The longest organic molecules identified to date on Mars have recently been detected by scientists from the CNRS, together with their colleagues from France, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain. These long carbon chains, containing up to 12 consecutive carbon atoms, could exhibit features similar to the fatty acids produced on Earth by biological activity.
NASA research is revealing there’s more to flowers than meets the human eye. A recent analysis of wildflowers in California shows how aircraft- and space-based instruments can use color to track seasonal flower cycles. The results suggest a potential new tool for farmers and natural-resource managers who rely on flowering plants.
Scientists have long thought that our solar system’s ocean worlds, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, may harbor extraterrestrial life in the form of microbes. But detecting it could be a challenge because missions to ocean worlds have relied on probes, not landers.
In late 2024, astronomers spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 on a trajectory that could potentially threaten Earth. This observation triggered a fervid series of observations of the object—possibly as big as a football field—to determine that it will not hit. However, an impact on the moon cannot be ruled out.
Last week, the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres… and the team are now working hard to understand their origin.
Does the proton decay? While this was a famous prediction of Grand Unified Theories (GUTS) developed in the 1970s and 1980s, experimentalists have ruled it out—or rather, put lower limits on its mean lifetime of about 1034 years. That’s 20 orders of magnitude greater than the age of the universe.
With the drama around the first human spaceflight of the year behind it, SpaceX is back to the business of sending private customers to space.
Using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), astronomers have detected a new giant molecular cloud in the Milky Way galaxy. The newfound cloud has a size of nearly 200 light years and its mass is estimated to be some 160,000 solar masses. The finding was reported in a paper published March 18 on the arXiv preprint server.
NASA websites have dropped references to landing the first woman on the moon as part of the goals for its Artemis program.
One of the Holy Grails in cosmology is a look back at the earliest epochs of cosmic history. Unfortunately, the universe’s first few hundred thousand years are shrouded in an impenetrable fog. So far, nobody’s been able to see past it to the Big Bang. As it turns out, astronomers are chipping away at that cosmic fog by using data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.
The clearest and most precise images yet of the universe in its infancy—the earliest cosmic time accessible to humans—have been produced by an international team of astronomers.
In the remnant rainforests of coastal far-north Queensland, bushwalkers may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a diminutive marsupial that’s the last living representative of its family.
The James Webb Space Telescope has directly observed the key chemical of carbon dioxide in planets outside of our solar system for the first time, scientists announced Monday.
This week, ALMA researchers reported the discovery of oxygen in the most distant known galaxy. Geologists believe unusual structures in rock in the desert regions of Namibia, Oman and Saudia Arabia may be evidence of an unknown microorganism. And a group of physicists may have generated a tiny charge of electricity using the Earth’s rotational energy. But the biggest story by far is the second release of data from the DESI survey of the universe, which could upend the standard model:
On March 11, NASA launched a new space telescope into orbit to explore the origins of the universe. The mission will use sophisticated software, developed at the Arizona Cosmology Lab at the University of Arizona, to analyze data and help astronomers understand what happened in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere.
Scientists have long sought to determine the age of the moon’s South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest known impact crater on the lunar surface. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Chen Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has dated the formation of the basin to 4.25 billion years ago by analyzing the first-ever rock samples returned from the SPA basin by China’s Chang’e-6 mission.
Somehow, we all know how a warp drive works. You’re in your spaceship and you need to get to another star. So you press a button or flip a switch or pull a lever and your ship just goes fast. Like really fast. Faster than the speed of light. Fast enough that you can get to your next destination by the end of the next commercial break.
Dark energy is a mystery so daunting that it stretches and strains our most robust theories. The universe is expanding, driven by the unknown force that we’ve named Dark Energy. Dark Energy is also accelerating the rate of expansion. If scientists could figure out why, it would open up a whole new avenue of understanding.
A NASA spacecraft will make another close brush with the sun, the second of three planned encounters through the sizzling solar atmosphere.
