The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a dazzling image of a star about to go supernova in a massive explosion. The picture, released by NASA on Tuesday (March 14), shows the star WR 124 in the middle of a spectacular cosmic cloud. As it goes supernova, the star, which is about 30 solar … Read more
New “unprecedented” animations of the Earth show how the planet’s surface has shifted and changed over the past 100 million years. These animations are the most detailed view of the history of Earth’s topography ever, depicting the rise of mountains, the development of basins, and the transport of large masses of sediments around the globe … Read more
The moon crashing into Earth may sound like an unrealistic doomsday scenario or the stuff of sci-fi disasters. But for some planets in other star systems, such catastrophic collisions may be common. New research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses computer simulations to show that collisions between exoplanets and … Read more
The ancient Celts were fierce warriors who lived in mainland Europe. But during the Renaissance, an idea took hold that they lived in the British Isles. The term “Celts” is used today to describe the cultures, languages and peoples that are based in Scotland; Ireland; other parts of the British Isles; and Brittany, in France. … Read more
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured stunning images of almost perfectly round sand dunes on the surface of the Red Planet. While sand dunes of all shapes and sizes are common on Mars, circular dunes like these are a rare sight. The dunes appear as slightly asymmetrical splodges in the picture, which was taken … Read more
There’s a floating garbage dump orbiting Earth, and it’s getting fuller every year. Space debris — known colloquially as space junk — is the name that scientists give to the thousands of pieces of broken satellites and spacecraft that clog Earth’s orbit. Space junk can be as small as a paint fleck or as large … Read more
Astronomers studying a remote baby star have found a “missing link” that could finally explain the origins of water on Earth, a new study suggests. By training a powerful radio telescope at V883 Orionis, a protostar 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion, astronomers have spotted gaseous water with a chemical composition close … Read more
Scientists studying a cousin of the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and leprosy have discovered an enzyme that converts hydrogen into electricity, and they think it could be used to create a new, clean source of energy literally from thin air. The enzyme, which has been named Huc, is used by the bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis to … Read more
The shredded remnants of the first supernova ever recorded by humans — which appeared in the sky more than 1,800 years ago and vanished within eight months — rise from the cosmic grave in a stunning new image from the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. Tinged blood red and swirling around an invisible center of mass, … Read more
The largest animal ever to walk on Earth was likely the dinosaur Argentinosaurus, a hulking 77-ton (70 metric tons) titanosaur that lived about 90 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous. For comparison, the heaviest animal on land today is the African elephant (Loxodonta), which weighs less than 7 tons (6 metric tons). And both … Read more
