A satellite orbiting Mars has captured the best-ever images of a gigantic “scar” carved across the Red Planet’s surface. The dark ravine, which is accompanied by unusual zebra-like stripes, is likely the result of extreme volcanic activity millions of years ago. The striking surface feature, named Aganippe Fossa, is a graben — a “ditch-like groove … Read more
The remarkable aurora in early May this year demonstrated the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but occasionally the sun does something far more destructive. Known as “solar particle events”, these blasts of protons directly from the surface of the sun can shoot out like a searchlight into space. Records show that around … Read more
“Warp drives” used by super-advanced alien civilizations may create specific space-time ripples in their wake that we can spot from Earth, a new paper argues. However, the jury is still out on whether the faster-than-light technology is even possible to create in the first place. A warp drive is a hypothetical device that enables an … Read more
Low-temperature hydrothermal vents could survive on the dark ocean floors of moons like Jupiter’s Europa for potentially billions of years, new computer simulations have shown, as astrobiologists strive to figure out whether these alien oceans could be habitable. Hydrothermal vents are both a source of chemical energy and heat, and are one of the possible … Read more
If you look up on a clear night, the brightest and largest object in the sky will probably be the moon. And unless you have a decent telescope, it is the only natural satellite you can see with your own eyes. As a result, most people have a warped perception of what a moon is … Read more
The monster black hole at the center of our galaxy may be unleashing huge, gassy explosions — and now, astronomers think they’ve pinpointed the exact spot where that superheated gas is spilling into the Milky Way. Acting like a gargantuan exhaust vent, the newly discovered feature is a bright region of X-ray energy that’s nearly … Read more
The NASA’s JWST telescope has discovered what could be the earliest star clusters in the universe. JWST spotted the five proto-globular clusters — swarms of millions of stars bound together by gravity — inside the Cosmic Gems arc, a galaxy that formed just 460 million years after the Big Bang. The Cosmic Gems arc gets … Read more
The sun is on the verge of a significant event: a magnetic field reversal. This phenomenon happens roughly every 11 years and marks an important stage in the solar cycle. The shift in polarity indicates the halfway point of solar maximum, the height of solar activity, and the beginning of the shift toward solar minimum. … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the oldest and most distant supernova ever seen — a stellar explosion that took place when the universe was just 1.8 billion years old. The ancient starburst was uncovered among 80 others in a patch of sky that, from our perspective on Earth, is about the width of … Read more
Scientists believe Earth may have briefly lost protection from the sun around two million years ago, left to endure the extreme environment of interstellar space as the solar system passed through a dense cloud of gas and dust between stars. At that time, early human ancestors shared our planet with prehistoric animals like mastodons and … Read more
