Universe Today

A research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) examined samples returned by the Chang'e-6 mission from the far side of the Moon. They identified minerals that appear to be from a carbonaceous chondrite meteor, which are known to contain water and organic molecules. These findings support the theory that water and the ingredients for life were delivered by asteroids and comets to Earth billions of years ago.

To answer that question of what’s inside a void, we have to first decide what a void…is.

Researchers from Keio University have made the most precise measurement yet of the cosmic microwave background radiation's temperature from seven billion years ago, finding it was approximately 5.13 K, roughly twice today's temperature of 2.7 K. By analysing archived data from the ALMA telescope in Chile, the team confirmed a key prediction of Big Bang model, that the universe cools as it expands, meaning it was hotter in the past. This highly accurate measurement provides strong support for the standard cosmological model and helps scientists better understand the thermal history of our universe.

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has undergone dramatic brightening as it approached its closest point to the Sun. Researchers have been using solar monitoring satellites to track it during a period when Earth based observations were impossible due to the comet's position behind the Sun. Analysis of data from STEREO-A, SOHO, and GOES-19 spacecraft revealed the comet brightened at an unexpectedly rapid rate between mid September and late October 2025, with its light showing a distinctly blue colour indicating significant gas emission rather than just reflected sunlight from dust. The comet's unusual behaviour and the cause of its steep brightening remain mysteries that ground based observers will now investigate as it emerges into dark skies.

Scientists at MIT have discovered over 100 different molecules in a stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1, making it the most chemically diverse interstellar cloud ever observed. Using over 1,400 hours of telescope time, the team found mostly hydrocarbons and nitrogen rich compounds, along with 10 ring shaped aromatic molecules similar to those found in coffee, vanilla, and DNA. This discovery helps solve a decades old mystery about complex organic molecules in space and provides key insights into the chemical conditions that existed before our own Solar System formed.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped the three-dimensional atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star, revealing temperature variations and distinct atmospheric regions across an alien world 400 light years away. Using the James Webb Space Telescope to track minute changes in brightness as the scorching gas giant WASP-18b passed behind its star, scientists created a weather map of an exoplanet, transforming these distant worlds from featureless dots into environments we can actually study layer by layer. This new technique could soon map hundreds of other similar hot Jupiters, finally bringing alien atmospheres into focus as real places with their own geography and weather patterns.

Every kilogram of rocket fuel is dead weight once it’s burned, yet conventional spacecraft must carry hundreds, sometimes thousands of tons of propellant to reach even nearby planets. This fundamental limitation has confined humanity to our own Solar System for decades. But a new generation of propulsion concepts promises to break free from this constraint entirely, harnessing radiation pressure, solar wind, and planetary gravity to accelerate spacecraft without carrying a single drop of fuel. These elegant systems could finally make interstellar exploration feasible…if engineers can overcome their formidable technical challenges.

How does water form on exoplanets and what could this mean for the search for life beyond Earth? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of scientists investigated the processes responsible for exoplanets producing liquid water. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth, and specifically which exoplanets could be viable future targets for astrobiology.

NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto has forced astronomers to rewrite their textbooks — but that’s not all: In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, space scientist Les Johnson explains how New Horizons forced him to rewrite "Pluto," the final novel in Ben Bova's Grand Tour series.

Black holes are usually described as having an event horizon and a singularity, but there are alternative models that don't have these bothersome mathematical paradoxes.

So where do we go after years of empty searches for dark matter? We haven’t learned nothing.

How could the principle of “radical mundanity” proposed by the Fermi paradox help explain why humans haven’t found evidence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations (ETCs)? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a lone researcher investigated the prospect for finding ETCs based on this principle. This study has the potential to help scientists and the public better understand why we haven’t identified intelligent life beyond Earth and how we might narrow the search for it.

The Vera Rubin Observatory saw first light in June 2025. Its images from that time are called the Virgo First Look images because they focus on the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. M61 is one of the galaxies in that cluster, and the VRO has detected a stellar stream of stars around the distant spiral galaxy in Rubin's images.

Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia have created a stunning new radio colour image of the Milky Way. By mapping different radio frequencies to RGB colours, the image reveals large-scale astrophysical phenomena and gives researchers a new tool to understand the lifecycle of stars.

What if I told you that while you can’t see dark matter, maybe you can hear it?

We successfully plugged the hole in the ozone layer that was discovered in the 1980s by banning ozone depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But, it seems we might be unintentionally creating another potential atmospheric calamity by using the upper atmosphere to destroy huge constellations of satellites after a very short (i.e. 5 year) lifetime. According to a new paper by Leonard Schulz of the Technical University of Braunschweig and his co-authors, material from satellites that burn up in the atmosphere, especially transition metals, could have unforeseen consequences on atmospheric chemistry - and we’re now the biggest contributor of some of those elements.

Why is it important to know about exoplanets having their atmospheres stripped while orbiting F-type stars? This is what a recent study submitted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of scientists conducted a first-time investigation into atmospheric escape on planets orbiting F-type stars, the latter of which are larger and hotter than our Sun. Atmospheric escape occurs on planets orbiting extremely close to their stars, resulting in the extreme temperature and radiation from the host star slowly stripping away the planet’s atmosphere.

The gas giant’s early growth carved rings in the protoplanetary disk that surrounded our Sun billions of years ago. This process set the architecture for the inner Solar System and prevented Earth from spiraling into the Sun.

New research from Tel Aviv University reveals that the first stars in the Universe formed in binary systems. These stars played a vital role in the evolution of early galaxies, giving rise to black holes and seeding the Universe with the ingredients for life.

A tiny dim satellite galaxy of the Milky Way doesn't have enough stars to hold itself together. Its properties suggest that its dark matter halo is holding it together, but new research counters that. Researchers say that it's not dark matter but a massive black hole that's keeping the dwarf galaxy intact.