Astronomy

There is plenty of intriguing sci-fi on offer this month, whether it’s solar-powered cities from Adrian Tchaikovsky or a strange future from M. John Harrison

Messier 88 is an active galaxy with a central supermassive black hole that is gobbling up gas and dust

Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies

Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies

A cloaked alien invasion force is approaching Earth and coming up on Mars. The first officer looks through a viewfinder and says, “Captain, the fourth planet’s atmosphere is behaving strangely. As though it were trying to block incoming energy.” The captain takes a moment, then his (already big) eyes get wide and he exclaims, “It’s a defense shield! The Earthlings are hiding on the fourth planet and are prepared to attack us! Abort the invasion!” The first officer responds, “Aye aye, Captain!”

As General Dwight D. Eisenhower prepared for D-Day, he needed a forecast. The new movie Pressure shows the tense make-or-break weather prediction that led to the successful invasion of Europe that spelled the beginning of the end of World War II

High-bandwidth memory keeps powerful AI chips fed with data, and demand for it helped Boise, Idaho–based Micron briefly top $1 trillion in market value

Rovers, drones, and landers will usher in a sustained lunar presence, under the new plan NASA announced this week.

The post NASA Brings Its Lunar Ambitions into Focus with Moon Base Missions appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The Sun has a heartbeat. Every eleven years it swells with magnetic fury, hurling solar flares and charged particles into space, sparking auroral displays and threatening power grids, all before quietening down again. We've tracked this rhythm for centuries. But now, scientists listening to sound waves deep inside our local star have found something deeply unexpected, that heartbeat is changing. And nobody yet knows what it means.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the faint glow of the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017.

Reanalysis shows that the Hubble Space Telescope's detection of water vapor escaping from Jupiter’s moon Europa might have been a glitch.

The post Evidence of Water Plumes from Jupiter's Moon Europa Vanishes appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

According to a mathematical model of how people weigh up different outcomes, the optimal strategy is to be ambitious, but not overly so

According to a mathematical model of how people weigh up different outcomes, the optimal strategy is to be ambitious, but not overly so

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What did space deliver for Europe this month? From asteroid flybys to Mars landing tests, new discoveries from Webb and Hubble, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot capturing shooting stars from orbit, here’s your monthly roundup from the European Space Agency.

This month also saw ESA team up with DON’T NOD for Aphelion, a sci-fi adventure inspired by real space science and exploration.

New-generation GLP-1 drugs, such as retatrutide, are achieving higher rates of weight loss. How much weight is too much and too fast to lose?

The latest flight of the New Glenn rocket was meant to prepare Blue Origin for a series of NASA-funded lunar voyages. Instead it ended before it began

Week in images: 25-29 May 2026

Discover our week through the lens

Quantum Backrooms is a horror game in which the player explores eerie rooms. The twist is that the rooms have been generated by a quantum computer

Quantum Backrooms is a horror game in which the player explores eerie rooms. The twist is that the rooms have been generated by a quantum computer

Unseasonably hot weather in Europe has already claimed at least 18 lives. And history shows more are likely on the way