Astronomy

Mercury pollution accumulating in trees could offer a new way to monitor destructive gold mining operations

A never-before-flown SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit today (April 7) from the coast of California.

Physicists think the insides of black holes may be complex mazes of tangled strings in higher dimensions

A fresh analysis of a decade's worth of Hubble Space Telescope observations shows Uranus takes 17 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds to complete a full rotation — 28 seconds longer than the estimate provided by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft nearly 40 years ago.

Astronomers have discovered a remarkable star system just 150 light-years from Earth that's destined for a spectacular cosmic display. The system contains a white dwarf star drawing material from its companion star, with the pair orbiting at just 1/60th of the Earth-Sun distance. With their combined mass reaching 1.56 times that of our Sun, these stars are gradually spiralling toward each other, setting the stage for a spectacular explosion. Fortunately, scientists estimate this cataclysmic event won't occur for roughly 23 billion years, long after our own Sun will have reached the end of its life cycle.

India's POEM-4 experiment module burned up and fell into the Indian Ocean to avoid becoming space debris.

The U.S. Space Force has awarded $13.7 billion in national-security launch contracts to SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin for missions that will lift off between 2027 and 2032.

Can the Sun appear to rise twice at the same time?

A bright star located in the Milky Way appears nestled in the distant galaxy NGC 5530 due to a chance alignment along the Hubble Space Telescope's line of sight.

Although astronomers have ruled out a smash-up between Earth and an asteroid known as 2024 YR4 in the year 2032, the building-sized space rock still has a chance of hitting the moon. In fact, the chances — slight as they are — have doubled in the past month.

Colossal Biosciences claims three pups born recently are dire wolves, but they are actually grey wolves with genetic edits intended to make them resemble the lost species

Colossal Biosciences claims three pups born recently are dire wolves, but they are actually grey wolves with genetic edits intended to make them resemble the lost species

A recently developed medication encourages people with cocaine use disorder to reduce their intake of the stimulant – a step towards the first approved drugs to treat the problem

A recently developed medication encourages people with cocaine use disorder to reduce their intake of the stimulant – a step towards the first approved drugs to treat the problem

In 23 billion years, these two white dwarf stars will collide. Then, they'll explore. Here's why scientists say this discovery is such a big deal.

Despite their name, black holes can sometimes emit radiation. A team of astronomers has recently detected a flicker of X-ray radiation from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy. This flicker was identified using 15 years of data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, revealing two distinct flashes in 2006 and 2013. Interestingly, these flashes coincided with bursts of neutrinos detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, offering exciting new insights into the extreme conditions surrounding the black hole.

New 'Superman' trailer gives us more Krypto, a better look at the Fortress of Solitude, and a giggling servant robot.

Terraforming Mars has been the long-term dream of colonization enthusiasts for decades. But when you start to grapple with the actual physics of what would be necessary to do so, the effort seems further and further out of reach. Depictions like those of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy are just wildly unrealistic regarding the sheer amount of material that must be moved to the Red Planet to achieve anything remotely resembling Earth-like conditions. That is the conclusion of an abstract presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Leszek Czechowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

President Trump's DOGE team, headed by Elon Musk, claims to have saved $1 million by ditching 70-year-old tape data storage. But experts say the move will likely end up costing more in the long term and could put data at risk

President Trump's DOGE team, headed by Elon Musk, claims to have saved $1 million by ditching 70-year-old tape data storage. But experts say the move will likely end up costing more in the long term and could put data at risk