Astronomy

SpaceX's Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.

A comparison of the thylacine’s genome to other marsupials has revealed that the creatures lost genetic diversity long before humans and dingoes arrived in Australia

A comparison of the thylacine’s genome to other marsupials has revealed that the creatures lost genetic diversity long before humans and dingoes arrived in Australia

Sometimes even the sky surprises you.

At the core of the

What are those curved arcs in the sky?

What's hovering above the Sun?

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe lost contact with Earth for nearly a full day recently, but the problem was solved in time for its planned Aug. 31 Venus flyby.

Even if life never took hold on Ceres, the discovery could help broaden the range of environments that could potentially be habitable.

The rare sailback houndshark, which has an unusually large dorsal fin, was first described by scientists in 1973. That was the last record of its existence, until now

The rare sailback houndshark, which has an unusually large dorsal fin, was first described by scientists in 1973. That was the last record of its existence, until now

For the first time, astrophysicists have spotted a supernova right before it explodes. This is a rare glimpse inside a massive star before it meets its doom. The star was stripped down to its core, and the observations confirm theories that show stars have onion-like layers.

Now versions of the Great Filter argument had been around for decades (just like Fermi was not the first person to ask where everybody is), but the most comprehensive form of the argument comes from Robin Hanson in 1996.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the most powerful signals in the universe. They can emit as much power in a few milliseconds as our Sun does in several days. Despite their strength, we still don’t have a definitive answer to what causes them. That is partly because, at least for the ones that only happen once, they are really hard to point down. But a new extension to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) might provide the resolution needed to determine where non-repeating FRBs come from - and its first discovery was one of the brightest FRBs of all time, which helped researchers track it with an unprecedented level of precision, as described in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A new study led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Barcelona presents a new method and protocol for detecting supernovae within days. Their findings are crucial to astronomers hoping to learn more about these powerful events and the life cycles of stars.

Scientists thought they had Jupiter figured out until NASA's Juno spacecraft peered inside our Solar System’s largest planet and discovered something completely unexpected. Jupiter doesn't have the solid, well defined core that researchers had imagined, instead, Jupiter's core is mysteriously fuzzy and blurred, defying everything we thought we knew about how giant planets form. Now, powerful computer simulations are overturning the leading theory about how this strange structure came to be, suggesting that Jupiter's secrets run deeper than anyone realised.

Asteroids floating through our Solar System are debris left over from when our planetary neighbourhood formed 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists study these ancient fragments as time capsules that reveal secrets about our Solar System's earliest days. Now, new research has uncovered a surprising connection between two completely different types of asteroids that may actually share the same dramatic origin story.