The space of night is infinite,
The blackness and emptiness
Crossed only by thin bright fences
Of logic

— Kenneth Rexroth
"Theory of Numbers"

Astronomy

Lunar Outpost unveils sleek new 'Eagle' moon rover (photos)

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 11:00am
Lunar Outpost unveiled its new "Eagle" moon rover at the 40th annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, and it looks straight out of science fiction.
Categories: Astronomy

Why Social Media Screen Time Is So Bad for Sleep

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 10:15am

Scrolling on social media at bedtime is particularly disruptive to sleep. Here’s why

Categories: Astronomy

Voyager, Sputnik and more: New collectible pins celebrate humanity's robotic space explorers

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 10:00am
A design studio's plan for a new collectible set seeks to "pin" down the pivotal probes from space exploration history. Chop Shop is seeking fans of robotic spacecraft to help produce lapel pins.
Categories: Astronomy

This Star Might Have Been Thrown Out of a Globular Cluster by an Intermediate Mass Black Hole

Universe Today - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 9:02am

Astronomers are on the hunt for those in-between black holes, not the small stellar ones or the supermassive ones, but something right in the middle. Recently, a group of scientists spotted a star travelling at high velocity out of the globular cluster M15. This speedy star got kicked out about 20 million years ago and is now zooming along at an incredible 550 km/s, fast enough that it's actually escaping our entire Galaxy! The researchers think this stellar ejection might have happened because of some cosmic game of pool - basically a three-body interaction involving one of those middle-sized black holes they've been trying to find!

Categories: Astronomy

How science gets tested on alien worlds: 'We quickly realize how much there is yet to discover'

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 9:00am
New insights into the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres indicates planet-wide rainfall might take place following hydrogen atmosphere and water mixing.
Categories: Astronomy

Mpox Outbreak in Africa Traced Back to Squirrels

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 9:00am

A team of researchers traced the wild animal source of the mpox virus to the fire-footed rope squirrel

Categories: Astronomy

There Could Be Life on Titan, But Not Very Much

Universe Today - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 8:16am

The search for life in our Solar System, however primitive, past or present has typically focussed upon Mars and a select few moons of the outer Solar System. Saturn’s moon Titan for example has all the raw materials for life scattered across its surface, rivers and lakes of methane along with rock and sand containing water ice. There’s even a sprinkling of organic compounds too but according to a new study, Titan can probably only support a few kilograms of biomass overall, that’s just one cell per litre of water across Titan’s ocean.

Categories: Astronomy

New ESA invention tested in a chamber of no echoes

ESO Top News - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 8:10am
Image: New ESA invention tested in a chamber of no echoes
Categories: Astronomy

This More Than 380-Year-Old Trick Can Crack Some Modern Encryption

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 8:00am

A little math from the 1600s can make what people send to a printer more vulnerable

Categories: Astronomy

Why People Feel More Energized with Less Sleep

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 7:30am

People on TikTok and other social media say they feel more alert when they have had fewer hours of sleep—but sleep scientists warn this is a false sense of energy

Categories: Astronomy

JWST Spots Giant Spiral Galaxy Shockingly Early in Cosmic History

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 7:00am

Nicknamed the “Big Wheel,” a giant, spiral-shaped disk galaxy was spotted in an unusually crowded part of the early universe just two billion years after the big bang

Categories: Astronomy

Watch Atlas V rocket launch 1st big batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper internet satellites

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 6:01am
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch Amazon's first big batch of Project Kuiper broadband satellites today (April 9), and you can watch it live.
Categories: Astronomy

If Bacterial Vaginosis Acts like an STI, Should It Be Treated like One?

Scientific American.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 6:00am

Bacterial vaginosis is an irritating overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. A new study has found that some cases of the condition should be treated like a sexually transmitted infection.

Categories: Astronomy

Martian rock on the move

ESO Top News - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 6:00am

This new snapshot from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express deftly captures the two distinct faces of Mars: ridged and rugged versus smooth and unmarked.

Categories: Astronomy

Newly discovered Comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN) captured in stunning photo blazing across UK skies

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 5:56am
The striking Comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN) photograph was captured by astrophotographer Josh Dury at 4:50 a.m. local time on April 9.
Categories: Astronomy

How Trump's tariffs could shake up the global space industry

Space.com - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 5:00am
Trump-era trade policies could reshape the global space economy, straining transatlantic ties and pushing Europe toward new partnerships and greater autonomy.
Categories: Astronomy

The Search for Biosignatures in Enceladus’ Plumes

Universe Today - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 1:44am

What kind of mission would be best suited to sample the plumes of Saturn’s ocean world, Enceladus, to determine if this intriguing world has the ingredients to harbor life? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the pros and cons of an orbiter or flyby mission to sample Enceladus’ plumes. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners design and develop the most scientifically effective mission to Enceladus with the goal of determining its potential habitability.

Categories: Astronomy

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APOD - Tue, 04/08/2025 - 8:00pm

Why does Jupiter have rings?


Categories: Astronomy, NASA

The Solar Wind Crashes Into Jupiter a Few Times Every Month

Universe Today - Tue, 04/08/2025 - 7:16pm

In the great tug-of-war between the Sun and its planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are much more susceptible to solar activities than scientists thought. Jupiter itself has an interesting reaction as it gets pummeled several times a month by solar wind bursts. They compress its magnetosphere and create a huge "hot spot" with temperatures over 500C.

Categories: Astronomy

Our Understanding of the Physical Properties of Galaxies Could Be Wrong

Universe Today - Tue, 04/08/2025 - 6:51pm

Up until recently, astronomy was reliant entirely on electromagnetic waves. While that changed with the confirmation of gravitational waves in 2016, astronomers had developed fundamental frameworks in the electromagnetic spectrum by that point. One critical framework broke the spectrum into three categories based on their wavelength - infrared, optical, and ultraviolet. To astronomers, each of these categories was created by a different physical phenomenon, and monitoring each gave its insight into what that phenomenon was doing, no matter what the other spectra said. This was especially prevalent when researching galaxies, as infrared and optical wavelengths were used to analyze different aspects of galaxy formation and behavior. However, Christian Kragh Jespersen of Princeton's Department of Astrophysics and his colleagues think they have found a secret that breaks the entire electromagnetic framework - the optical and infrared are connected.

Categories: Astronomy