Category Archives: Phys.org

New observations of 2024 YR4 conducted with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and facilities around the world have all but ruled out an impact of the asteroid with our planet. The asteroid has been closely monitored in the past couple of months as its odds of impacting Earth in 2032 rose to around 3%, the highest impact probability ever reached for a sizable asteroid. After the latest observations, the odds of impact dropped to nearly zero.

The chance that a football field-sized asteroid capable of destroying a city will strike Earth in 2032 has fallen to 0.001 percent, the European Space Agency said on Tuesday.

A team of international researchers including Dr. Jake Taylor from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to explore the exotic atmosphere of LTT 9779 b, a rare “ultra-hot Neptune.” The results are published on 25 February in Nature Astronomy.

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new dwarf galaxy, which they have named Pegasus VII. The newfound galaxy, which lies about 2.4 million light years away, was identified in the Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS). The discovery was detailed in a research paper published Feb. 13 on the arXiv preprint server.

Searching for life on other celestial bodies, or at the very least the necessary components to support it, has been fascinating scientists and enthusiasts for centuries. While planets are the obvious choice, their moons can also harbor the chemical ingredients for life.

Mars is easily identifiable in the night sky by its prominent red hue. Thanks to the fleet of spacecraft that have studied the planet over the last decades, we know that this red color is due to rusted iron minerals in the dust. That is, iron bound up in Mars’s rocks has at some point reacted with liquid water, or water and oxygen in the air, similar to how rust forms on Earth.

How can we explore Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, to include its surface and subsurface ocean, with the goal of potentially discovering life as we know it? This is what a recent study presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU 2024) Fall Meeting hopes to address. A team of students and researchers proposed the Thermal Investigation of Geothermal Regions of Enceladus (TIGRE) mission concept, which is designed to conduct in-depth exploration of Enceladus with an orbiter, lander, and drill, while laying the groundwork for future missions to icy moons throughout the solar system.

The first life on Earth formed four billion years ago, as microbes living in pools and seas: what if the same thing happened on Mars? If it did, how would we prove it? Scientists hoping to identify fossil evidence of ancient Martian microbial life have now found a way to test their hypothesis, proving they can detect the fossils of microbes in gypsum samples that are a close analogy to sulfate rocks on Mars.

Ribonucleic acid, commonly known as RNA, is involved in many biological functions, and some, including gene silencing, are utilized to cure diseases. RNA has recently gained attention as a promising drug target. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of RNA structures have been determined experimentally, and the process of uncovering these structures requires significant time and effort. Using this time scale, the structures of many lifesaving RNA structures may not be discovered for years. As a result, there is a significant gap between the types of known RNA and the available structural data.

On Wednesday 26 February, a thermal imaging camera built by researchers at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics will blast off to the moon as part of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission. This aims to map sources of water on the moon to shed light on the lunar water cycle and to guide future robotic and human missions.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for the next test flight of its Starship megarocket on Friday, following a dramatic mid-air explosion over the Caribbean during its last trial.

In December 2024, astronomers in Chile spotted a new asteroid streaking through the sky, which they named 2024 YR4. What’s significant about this 100m-wide space rock is that it has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.

The sun periodically ejects huge bubbles of plasma from its surface that contain an intense magnetic field. These events are called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. When two of these ejections collide, they can generate powerful geomagnetic storms that can lead to beautiful auroras but may disrupt satellites and GPS back on Earth.

The Earth is immersed in material streaming from the sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.

The sparkling spiral galaxy gracing this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is UGC 5460, which sits about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image combines four different wavelengths of light to reveal UGC 5460’s central bar of stars, winding spiral arms, and bright blue star clusters. Also captured in the upper left-hand corner is a far closer object: a star just 577 light-years away in our own galaxy.

Israeli astronomers report the detection of a new Jupiter-like exoplanet using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). The newfound alien world orbits a nearby M-dwarf star designated GJ 2126. The discovery was announced in a research paper published Feb. 16 on the arXiv pre-print server.

SpaceX looks to knock out the Space Coast’s 18th launch of 2025 but is now targeting Monday night.

An international research collaboration led by the University of Surrey’s Nuclear Physics Group has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb) is perfectly spherical. The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe.

This week, University of Ferrerra researchers reported on the evolution of European skin, eye and hair pigmentation over the last 45,000 years. A re-examination of Galileo space probe data strongly suggests that Callisto has a subsurface ocean. And a two-dimensional carbon material is reportedly tougher than graphene and resists cracking.

There is a very small chance that an asteroid capable of taking out an entire city could strike Earth in less than eight years. But even if this asteroid is hurtling our way, humanity is now able to defend itself against such a threat, experts say.