Astronomy

In the 1970’s Vera Rubin didn’t set out to upend modern cosmology.

Plague, leprosy, smallpox and other diseases didn't jump from animals to humans when we thought. Ancient DNA is revealing where they come from and how they changed history

Plague, leprosy, smallpox and other diseases didn't jump from animals to humans when we thought. Ancient DNA is revealing where they come from and how they changed history

The role of space for security was presented at a high-level event in Brussels on Tuesday.

The monster hurricane pummelling Jamaica is powered by abnormal sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean, which were made at least 500 times more likely by global warming

The monster hurricane pummelling Jamaica is powered by abnormal sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean, which were made at least 500 times more likely by global warming

The monster hurricane pummelling Jamaica is powered by abnormal sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean, which were made at least 500 times more likely by global warming

These rare samples, uncovered on the moon by China’s Chang’e 6 mission, might help to reveal secrets of how the solar system evolved

New peer-reviewed research reporting strange lights in the pre-space-age sky is sparking curiosity and controversy

Image: The Red Spider Nebula (Webb)

The European Space Agency has announced it is establishing a new presence in Tokyo, Japan, its first in Asia.

Theorists have found that a “warm” version of cosmic inflation is consistent with known physics, linking it to the hunt for dark matter

Asteroids spin. Most of them do so rather slowly, and up until now most theories of asteroid rotation have failed to explain exactly why. A new paper from Wen-Han Zhou at the University of Tokyo and his co-authors might finally be able to fully explain that mystery as well as a few others related to asteroid rotation. Their work was presented at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science in late September and could impact our understanding of how best to defend against a potentially hazardous asteroid.

Civets enrich coffee beans they eat and excrete with two fatty acids often used in dairy products, study finds

The noperthedron has a surprising property—which disproves a long-standing conjecture

Image: This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission show Hurricane Melissa as it barrelled through the Caribbean Sea

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission is about to get its fourth satellite, with Sentinel-1D now ready for liftoff. Launch will take place with an Ariane 6 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana and live coverage will be shown on Tuesday, 4 November, at 22:02 CET (18:02 at Kourou).

Could scientists find life in the clouds of exoplanet atmospheres? This is what a recently submitted manuscript hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how the biosignatures of microbes could be identified in exoplanet atmospheres and clouds. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for finding life on exoplanets, either as we know it or even as we don’t know it.

A team led by a University of Maryland astronomer detected large complex organic molecules in ices outside of the Milky Way for the first time, offering a glimpse into the chemistry of the early universe.