Astronomy

SpaceX released a video that offers a glimpse at how Starlink satellite kits are made in the company's factory outside of Austin, Texas.

We see the Universe through a glass darkly, or more accurately, through a dusty window. Interstellar dust is scattered throughout the Milky Way, which limits our view depending on where we look. In some directions, the effects of dust are small, but in other regions the view is so dusty it's called the Zone of Avoidance. Dust biases our view of the heavens, but fortunately a new study has created a detailed map of cosmic dust so we can better account for it.

When massive stars explode as supernovae, they can leave behind neutron stars. Other than black holes, these are the densest objects we know of. However, their masses are difficult to determine. New research is making headway.

A meteorite discovered in north-west Africa in 2023 didn’t come from a large asteroid or any of the known planets of the solar system – but it might have formed on a planet that was destroyed long ago

A meteorite discovered in north-west Africa in 2023 didn’t come from a large asteroid or any of the known planets of the solar system – but it might have formed on a planet that was destroyed long ago

NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 members pose together for a portrait inside the vestibule between the International Space Station and the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured this stunning long-exposure view of Earth and stars from space at night from the International Space Station.

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range, but will they be widely used?

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range, but will they be widely used?

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range

The search for life has become one of the holy grails of science. With the increasing number of exoplanet discoveries, astronomers are hunting for a chemical that can only be present in the atmosphere of a planet with life! A new paper suggests that methyl halides, which contain one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, may just do the trick. Here on Earth they are produced by bacteria, algae, fungi and some plants but not by any abiotic processes (non biological.) There is a hitch, detecting these chemicals is beyond the reach of current telescopes.

The clearest and most precise images yet of the universe’s infancy from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope show the first steps toward the first stars and galaxies.

The finest ever map of the cosmic microwave background - the faint evidence of the universe's early form - has yielded precise confirmation of the age of the cosmos and its rate of expansion. But for some scientists, the findings offer a frustrating lack of clues to major cosmological mysteries

The finest ever map of the cosmic microwave background - the faint evidence of the universe's early form - has yielded precise confirmation of the age of the cosmos and its rate of expansion. But for some scientists, the findings offer a frustrating lack of clues to major cosmological mysteries

Paramount celebrates with a USS Enterprise bridge photo and new Season 3 character posters

RFK, Jr. fought mercury pollution for years, but he is now in an administration that wants to make it easier for industries to dump it into the air and water

Money is a deeply emotive subject, our attitudes to it vary wildly and we are reluctant to bring it up in conversation. Could new research help us to be less weird about it?

Money is a deeply emotive subject, our attitudes to it vary wildly and we are reluctant to bring it up in conversation. Could new research help us to be less weird about it?

The China Space Station Telescope, scheduled for a 2027 launch, will offer astronomers a fresh view on the cosmos. Though somewhat smaller than Hubble, it features a much wider field of view, giving a wide-field surveys that will map gravitational lensing, galaxy clusters, and cosmic voids. Scientists anticipate it will measure dark energy with 1% precision, differentiate between cold and dark matter models, and evaluate gravitational theories.