New evidence of ancient rivers suggests Mars may have been a “blue planet,” thanks to an ocean spanning its entire northern hemisphere. Cameras from several Mars orbiters captured the dusty remnants of apparent river deltas, which were described in research published Jan. 7 in the journal NPJ Space Exploration. The team, led by researchers at … Read more
NASA recently revealed the first pictures of its newly constructed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which could soon help researchers hunt for exoplanets, map the Milky Way and unravel some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, such as the true nature of dark matter. Experts have also revealed the most probable launch date for the next-generation … Read more
What if some of the alien worlds we’ve discovered are not actually planets at all? Astronomers have spent years cataloging thousands of worlds orbiting distant stars, assuming that if something has the mass of a planet and exerts a gravitational pull on its parent star, it must be a planet. But there may be a … Read more
The interiors of Uranus and Neptune may be rockier than scientists previously thought, a new computational model suggests — challenging the idea that the planets should be called “ice giants.” The new study, published Dec. 10 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, may also help to explain the planets’ puzzling magnetic fields. Uranus and Neptune … Read more
A strange, lopsided dust cloud shrouds Earth’s moon, ever skewed toward whichever side is facing the sun. Now, a new study may finally explain how the asymmetrical cloud got its shape. Most of the moon’s surface is covered by a layer of gray dust and loose rocks. This layer, called regolith, arises because the lunar … Read more
A huge “wave” is rippling through our galaxy, pushing billions of stars in its wake, a new study reveals. The Milky Way’s galactic wave was spotted in mapping data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope, which charted the positions and movement patterns of millions of stars with high accuracy before retiring earlier … Read more
The age of exoplanets began in 1992, when astronomers detected a pair of planets orbiting a pulsar. Then, in 1995, astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star. As NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions got going, the number of confirmed exoplanets continued to rise. By 2015, NASA announced that Kepler had discovered its … Read more
As many as 200 worlds beyond our solar system discovered by astronomers may be larger than estimated, which could influence the search for extraterrestrial life. That’s the theory of a team of researchers who looked at hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS hunts exoplanets by catching … Read more
Astronomers have captured the first evidence of a “planet with a death wish” — an alien world that’s orbiting so close to its star and so fast that it’s causing the star to cook it to death with stellar explosions. The planet, called HIP 67522 b, is a wispy, Jupiter-size planet bound on a tight, … Read more
The Big Bang is often described as the explosive birth of the universe — a singular moment when space, time and matter sprang into existence. But what if this was not the beginning at all? What if our universe emerged from something else — something more familiar and radical at the same time? In a … Read more
