Astronomy

The numbers of many tropical birds are plummeting, and now it has been shown that heat extremes intensified by global warming are the biggest factor driving these declines

Scientists are making milestones on NASA's Roman Space Telescope as Trump continues to threaten the agency's science budget.

ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has been imaging the dynamic Acheron Fossae region of Mars for more than 20 years.

Companies are experimenting with deep-sea tech to produce cheaper fresh water

The quickest way to win the board game Guess Who? involves asking sneaky questions that involve a logical paradox, according to mathematicians

The quickest way to win the board game Guess Who? involves asking sneaky questions that involve a logical paradox, according to mathematicians

A distant galaxy nicknamed "Cosmic Grapes" is bursting with massive star-forming clumps — far more than expected — offering fresh clues about how galaxies grew in the early universe.

Explore the words of science past from Scientific American

The Perseid meteor shower takes place each year as Earth travels through the debris shed by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

Video: 00:01:45

Experience the preparation of the MetOp-SG-A1 satellite, hosting Copernicus Sentinel-5, scheduled for liftoff on an Ariane 6 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 August 2025 at 02:37 CEST (12 August 21:37 Kourou time). This timelapse video captures key stages from the encapsulation within the Ariane 6 fairing to the installation in the launch tower.

MetOp-SG-A1 is the first in a series of three successive pairs of satellites. The mission as a whole not only ensures the continued delivery of global observations from polar orbit for weather forecasting and climate analysis for more than 20 years, but also offers enhanced accuracy and resolution compared to the original MetOp mission – along with new measurement capabilities to expand its scientific reach.

This new weather satellite also carries the Copernicus Sentinel-5 mission to deliver daily global data on air pollutants and atmospheric trace gases as well as aerosols and ultraviolet radiation.

New research suggests the first stars weren't the behemoths we expected them to be — which might explain why we haven't seen them yet.

The post Were the Very First Stars Really That Massive? appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

This long-exposure image from the International Space Station shows the growing tension between celestial beauty and human expansion into space.

Searching for life on Mars has been an explicit goal of the astrobiological community for decades. However, they have not really had the resources to effectively do so, and they might be running out of time. Crewed missions to Mars are planned for as little as 15 years from now (though those timelines might be changing…again), and by the time that happens it may be too late to separate Martian life from unintentionally transplanted Earth-life. According to a group of researchers from the Agnostic Life Finding Association, there is one final chance to detect Martian life before it is irreversibly contaminated - the Mars Life Explorer (MLE). But to do its job properly, it’s going to need an upgrade.

Scientists have finally solved a billion year old mystery that explains how life on Earth survived its earliest and most vulnerable stages. Using powerful computer simulations, researchers have proved that our planet's completely liquid core could generate the magnetic field that acts as an invisible shield against deadly cosmic radiation. This groundbreaking discovery reveals that Earth has been protecting life far longer than previously thought, creating a safe haven where the first complex molecules could form and evolve without being destroyed by high energy particles from space.

The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest look at a planetary nebula, NGC 6072, provides new insights into the lifecycle of stars. This could help astronomers predict what will happen to our Sun during its final days as well.

A jet from a young star created an expanding bubble that collided with the star's protoplanetary disk. Astronomers have found these explosive bubbles before, but never one that's collided with the disk. What does this mean for planet formation?

Massive galaxies like the Milky Way have smaller satellite galaxies that are tidally disrupted and absorbed. Astronomers think this is how galaxies assemble hierarchically. New research examines galaxies much less massive than the Milky Way to see if they also have their own, much less massive satellites.

An artificial intelligence breakthrough uses reinforcement learning to tackle the Andrews-Curtis conjecture, solving long-standing counterexamples and hinting at tools for forecasting stock crashes, diseases and climate disasters

New research is revealing how disease-smelling dogs can excel

From planets roaming space to major shifts in health funding, catch up with this week’s news roundup.