Astronomers have uncovered more than 400 previously hidden black holes feeding on stars and dust in the center of galaxies. It appears that many of the new black holes, discovered using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, remained unknown until now because they are buried beneath cocoons of dust. Supermassive black holes, which can be millions of … Read more
An ancient, dried-up lake bed on Mars may be teeming with opal gemstones, new data from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover suggests. Beyond giving the cracked surface of Mars’ Gale Crater a semiprecious glint, these opals could be evidence that water and rock have been interacting beneath the Martian surface much more recently than was previously … Read more
Black holes are scary beasts — objects so massive that not even light can escape their clutches. In 2022, we learned more about these gravitational monsters than ever before — from the first direct image of the black hole “heart” at the center of the Milky Way to one of the earliest black hole ancestors … Read more
For decades, astronomers assumed that Mars was geodynamically dead — a planet without rumbling earthquakes and erupting volcanoes. Though remnants of towering volcanoes exist on the surface of the Red Planet today, these colossal structures have been dormant for millions of years. With little to no heat firing the planet’s engine, scientists reasoned, Mars became … Read more
A towering dust storm that engulfed the Mars Perseverance rover in September 2021 was a colossal 390.4 feet (119 meters) tall, the first-ever audio recording of a dust devil on the surface of Mars reveals. The recording, an analysis of which was published Tuesday (Dec. 13) in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab), … Read more
Scientists studying a distant “hell planet” where clouds rain lava, the oceans are molten and the core is filled with diamonds have found that the nightmarish planet wasn’t always so bad; but it became infernally hot after being yanked closer to its sun. The planet, classified as 55 Cancri e, is nicknamed “Janssen” after Zacharias … Read more
The exact origins of the Milky Way are shrouded in mystery. But astronomers believe that our home galaxy started out more than 13 billion years ago, and that it was much smaller than its present-day size. How did it grow so much to reach its current size? For that, we can likely thank eons of … Read more
A special type of radioactive meteorite could have seeded life on Earth, a new study found. Carbonaceous chondrites, a type of radioactive meteorite chock full of water and organic compounds, produce energetic gamma rays that can drive the chemical reactions to synthesize amino acids — the building blocks of life — researchers discovered. Meteorites are … Read more
New research has debunked a controversial 2020 study that claimed to have found the chemical phosphine in Venus’ hellish atmosphere. The chemical’s reported existence had hinted that there was alien life on the planet. In 2020, a team of researchers announced that they had found phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere using data collected by the Japanese … Read more
One of the world’s largest telescopes has just joined the hunt for signs of alien life elsewhere in the cosmos. Since 2016, the Breakthrough Listen project has been quietly using radio telescopes to listen for unusual radio signals, or technosignatures, from potential advanced extraterrestrial civilizations within the Milky Way. The project, launched in part by … Read more
