If there were such a thing as a photo album of the universe, it might include snapshots of pancake-like disks of gas and dust, swirling around newly formed stars across the Milky Way. Known as planet-forming disks, they are believed to be a short-lived feature around most, if not all, young stars, providing the raw materials for planets to form.
NASA’s two stuck astronauts are just a few weeks away from finally returning to Earth after nine months in space.
The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show “3 Body Problem.” There’s no problem, however, with what a team of researchers say is likely a stable trio of icy space rocks in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt, found using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
By sending nanoemulsion formulations on a space flight, scientists are investigating whether chitosan—a material derived from shrimp and widely used to control the release of medications—performs well in controlling medicine delivery when exposed to zero gravity. Their preliminary results suggest that drugs needed by astronauts can be delivered effectively in space.
In a new study published in Physical Review D, Professor Ginestra Bianconi, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London, proposes a new framework that could revolutionize our understanding of gravity and its relationship with quantum mechanics.
Radio astronomers see what the naked eye can’t. As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles.
Japanese startup ispace on Tuesday set a June 6 target touchdown date for its moon lander, following the success of its rocket “rideshare” buddy, a spacecraft from a US firm.
Last-minute problems forced a launch delay Monday for SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship, attempting a comeback following an explosion on the last test flight.
Water may have first formed 100–200 million years after the Big Bang, according to a modeling paper published in Nature Astronomy. The authors suggest that the formation of water may have occurred in the universe earlier than previously thought and may have been a key constituent of the first galaxies.
The American Meteorological Society has released the following statement regarding weather forecasting at the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
On December 3, 2018, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) successfully rendezvoused with the near-earth asteroid (NEA) 101955 Bennu. Over the next two years, the mission collected rock and regolith samples from the asteroid’s surface. By September 24, 2023, the mission’s sample return capsule (SRC) entered Earth’s atmosphere and was collected by NASA scientists. Analysis of these samples is already providing insight into what conditions were like during the early solar system.
An international team of researchers has discovered that previously observed variations in brightness of a free-floating planetary-mass object known as SIMP 0136 must be the result of a complex combination of atmospheric factors, and cannot be explained by clouds alone.
In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a famous—and frequently photographed—supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. The remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the sun that exploded about 10,000 years ago, the Veil Nebula is situated about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Hubble images of this photogenic nebula were first taken in 1994 and 1997, and again in 2015.
Developed at NASA JPL, the science instrument gives researchers a more detailed picture of high-temperature surfaces, such as land scorched by wildfire, than previous infrared instruments.
Light was long considered to be a wave, exhibiting the phenomenon of interference in which ripples like those in water waves are generated under specific interactions. Light also bends around corners, resulting in fringing effects, which is termed diffraction. The energy of light is associated with its intensity and is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the electric field, but in the photoelectric effect, the energy of emitted electrons is found to be proportional to the frequency of radiation.
At a dire point in the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, some say hope is springing from an unlikely place: the state of Pennsylvania.
Elon Musk has been making headlines for mass layoffs and funding cuts at US federal agencies under his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But on Monday, his towering Starship rocket will return to the spotlight with its next test flight.
For a brief window, Asteroid 2024 YR4 looked like a planetary hazard in the making. At up to 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter, it was described as a potential “city killer.” On its estimated trajectory, it could’ve collided with Earth as soon as 2032. According to the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, used to characterize such threats, it ranked a Level 3 out of 10—a highly unusual designation, suggesting a “close encounter” was plausible.
More than fifty years passed between the last Apollo mission and the United States’ return to the lunar surface, when the first-ever private lander touched down last February.
Landing a spacecraft on the moon has long been a series of hits and misses.
