Astronomy

New insights into the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres indicates planet-wide rainfall might take place following hydrogen atmosphere and water mixing.

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

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.

Image: New ESA invention tested in a chamber of no echoes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The striking Comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN) photograph was captured by astrophotographer Josh Dury at 4:50 a.m. local time on April 9.

Trump-era trade policies could reshape the global space economy, straining transatlantic ties and pushing Europe toward new partnerships and greater autonomy.

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.

Why does Jupiter have rings?

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.

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.

It’s easy to measure the rotation rate of terrestrial planet by tracking surface features but the gas and ice giants pose more of a problem. Instead, previous studies have relied upon indirect measures like measuring the rotation of their magnetic fields. Now a team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to refine the rotation rate of Uranus with an incredible level of accuracy. This time though, instead of studying the rotation of the magnetic field, they tracked aurora to measure one rotation!

We all know that black holes can devour stars. Rip them apart and consume their remnants. But that only happens if a star passes too close to a black hole. What if a star gets close enough to a star to experience strong tidal effects, but not close enough to be immediately devoured? This scenario is considered in a recent paper on the arXiv.

Asteroid 2024 YR4, once a potential Earth threat, likely originated from the main asteroid belt's central region, a surprising origin for Earth-crossing space rocks, a new study finds.

Trump officially nominated Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut to lead NASA, shortly after taking office.