There is a supermassive black hole at the center of nearly every big galaxy—including ours, the Milky Way (it’s called Sagittarius A*). Supermassive black holes are the densest objects in the universe, with masses reaching billions of times that of the sun.
In just over three years since its launch, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has generated significant and unprecedented insights into the far reaches of space, and a new study by a Kansas State University researcher provides one of the simplest and most puzzling observations of the deep universe yet.
An international team of astronomers led by scientists from the Netherlands has shown that a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting each other every two hours are emitting radio pulses. Thanks to observations with several telescopes, the researchers were able to determine the origin of these pulses with certainty for the first time. Their results are published in Nature Astronomy.
NASA announced Tuesday the dismissal of its chief scientist and others to comply with orders from President Donald Trump, marking the latest in a series of administration actions undermining climate change research.
NASA’s newest space telescope rocketed into orbit Tuesday to map the entire sky like never before—a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.
Last year, astronomers detected the near-earth asteroid (NEA) 2024 YR4, which orbits the sun every four years and periodically crosses Earth’s orbit. The nature of its orbit makes it a potentially hazardous object (PHO), meaning it could pose a collision risk to Earth someday. Recently, refined estimates of its orbit have ruled out the possibility that it will strike Earth in 2032. Nevertheless, there will likely be further close encounters with Earth well into the distant future.
Using data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it flew past Jupiter’s highly volcanic moon Io in late 2023 and again in early 2024, a Southwest Research Institute-led team identified electrons with energies enhanced by processes in the region connecting the moon to Jupiter’s ionosphere, called an Alfvén wing. A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters emphasizes how these electrons, and their variation within that region, shape the plasma environment around Io.
Humans will likely set foot on the moon again in the coming decade. While many stories in this new chapter of lunar exploration will be reminiscent of the Apollo missions 50 years ago, others may look quite different.
The universe is ballooning outward at an ever-faster clip under the power of an unknown force dubbed dark energy. One of the major goals for NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is to help astronomers gather clues to the mystery. One team is setting the stage now to help astronomers prepare for this exciting science.
Ask almost any physicist what the most frustrating problem is in modern-day physics, and they will likely say the discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics. That discrepancy has been a thorn in the side of the physics community for decades.
Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity.
Rotating black holes are the most powerful phenomenon in the known universe. Their powerful gravity radically alters the curvature of spacetime around them, leading to relativistic effects like time dilation, light distortion, and for matter and photons to infall around them, forming accretion disks. In the case of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies, these disks are accelerated to close to the speed of light and emit powerful radiation that temporarily outshines all the stars in the disks.
University of Arizona astronomers have learned more about a surprisingly mature galaxy that existed when the universe was just less than 300 million years old—just 2% of its current age.
MXene is a lightweight two-dimensional (2D) material capable of protecting everything—including spacecraft, mechanical components, and maybe even people—from harmful radiation. Because traditional synthesis requires multi-step processes that can take up to 40 hours, MXene is difficult to produce.
A mysterious phenomenon at the center of our galaxy could be the result of a different type of dark matter.
The XRISM collaboration has discovered flows of hot gas in the core of the Centaurus Cluster. By comparing state-of-the-art X-ray measurements from the XRISM satellite with numerical simulations, they showed this is evidence for collisions between galaxy clusters, causing gas inside to “slosh.” This solves the longstanding mystery of how cluster cores stay hot, and sheds light on how our universe continues to evolve.
New research has revealed that a revamp of a federal website for filing consumer complaints has led to a significant increase in public usage. More to the point, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conducted a wholesale redesign of its website, which consumers can use to file complaints to the FTC, the number of complaints jumped by 28%.
The return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner astronauts stuck on the International Space Station inched closer as their replacements arrived to Florida for their relief flight this week.
A total lunar eclipse will flush the moon red Thursday night into Friday morning across the Western Hemisphere.
We have discovered the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth, in the very heart of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The crater formed more than 3.5 billion years ago, making it the oldest known by more than a billion years. Our discovery is published today in Nature Communications.
