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
California-based startup’s controversial plan to put 4,000 tennis-court-sized mirrors in orbit around Earth is “catastrophic” and “horrifying,” astronomers warn. Reflect Orbital, which was founded in 2021, has recently taken the first step in a scheme to sell sunlight at night by bouncing solar rays off giant “reflectors” that can redirect the vital resource almost anywhere … 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
Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe nearly four decades ago. Scientists led by Xinyue Yang of the University of Houston analyzed decades of readings from … 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
“You operate as an autonomous agent controlling a pursuit spacecraft.” This is the first prompt researchers used to see how well ChatGPT could pilot a spacecraft. To their amazement, the large language model (LLM) performed admirably, coming in second place in an autonomous spacecraft simulation competition. Researchers have long been interested in developing autonomous systems … Read more
After decades of preparation, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images to the world in a live stream on Monday (June 23). The photos, taken by the world’s largest digital camera, are highly-detailed and show relatively large areas of the sky. In a televised news conference, scientists from the observatory revealed new details … Read more
Nowadays, the dark of night is interspersed with the light of stars. But before the stars were born, did light shine at the beginning of the universe? The short answer is “no.” But the long answer reveals light’s extraordinary journey. At first, the early universe’s light was “trapped,” and it took several hundred thousand years … Read more
New research suggests that the explosive death throes of massive stars, known as supernovas, may have had dramatic effects on our planet’s climate over its distant history. Investigating historic incidents of these events could help scientists predict similar events in the future and prepare for them. Supernovas occur when stars that are much more massive … 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
