Astronomy

"Our work is a new piece of evidence that suggests that Mars was once a much more complex and active planet than it is now."

China is poised to make space exploration history again with its Tianwen-3 mission launching in 2028. With the audacious plan to drill two meters beneath Mars' radiation blasted surface it aims to collect samples that could harbor ancient microbial life, and bring them back to Earth for the first time in human history! The mission's most intriguing challenge isn't the technical feat of interplanetary sample return, it’s the quarantine protocols required once these potentially life containing samples arrive on Earth making this mission as much about protecting our planet as it is about exploring another.

A 14year study of Hong Kong's Earth Hour participation has revealed that it's not the millions of apartment windows or office buildings that steal our night sky, but rather a small handful of brightly lit skyscrapers and LED advertising boards that have an outsized impact on darkness above cities. When these decorative lights and digital screens go dark, the night sky becomes up to 50% darker, offering a hopeful new strategy for tackling light pollution without requiring massive citywide changes. Could this be he the change that dramatically improve night sky visibility for stargazers, wildlife, and anyone hoping to reconnect with the the night sky above our urban landscapes?

When Einstein's predicted ripples in spacetime pass through magnetic fields, they cause the current carrying wires to dance at the gravitational wave frequency, creating potentially detectable electrical signals. Researchers have discovered that the same powerful magnets used to hunt for dark matter could double as gravitational wave detectors. This means experiments already searching for the universe's most elusive particles could simultaneously capture collisions between black holes and neutron stars, getting two of physics' most ambitious experiments for the price of one, while potentially opening entirely new windows into the universe's most violent events.

There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris hurling around the Earth right now. Since it can cost tens of millions of dollars to remove just a single piece of space debris, which are the ones that we should be most concerned with? A few years ago, 11 teams of experts came together to rank the 50 most concerning pieces of debris, the ones that they think would be the highest priority. Although they used different approaches, 20-40% of the objects ended up on several experts' lists.

Portrait of a galaxy cluster

A massive filament eruption carved a 250,000-mile-long "canyon of fire" into the sun — and sent a CME sailing into space.

China is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in sinking data centers that power AI into the ocean as an alternate way to keep them cool

In human beings, egg cells need to survive for about five decades, much longer than most other cell types – and they may achieve this unusually long lifespan by slowing down their natural cell processes

In human beings, egg cells need to survive for about five decades, much longer than most other cell types – and they may achieve this unusually long lifespan by slowing down their natural cell processes

After 10 years of gravitational-wave research, the LIGO Lab team at MIT is getting ready for the next generation of detectors.

The impact that carved out the moon's huge South Pole-Aitken basin may explain the puzzling differences between the lunar near and far sides.

An expedition in the Red Sea found several brine pools that appear to be fed by underwater volcanoes, which may be home to microbes and animals with unique adaptations

An expedition in the Red Sea found several brine pools that appear to be fed by underwater volcanoes, which may be home to microbes and animals with unique adaptations

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View of Earth as seen by ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski inside the seven-windowed cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world".

The European Space Agency-built Cupola is the favourite place of many astronauts on the International Space Station. It serves not only as a unique photo spot, but also for observing robotic activities of the Canadian Space Agency's robotic arm Canadarm2, arriving spacecraft and spacewalks.

Sławosz was launched to the International Space Station on the Dragon spacecraft as part of Axiom Mission 4 on 25 June 2025. The 20-day mission on board is known as Ignis.
During the Ignis mission, Sławosz conducted 13 experiments proposed by Polish companies and institutions and developed in collaboration with ESA, along with three additional ESA-led experiments. These covered a broad range of areas including human research, materials science, biology, biotechnology and technology demonstrations.  

The Ax-4 mission marks the second commercial human spaceflight for an ESA project astronaut. Ignis was sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA).   

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 26 Starlink internet satellites into low Earth orbit after lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 15, 2025.

New research indicates that cellular "pockets" that are the first step toward protocells, the precursors of life, could form in the methane seas of Saturn's moon Titan.

Social inequality and the decay of democratic institutions are linked to accelerated aging, but education seems to slow the process

SpaceX launched 24 of Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband satellites early Wednesday morning (July 16), the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 liftoff.