Europe’s physics lab CERN is planning to build a particle-smasher even bigger than its Large Hadron Collider to continue searching for answers to some of the universe’s tiniest yet most profound mysteries.
NASA’s Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) successfully demonstrated its ability to remove regolith, or lunar dust and dirt, from its various surfaces on the moon during Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which concluded on March 16.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain of carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells.
A team of biomedical engineers at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science working with a team of bio-scientist colleagues from NASA Ames Research Center, both in the U.S., has found that test mice living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) experience a significant amount of bone loss in their femurs compared to control mice on Earth.
One of the most powerful objects in the universe is a radio quasar—a spinning black hole spraying out highly energetic particles. Come too close to one, and you’d get sucked in by its gravitational pull, or burn up from the intense heat surrounding it. But ironically, studying black holes and their jets can give researchers insight into where potentially habitable worlds might be in the universe.
Dark matter is a confounding concept that teeters on the leading edges of cosmology and physics. We don’t know what it is or how exactly it fits into our understanding of the universe. We only know that its unseen mass is a critical part of the cosmos.
Venus—a hot planet pocked with tens of thousands of volcanoes—may be even more geologically active near its surface than previously thought. New calculations by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis suggest that the planet’s outer crust may be constantly churning, an unexpected phenomenon called convection that could help explain many of the volcanoes and other features of the Venusian landscape.
SpaceX is set to launch the first human spaceflight directly over Earth’s polar regions on Monday—a days-long, privately funded orbital mission involving four astronauts.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy.
The surface of Mars is known for being an extremely cold, desiccated, and irradiated place. But as its many surface features attest, the red planet was once a warmer, wetter place with flowing water and glaciers. Today, most of the remaining water on the surface is largely confined to its polar regions in the form of ice caps, permafrost, and subsurface glaciers. Nevertheless, the seasonal melting and freezing of this ice still impacts the Martian environment and offers clues about glacial activity in the past.
One of the strangest facts in computer science is that it’s really hard to generate true random numbers. For a computer, anyway. I can do it just fine: 173, 401, 530. That’s right off the top of my head, true randomness. Scientists: If you need a random number, please contact me by email, night or day. However, a multi-institutional group of researchers now reports generating “demonstrated certified randomness” using a 56-qubit quantum computer. A study in Frontiers in Marine Science reports evidence of deep ecosystem consequences following the disappearance of great white sharks from False Bay, South Africa. And in actually great medical news, a team at McMaster University discovered a new class of antibiotics.
NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to help scientists understand the planet’s climate and geography. But another key objective is to pave the way for human exploration of Mars, and as part of that effort, the rover carries a set of five spacesuit material samples. Now, after those samples have endured four years of exposure on Mars’ dusty, radiation-soaked surface, scientists are beginning the next phase of studying them.
What drives us to send probes throughout the solar system and rovers and landers to Mars? It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy. It’s because we live inside a big, natural puzzle, and we want to understand it. That’s one reason. But the main reason for space exploration is to search for life beyond Earth. That our planet could be the only planet to host life is a disquieting thought.
What can Venus-like exoplanets, also known as exoVenuses, teach us about our own solar system and potentially finding life beyond Earth, and how can the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) provide these insights?
The instrument enclosure of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor was prepared for critical environmental tests inside the historic Chamber A at the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in December 2024.
How gravity causes a perfectly spherical ball to roll down an inclined plane is part of the elementary school physics canon. But the world is messier than a textbook.
Aside from sunlight, the sun sends out a gusty stream of particles called the solar wind. The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission is the first to capture on camera this wind flying out from the sun in a twisting, whirling motion. The solar wind particles spiral outward as if caught in a cyclone that extends millions of kilometers from the sun.
After more than a decade mapping out our home galaxy, the Gaia space telescope was powered down and sent into “retirement orbit” around the sun on Thursday, the European Space Agency said.
Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth.
There is a non-zero chance that somewhere in the nearby solar system is a rock that might kill us all.
