Astronomers have discovered a binary star system with the closest high-mass young stellar objects ever measured, providing a valuable “laboratory” to test theories on high mass binary star formation. An international team led by the University of Leeds has determined the distance between the massive young star PDS 27 and its orbiting stellar companion to…
Researchers Outline Goals For Collecting and Studying Samples From Mars
Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science…
Asteroids are Stronger, Harder to Destroy Than Previously Thought
A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture…
Anemic Galaxy Reveals Deficiencies in Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Formation Theory
A team of astronomers led by the University of California Observatories (UCO) have studied in great detail a galaxy so faint and in such pristine condition it has acted as a time capsule, sealed shortly after the dawn of our universe only to be opened by the newest technology at W. M. Keck Observatory. Using…
New NASA Mission Could Find More Than 1,000 Planets
A NASA telescope that will give humans the largest, deepest, clearest picture of the universe since the Hubble Space Telescope could find as many as 1,400 new planets outside Earth’s solar system, new research suggests. The new telescope paves the way for a more accurate, more focused search for extraterrestrial life, according to researchers. The…
Ingredients for Water Could be Made on Surface of Moon, a Chemical Factory
When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind careens onto the Moon’s surface at 450 kilometers per second (or nearly 1 million miles per hour), they enrich the Moon’s surface in ingredients that could make water, NASA scientists have found. Using a computer program, scientists simulated the chemistry that unfolds when the…
LOFAR Radio Telescope Reveals Secrets of Solar Storms
An international team of scientists led by a researcher from Trinity College Dublin and University of Helsinki announced a major discovery on the very nature of solar storms in the journal Nature Astronomy. The team showed that solar storms can accelerate particles simultaneously in several locations by combining data from the Low Frequency Array, LOFAR,…
Spacecraft Measurements Reveal Mechanism of Solar Wind Heating
Queen Mary University of London has led a study which describes the first direct measurement of how energy is transferred from the chaotic electromagnetic fields in space to the particles that make up the solar wind, leading to the heating of interplanetary space. The study, published in Nature Communications and carried out with University of…
New Study Suggests Possibility of Recent Underground Volcanism on Mars
A study published last year in the journal Science suggested liquid water is present beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars. Now, a new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters argues there needs to be an underground source of heat for liquid water to exist underneath the polar ice cap. The new research does…
Developing a Flight Strategy to Land Heavier Vehicles on Mars
The heaviest vehicle to successfully land on Mars is the Curiosity Rover at 1 metric ton, about 2,200 pounds. Sending more ambitious robotic missions to the surface of Mars, and eventually humans, will require landed payload masses in the 5- to 20-ton range. To do that, we need to figure out how to land more…
Zwicky Transient Facility Nabs Several Supernovae a Night
The results are rolling in from Caltech’s newest state-of-the-art sky-surveying camera, which began operations at the Palomar Observatory in March 2018. Called the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, the new instrument has so far discovered 50 small near-Earth asteroids and more than 1,100 supernovae, and it has observed more than 1 billion stars in the…
Giant Impacts Caused by interplanetary Collisions
Astronomers have found fresh evidence for significant planetary diversity within a single exoplanet system, suggesting that giant high-speed collisions are partly responsible for planetary evolution. An international team of scientists led by Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and involving physicists from the University of Bristol spent three years observing the exoplanetary system Kepler-107 via…
Retreating Snow Line Reveals Organic Molecules Around Young Star
Astronomers using ALMA have detected various complex organic molecules around the young star V883 Ori. A sudden outburst from this star is releasing molecules from the icy compounds in the planet forming disk. The chemical composition of the disk is similar to that of comets in the modern Solar System. Sensitive ALMA observations enable astronomers…
Simulating Meteorite Impacts in the Lab
Space Technology Predicts Droughts Several Months in Advance
Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have used new space technology to predict droughts and increased bushfire risk up to five months in advance. ANU researcher Siyuan Tian said the team knew they needed to move into space to get closer to understanding the complex nature of drought. They used data from multiple satellites…
Spaceflight Might Increase Cancer Risk for Astronauts
Seeing Double Could Help Resolve Dispute About How Fast the Universe is Expanding
The question of how quickly the universe is expanding has been bugging astronomers for almost a century. Different studies keep coming up with different answers — which has some researchers wondering if they’ve overlooked a key mechanism in the machinery that drives the cosmos. Now, by pioneering a new way to measure how quickly the…
Mystery Orbits in Outermost Reaches of Solar System Not Caused by ‘Planet Nine’
Saturn Hasn’t Always Had Rings
One of the last acts of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft before its death plunge into Saturn’s hydrogen and helium atmosphere was to coast between the planet and its rings and let them tug it around, essentially acting as a gravity probe. Precise measurements of Cassini’s final trajectory have now allowed scientists to make the first accurate…
Tel Aviv University-Led Team Discovers New Way Supermassive Black Holes are ‘Fed’
Supermassive black holes weigh millions to billions times more than our sun and lie at the center of most galaxies. A supermassive black hole several million times the mass of the sun is situated in the heart of our very own Milky Way. Despite how commonplace supermassive black holes are, it remains unclear how they…
Hubble Sees the Brightest Quasar in the Early Universe
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the brightest quasar ever seen in the early Universe. After 20 years of searching, astronomers have identified the ancient quasar with the help of strong gravitational lensing. This unique object provides an insight into the birth of galaxies when the Universe was less than a billion years old.…
Tiny Satellites Could be ‘Guide Stars’ for Huge Next-Generation Telescopes
SpaceX Sells Shares to Raise Funds for Satellite Internet Service
Next Up: Ultracold Simulators of Super-Dense Stars
Rice University physicists have created the world’s first laser-cooled neutral plasma, completing a 20-year quest that sets the stage for simulators that re-create exotic states of matter found inside Jupiter and white dwarf stars. The findings are detailed this week in the journal Science and involve new techniques for laser cooling clouds of rapidly expanding…
Chinese Moon Rover Landing Could Jolt Space Race, Rutgers Expert Says
The Chinese moon landing on the far – or “dark” – side of the moon by the Chang’e-4 probe was the first in human history. It was made in Von Karman Crater, within the massive Aitken Basin. The crater is named for Theodore Von Karman, a Hungarian-American founder of the United States’ Jet Propulsion Laboratory…