Space News & Blog Articles

Mars has a curious past. Rovers have shown unequivocal evidence that liquid water existed on its surface, for probably at least 100 years. But climate models haven’t come up with how exactly that happened with what we currently understand about what the Martian climate was like back then. A new paper, published in the journal AGU Advances by Eleanor Moreland, a graduate student at Rice University, and her co-authors, has a potential explanation for what might have happened - liquid lakes on the Red Planet would have hid under small, seasonal ice sheets similar to the way they do in Antarctica on Earth.

It looks like NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission has come to a bureaucratic end. The mission was to be the crowning achievement in the study of Mars and all the questions surrounding its ancient habitability. But the US Congress has drastically cut the mission's funding.

In 1604, German astronomer Johannes Kepler spotted a new star in the sky that was so bright it could be seen during the daytime. The discovery, which Kepler described in his book *De Stella Nova*, caused quite a stir in the astronomical community. With this one point of light, astronomers questioned the prevailing dogma that the "firmament" (the background stars in the sky) was not unchanging and permanent. In time, we would come to realize that Kepler's Supernova (as it's come to be known) was a white dwarf that exceeded its critical mass and exploded in a brilliant burst.

Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa has emerged as a prime target in the search for life in our Solar System. Its frozen surface caps an ocean that contains more water than all of Earth's combined. Because it orbits the massive gas giant Jupiter, tidal heating keeps that ocean from freezing.

Dark Matter (DM) remains one of the most daunting mysteries for astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists. Six decades ago, the theory that the Universe was filled with mass that did not interact with normal matter in visible light became an accepted part of our cosmological models. And yet, all efforts to detect this mysterious matter in space or its constituent particles in a lab have produced null results. However, scientists have developed several promising methods that are helping them narrow the search for DM and measure its influence on the cosmos.

One of the critical aspects of exoplanet habitability is the long-term stability of the stars they orbit. Some stars are extremely massive and blast through their hydrogen fuel in only a few million years. Rigel, the blue supergiant in Orion, is an example of one of these. It will shine for only about 10 million years. That's not much time for life to arise on planets.

It feels like every time we publish an article about an exciting discovery of a potential biosignature on a new exoplanet, we have to publish a follow-up one a few months later debunking the original claims. That is exactly how science is supposed to work, and part of our job as science journalists is to report on the debunking as well as the original story, even if it might not be as exciting. In this particular case, it seems the discovery of dimethyl sulfide in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18 b was a false alarm, according to a new paper available in pre-print form on arXiv by Luis Welbanks of Arizona State University and his co-authors.

Jupiter enters the evening sky and dominates the night.

This is Part 1 in a series on the physics of free will.

Gravitational Lensing is a vital tool for astronomers to observe objects that are too distant or faint (or both) to be resolved by current instruments. This method leverages a prediction from Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, namely that massive objects alter the curvature of spacetime. When a "lens" comes into view, its gravitational field bends and amplifies light from more distant objects. In a recent study, a team of astronomers used a combination of ground-based telescopes to discover the first spatially resolved, gravitationally lensed supernova.

The platypus is one of evolution's loveable, oddball animals. The creature seems to defy well-understood rules of biology by combining physical traits in a bizarre way. They're egg-laying mammals with duck bills and beaver-like tails, and the males have venomous spurs on their hind feet. In that regard, it's only fitting that astronomers describe some newly-discovered oddball objects as 'Astronomy's Platypus.'

We may not know what dark matter is, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying to understand its role in the Universe. The Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model is the standard model that explains the cosmos the best, although it's not the only model. It makes a number of predictions about dark matter and researchers look for opportunities to test those predictions. The results either help confirm or deny the model.

It feels like every week now we’re writing a new article about how 3I/ATLAS is not an alien technology. But it’s worth re-iterating, and perhaps taking a look at the methodology we used to prove that statement. A new paper, available in pre-print form on arXiv from Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute and her co-authors, details how one specific instrument - the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) - contributed to that effort.

Stars and planets are inextricably linked. They form together and stars shape the fate of planets. Stars create the dusty protoplanetary disks that give birth to planets of all kinds. And when a star dies, planets are either blown apart, swallowed, or doomed to spend an eternity in cold and darkness.

One of the main questions in exoplanet science concerns M dwarfs (red dwarfs) and the habitability of exoplanets that orbit them. These stars are known for their prolific and energetic flaring, and that's a problem. M dwarfs are so small that their habitable zones are in tight proximity to them, putting any potentially habitable planets in the direct line of fire of all this dangerous flaring.

Nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its core. Whether the black hole forms first and then the galaxy around it—or the other way around—is still a matter of some debate, but we know the evolution of both are deeply connected. We can use that relationship to study the black holes.

So far, humanity has yet to find its first “exomoon” - a Moon orbiting a planet outside of the solar system. But that hasn’t been for lack of trying. According to a new paper by Thomas Winterhalder of the European Southern Observatory and his co-authors available as a pre-print on arXiv, the reason isn’t because those Moons don’t exist, but simply because we lack the technology to detect them. They propose a new “kilometric baseline interferometer” that can detect moons as small as the Earth up to 200 parsecs (652 light years) away.

The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a joint mission between the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA, launched on Sept. 7th, 2023. Its advanced imaging filters and spectrometers were designed to study black holes and neutron stars and detect the hot plasma in the intergalactic medium. Alongside the European Space Agency’s (ESA) X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission Newton (XMM-Newton) and NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), XRISM has provided the sharpest-ever X-ray spectrum of the iconic MCG–6-30-15.

The discovery of Gravitational Waves (GWs) in 2015 confirmed a prediction made by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and led to a revolution in astronomy. These waves are produced when massive, compact objects (such as black holes and neutron stars) merge, creating ripples in spacetime that can be detected millions of light-years away. A decade later, researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have proposed how GWs could be used to investigate an enduring cosmological mystery - the existence of Dark Matter.