Astronomy

Scientists have achieved a breakthrough that seemed impossible just months ago, they have simulated our entire Milky Way galaxy down to each of its 100 billion individual stars. By combining artificial intelligence with supercomputer power, researchers created a model that captures everything from galactic arms to the explosive deaths of individual stars, completing in days what would have taken conventional simulations 36 years. This fusion of AI and physics represents a significant shift in how we model complex systems, with implications reaching far beyond astronomy.

Scientists from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have uncovered new evidence that water once flowed beneath the surface of Mars, revealing that the planet may have remained habitable for life much longer than previously thought.

An expanding universe complicates this picture just a little bit, because the universe absolutely refuses to be straightforward.

I honestly don’t have a decent analogy for you to explain how the universe is expanding without a center and without an edge. It just does, whether we can wrap our minds around it or not. But I CAN give you a way to think about it.

Studies of insulin, blood sugar and diabetes in other animals such as fish and dogs have already saved millions of lives and could lead to new treatments for type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Uranus is its closest to Earth all year on the night of November 21st, and you can find it easily in the evening sky using Sky & Telescope’s exclusive star chart.

The post Spot Uranus at Opposition appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The decision to move Iran’s capital is partly driven by climate change, but experts say decades of human error and action are also to blame

The European Space Agency's Ministerial Council – more formally Council at Ministerial level – takes place in Bremen, Germany on 26 and 27 November 2025. 

Hurricane Melissa raged as a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean last month—and now scientists have confirmed that its strongest gusts neared record speeds

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to end its monkey research program will affect studies involving some 200 macaques, and the fate of the animals is unclear

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy, NGC 2775, that’s hard to categorize.

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms

Satellite megaconstellations are quickly becoming the backbone of a number of industries. Cellular communication, GPS, weather monitoring and more are now, at least in part, reliant on the networks of thousands of satellites cruising by in low Earth orbit. But, as these constellations grow into the tens of thousands of individual members, the strain they are putting on the communications and controls systems of their ground stations is becoming untenable. A new paper from Yuhe Mao of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and their co-authors hopes to alleviate some of that pressure by offloading much of the control scheme and network decision-making logic to satellites themselves.

Week in images: 17-21 November 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake

Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake