Astronomy

Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists

Deep Space Station 15 (DSS-15), one of the 112-foot (34-meter) antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, looks skyward, with the stars of the Milky Way overhead, in September 2025.

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is a tantalizing target in the search for habitability in our Solar System. Its thick, global ice sheet overlies a warm, salty, chemically-rich ocean. But for life to exist in that ocean, nutrients need to find their way from the surface to the ocean. New research says that may be very difficult.

An exoplanet called HD 137010 b might be the closest thing astronomers have ever seen to “Earth 2.0.” The trouble is that it’s only been seen once—and may never be glimpsed again

The light, rare element boron, better known as the primary component of borax, a longtime household cleaner, was almost mined to exhaustion in parts of the old American West. But boron could arguably be an unsung hero in cosmic astrobiology, although it's still not listed as one of the key elements needed for the onset of life.

Some 150 million years ago sauropods dramatically shaped the dinosaur ecosystem in what is now the western U.S., according to a new study

In the latest bout of winter weather, a bomb cyclone could bring blizzard conditions to the Carolinas while freezing temperatures reach all the way to Florida

When the rover now named Perseverance landed in Jezero crater in early 2021, scientists already knew they had picked an interesting place to scope out. From space, they could see what looked like a bathtub ring around the crater, indicating there could once have been water there. But there was some debate about what exactly that meant, and it’s taken almost five years to settle it. A new paper from PhD student Alex Jones at Imperial College London and his co-authors has definitively settled the debate on the source of that feature - part of it was once a beach.

Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why

Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why

Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?

Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?

Week in images: 26-30 January 2026

Discover our week through the lens

The dazzling Moon occults Regulus Monday night while Regulus is busy announcing February. Betelgeuse turns the Winter Hexagon into the Heavenly G.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, January 30 – February 8 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"

Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"

We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto

We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto

Synchrotron radiation has revealed a star map made by the ancient astronomer Hipparchus that was thought to be lost to time

The venerable Hubble observatory is going strong despite its decades in space and the advent of next-generation successors