A terrifying glimpse at one potential fate of our Milky Way galaxy has come to light thanks to the discovery of a cosmic anomaly that challenges our understanding of the universe.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Narrow Field Imager (NFI) was launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a part of NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission on March 11 and deployed from Falcon 9 on March 12.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling spiral galaxy paired with a prominent star, both in the constellation Virgo. While the galaxy and the star appear to be close to one another, even overlapping, they’re actually a great distance apart. The star, marked with four long diffraction spikes, is in our own galaxy. It’s just 7,109 light-years away from Earth. The galaxy, named NGC 4900, lies about 45 million light-years from Earth.
ESA’s Euclid space telescope has been providing valuable data from the depths of space for almost two years. With its help, the largest and most accurate 3D map of the universe to date is to be created, with billions of stars and galaxies. The data from Euclid is analyzed by the international Euclid consortium, which also includes the research teams of Francine Marleau and Tim Schrabback at the University of Innsbruck.
Interstellar objects are among the last unexplored classes of solar system objects, holding tantalizing information about primitive materials from exoplanetary star systems. They pass through our solar system only once in their lifetime at speeds of tens of kilometers per second, making them elusive.
Up for a challenge? If skies are clear, you may be able to complete a rare feat of visual athletics this coming weekend, and follow Venus on its trek from the evening into the morning sky.
Venus will pass between the Earth and sun on Saturday during what’s called an inferior conjunction.
Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. The discovery, reported in two separate studies, was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. This record-breaking detection is making astronomers rethink how quickly galaxies formed in the early universe.
Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Chinese astronomers have detected a new ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, which turned out to be gas-rich. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 12 on the preprint server arXiv.
The universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago, and astronomers believe a kind of invisible force called dark energy is making it accelerate faster.
After the safe return Tuesday of two astronauts left behind for months on the International Space Station, the White House characterized the pair as “stranded” and trumpeted their return as a “rescue.” Those are words that NASA has been resisting for months.
Dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the universe, yet we know nothing about it.
Dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be driving the ever-faster expansion of the universe, appears to be changing over time, according to new observations released Wednesday.
Scientists are homing in on the nature of a mysterious force called dark energy, and nothing short of the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
Scientists stalking a small marsupial through a remote Australian rainforest say they may have found a clue to the mystery of why its bigger kangaroo cousins hop instead of walk.
Quantum gravity is the missing link between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the yet-to-be-discovered key to a unified theory capable of explaining both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. The solution to this puzzle might lie in the humble neutrino, an elementary particle with no electric charge and almost invisible, as it rarely interacts with matter, passing through everything on our planet without consequences.
A new study using the Dark Energy Survey (DES) final datasets suggests potential inconsistencies in the standard cosmological model, known as ΛCDM. If confirmed, these findings could fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aren’t the first to run late in space, and their 9 ½-month mission falls short of any endurance record.
A team of geologists at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, the Institute of Space Sciences and the Shandong Institute of Geological Sciences, all in China, has found evidence in soil samples collected from the far side of the moon that bolsters a theory that the moon was once covered by an ocean of magma. In their study published in the journal Science, the group analyzed a moon soil sample returned to Earth by China’s Chang’e-6 mission.
Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the moon and worships gods?
