing effort to understand comets and asteroids, why some of them share properties, and what that means for their formation and evolution as Solar System objects.

Why Astronauts' Lower Eyelids "Let Go" in Space

A new study identifies possible mechanisms behind changes in astronauts' lower eyelids, a symptom associated with long periods in space that can affect their eyesight.

Theory-Defying Exoplanet Atmospheres Force a Rethink of Theories

The discovery of lava worlds with atmospheres is challenging our theories of how atmospheres escape, and calling into question the idea of the cosmic shoreline. Stanford researchers have developed a model that explains how lava-covered worlds close to their stars can retain their atmospheres. The new theory could inform the search for life beyond our Solar System.

NASA’s Webb Telescope Rules Out Two New Dyson Sphere Candidates

Recent searches for the technosignatures of hypothetical Dyson Spheres again turn up empty.

AI Spots Hidden Solar Storm Signs 9 Hours Early

When we think of weather forecasts, we instinctively think of weather on Earth like rain or shine. However, we rarely consider weather forecasts from outside of the Earth, also called space weather. While space weather often results in the awe-inspiring aurora located at the northern and southern latitudes, we often forget the negative impacts of space weather on our everyday lives. This includes potential disruption of communication satellites or ground stations. The primary conundrum that has eluded researchers is being able to forecast incoming space weather so we can better prepare for its impact.

Scientists Melted A Diamond and Cracked a Secret of Ice Giants

Some of the strangest weather in the solar system doesn’t happen on Earth, or even Jupiter’s Great Red Spot - it happens in the interior of the Ice Giants like Neptune and Uranus. Specifically, scientists have long believed that, at certain pressure and temperatures, it literally rains diamonds inside of these planets. And for the first time, scientists have mimicked the process they believe creates that. A new paper by physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), published in Nature Physics, resolves a 20 year old scientific mystery, and shows how the same physics that makes it rain diamonds inside Neptune could also help us triple our fusion energy output.

A Greenland Glacier Loses Another Chunk of Ice

The ESA's Sentinel satellites captured a 76 sq. km. chunk of ice breaking off from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. They watched the cracks and deformations happen in real time leading up to the calving. While calving is normal, it's happening more often, and this is another clear sign that the Arctic is rapidly changing due to the warming climate.

New Simulations Show How Galactic Centers Grow Together

Using a state-of-the-art galaxy simulation, a team led by scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) gained new insights into the processes shaping galactic centres across the Universe and the formation history of the Milky Way.

Surface Chemistry Shows Which Massive Stars Have Gained Mass from Binary Companions

Most stars, including massive ones, are in binary pairs. Astronomers think that about 70% of them have gained mass from their companions, but there's been no way to determine which ones have done so. Now, researchers have found a way.

A Distant Stream of Stars May Offer New Clues to Dark Matter

Dark matter continues to challenge astronomers as they work to solve the mystery of this so-far-unseen material that permeates the Universe. It's not that the stuff doesn't exist. It does, but we just can't see it. The only way it can be detected is by its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. A team of researchers led by University of Copenhagen PhD student Julie Kiel Holm has found a stream of stars stretching out more than 3,000 light-years from a globular cluster that appears to have been shaped by dark matter in a distant galaxy.

Comet 220P McNaught Puts On An Encore Performance

It has been a busy month for astronomy. In the midst of an eclipse season bookended by the total solar eclipse on August 12th and the deep partial lunar eclipse coming right up this week on August 28th, an outbound comet hanging high in the dawn sky just refuses to die: 220P/McNaught.

Can We Steal Energy from Black Holes? Part 1: Leveling Up Spacetime

Roger Penrose found a way to extract energy from a spinning black hole without breaking any laws of physics. To understand it, we first have to level up our picture of spacetime, from Newton's empty stage to a swirling, draggable fabric.

NASA Starshade Would Enable Astronomers To Directly Image Rocky Exoworlds

Innovative NASA-funded orbital starshade could help capture first direct images from extrasolar earths.

Astronomers Use Rare Ultra-Magnetic Star to Crack a Quantum Mystery

An international team observed a magnetar known as 1E 1547.0–5408 using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), leading to what could be the first detection of vacuum birefringence taking place in the magnetar’s ultra-strong magnetic field. These findings could potentially resolve a long-standing mystery quantum mechanics.

NASA Highlights Next-Gen Cargo Landers Paving the Way for a Moon Base

NASA and its commercial partners are making progress on their way to a permanent human presence on the Moon. As part of that, a recent press release and accompanying YouTube video hints they may be looking to provide regular updates to the progress of those efforts - and, at least for this first one, that progress looks pretty good.

White Dwarf-Red Dwarf Binaries Power Cosmic Lasers

Researchers have helped unravel the mystery of why certain pairs of stars pulse with regular, long-period bursts of radio waves. The particular class of objects they observed come in pairs that always include a compact dead star, called a white dwarf, locked in orbit with an M dwarf, a red star smaller than our Sun.

Dry Martian Meteorite Reveals Early Water in Mars's Crust

Billions of years ago, Mars was hypothesized to have been a habitable world with flowing liquid water and the potential for life. But directly studying its ancient past is currently limited to orbiters and rovers, as scientists have yet to obtain direct samples from Mars. However, meteorites have been found on Earth to have potentially originated from Mars during large impacts that flung chunks of the Red Planet into space, eventually being grabbed by Earth’s gravity and crashing into the Earth’s surface.

The CosmoQuest Satellite Will Listen to the Early Universe From the Far Side of the Moon

A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: what happened in the roughly 150 million years of cosmic dark ages, before the universe’s first stars appeared?

Strange Signals Called Long-period Radio Transits Come From Cataclysmic Variables

Long-period Radio Transients are sources that emit repeating radio and x-ray signals. The signals are polarized and coherent, and are similar to pulsars in some respects. But the type of astrophysical object responsible for them has been vigorously debated. New research says that at least one of them comes from a cataclysmic variable, a binary star where a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbit closely.

New Solar System Models Show Earth Is No Fluke

Astrobiologists use new starting points to produce ‘organic’ models of our solar system’s formation.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, With Some Help From a Korean Spacecraft

A SpaceX Falcon upper stage crashed into the Moon on August 5th. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured images of the crash site from different viewing angles and with different sunlight angles. The images showed that the crater is about 18 meters wide and about 3 meters deep. SpaceX says the crash was an accident.

Mars's Funky Moon Deimos was Shaped by an Impact

Mars' moon Deimos has a large crater on its southern pole. It's also covered by a layer of regolith so deep it buries many other, smaller craters. New research shows that an impact is responsible for both, and that the moon is rather fragile and porous, like a rubble pile asteroid.

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 4: Looking For Us

Some signs of an alien civilization are easier to spot than signs of life itself. On technosignatures, from CFCs and industrial gases to the pandemic dip in pollution, and why Earth's most detectable moment might be right now.

Webb Captures the Treasure Chest at the Heart of the Carina Nebula

This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

Pluto Planetary Science is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Something's wetting the surface of dwarf planet Pluto along the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia, and planetary scientists have found a good explanation for it. A recent study of new Horizons images taken during the 2015 flyby revealed evidence that liquid nitrogen is rising up through cracks in Sputnik Planitia. That's the giant heart-shaped glacial basin we see in all the Pluto images taken by the spacecraft.

The Fastest Star in the Milky Way Will Test Relativity

Astronomers have discovered another S star, the population of stars that orbits the Milky Way's SMBH. This one is the fastest of them all, and also comes closest to the SMBH. It will let astronomers test relativity, especially the Lense-Thirring effect.

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 3: Reading the Face of a Planet

A single pixel of light holds astonishing detail. How ocean glint, rotational mapping, and the vegetation red edge let us read a distant planet's oceans, continents, and even forests, all without ever resolving it as more than a point.

Life On Earth May Have Had A Cold Start

Nitrous oxide (otherwise known as laughing gas) is likely a key atmospheric component of life in the cosmos.

Even Near a Supermassive Black Hole, Stars Enrich the Interstellar Medium

Astronomers know that evolved AGB stars shed their outer layers, contributing to the makeup of the interstellar medium. But new JWST observations show this can happen even near a supermassive black hole, where powerful radiation could obliterate molecules.

Astronomers Finally See the Twisted Magnetic Fields That Drive Protostar Jets

For decades, scientists have theorized that young protostar jets are shaped and driven by complex, twisted magnetic fields. But they couldn't detect them. Now, thanks to ALMA, they've found them around a young binary protostar.

Massive Exoplanets Could Form Around Supermassive Black Holes

Black holes aren't just engines of inexorable destruction. They're complex regions of space and time, and under the right conditions, giant planets can form in their AGN disks.

NASA's SkyFall Mars Helicopters Will Feature a Revolutionary Antenna Design

Engineers developed a unique fabric-based design for a ground-penetrating radar that will be a key instrument on NASA’s SkyFall Mars helicopters. The hardware will enable the SkyFall mission’s trio of planetary rotorcraft to use ground-penetrating radar to study the Martian subsurface.

The JWST Little Red Dots Could Be 'Black Hole Stars'

Little red dots have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in JWST data from the Universe’s deep past. Their ‘powering engines’ might resemble a newly discovered phenomenon dubbed a “black hole star”—an early, rapidly growing black hole wrapped in dense gas. This object, described in a study published today in Nature by researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and international collaborators, may help explain how billion-solar-mass black holes formed so soon after the Big Bang.

Nuking An Asteroid on Short Notice Could Save Us

Readers of a certain age will remember a golden area of asteroid films, capstoned by two with very different endings. Deep Impact engrained the devastating consequences of letting a large piece of rock hit our planet, whereas Armageddon, though arguably the more kitschy of the two films, was an uplifting story about technical ingenuity and sacrifice. And now, the central crux of that movie’s storyline - essentially blasting an asteroid with a nuclear detonation - is taking center stage as our last line of defense against a potential Deep Impact scenario. A new paper from researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, and published in Space: Science & Technology, describes two potential scenarios examining how we might actually be able to nuke a space rock - and whether it would actually save us.

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 1: The Atmospheric Fingerprint

If an alien civilization could see Earth only as a single pale blue dot, what could they learn? We start with transit spectroscopy, the biosignature cocktail of oxygen, methane, ozone, and water, and why even the James Webb will struggle to find life.

The Planet That Lied About Its Own Spin

A new study warns that astronomers measuring the rotation of distant exoplanets may often be measuring atmospheric winds instead, since the clouds of Venus circle the planet roughly 60 times faster than Venus itself actually spins. Kane proposes using multi-wavelength observations to correct for this, work that will matter enormously once the European Space Agency's PLATO mission launches in 2027 and, researchers predict, discovers several hundred Venus like exoplanets.

The Sun Doesn't Care About Your Flight Schedule

New research shows that extreme space weather can significantly raise radiation exposure on commercial flights and increase electronic faults in aircraft systems. A severe 1956 scale solar storm could expose passengers to a year's worth of radiation in a single flight, and the researchers point to last year's Airbus A320 grounding, triggered by a solar radiation linked flight computer fault, as proof this isn't theoretical. To address the gap, the team has proposed a new aviation specific radiation scale designed to give airlines clearer, more reliable guidance on when to monitor, reroute, or ground flights during severe events.

The Tarantula That Lost Its Fire

A new composite image combining data from Chandra, Hubble, Webb and the retired Spitzer telescope has helped astronomers solve a long standing puzzle in the Tarantula Nebula, a star forming region 160,000 light years away. Young, massive stars there should be heating enough gas to emit X-rays, but observations showed far less X-ray emission than predicted.