Nothing is the bridge between the future and the further future. Nothing is certainty. Nothing is any definition of anything.

— Peter Hammill

Universe Today

Syndicate content
Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today
Updated: 14 hours 2 min ago

Magnets Could Become the Next Generation of Gravitational Wave Detectors

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

When Einstein's predicted ripples in spacetime pass through magnetic fields, they cause the current carrying wires to dance at the gravitational wave frequency, creating potentially detectable electrical signals. Researchers have discovered that the same powerful magnets used to hunt for dark matter could double as gravitational wave detectors. This means experiments already searching for the universe's most elusive particles could simultaneously capture collisions between black holes and neutron stars, getting two of physics' most ambitious experiments for the price of one, while potentially opening entirely new windows into the universe's most violent events.

Categories: Astronomy

These are the Most Concerning Pieces of Space Debris

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris hurling around the Earth right now. Since it can cost tens of millions of dollars to remove just a single piece of space debris, which are the ones that we should be most concerned with? A few years ago, 11 teams of experts came together to rank the 50 most concerning pieces of debris, the ones that they think would be the highest priority. Although they used different approaches, 20-40% of the objects ended up on several experts' lists.

Categories: Astronomy

Hubble Images Used to Create a Beautiful Portrait of the Abell 209 Galaxy Cluster

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Portrait of a galaxy cluster

Categories: Astronomy

California Desert Dunes Hold Keys to Understanding Mars' Shifting Sands

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Armed with a drone and a device which is a cross between a scoop and a spatula, a graduate student is cracking the code of Mars by studying California's desert dunes. By comparing wind carved patterns in the Algodones Desert with satellite images of the Red Planet, researchers are creating humanity's first comprehensive database of Martian sand formations, work that could determine where future astronauts can safely establish bases without getting buried alive. Her pioneering research proves that sometimes the keys to exploring alien worlds aren't found in billion dollar space missions, but in the shifting sands right here on Earth.

Categories: Astronomy

Are We in a Giant Void? That Would Help Explain the Hubble Tension

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

It's assumed that our region of the Universe isn't special, and the Hubble Tension, or mismatch of expansion rates of the Universe at different times, is happening everywhere. But what if our place is unusual, for example, if the Milky Way is inside a lower-density region of the Universe, with stronger gravity pulling material away from us in all directions? A new paper suggests we might be in a void that's emptying out towards higher-density regions all around us.

Categories: Astronomy

Scientists Discover Uranus Has a Dancing Partner

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Hidden in the darkness between Uranus and Neptune, a team of astronomers have discovered a small world locked in a million year gravitational waltz with Uranus. The asteroid enjoying this celestial dance with Uranus completes exactly three orbits for every four of the ice giant, representing the first known stable partnership of its kind in this remote region of the Solar System. The discovery proves that even in the apparent chaos of space, there are elegant mathematical relationships that have persisted, revealing new secrets about how gravitational forces sculpt the architecture of our planetary system.

Categories: Astronomy

This is the Closest Picture Ever Taken of the Sun

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

December 24th, 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its closest approach to the Sun so far, coming within just 6.1 million km from the surface of the Sun. During this flyby, it captured data and images, including this incredible picture using the Wide Field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR. In this WISPR image, you can see the corona and solar wind, charged particles coming from the Sun, hurled across the Solar System. The next pass will happen in September.

Categories: Astronomy

Primordial Black Hole Flybys Could Alter Exoplanet Orbits

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Close encounters with massive objects can alter the orbits of planets around their stars. Stellar flybys can change planetary orbits, and may be responsible for some of the rogue or free-floating planets astronomers have discovered. But stars aren't the only massive objects out there, and new research suggests that primordial black holes may alter the orbits of exoplanets.

Categories: Astronomy

Funding Astrobiology Challenges Can Bring Us Closer To Understanding the Origins of Life

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Astrobiology can be split into two very distinct fields. There’s the field that astronomers are likely more familiar with, involving large telescopes, exoplanets, and spectroscopic signals that are pored over to debate whether they show signs of life. But there is another camp, collective known as the Origins researchers that focus on developing a scientific understanding of how life originally developed on Earth. A new paper from Cole Mathis at Arizona State and Harrison B. Smith at the Institute of Science in Tokyo suggests a new path forward to tackling those challenges - set them up as competitions and let a hefty prize motivate scientific teams and individuals to pursue them.

Categories: Astronomy

Ancient Rivers in Noachis Terra Reveal Mars' Long-Lived Wet Past

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

In the last couple of decades, evidence has accumulated showing that ancient Mars was a warm planet with abundant water flowing across its surface. The more scientists study the planet, the more evidence they find. New research examining Mars' Noachis Terra region adds to this evidence, showing that flowing water was once widespread across this less-often studied region.

Categories: Astronomy

Spotting New Interstellar Comet C/2025 N1 ATLAS

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

It’s the question of the hour. On the first day of the month July 1st, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station at Río Hurtado, Chile spotted an interstellar interloper, which would receive the official designation C/2025 N1 ATLAS or 3I/ATLAS. The ‘I’ is a rare ‘interstellar’ designation, only the third such object known of after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2/I Borisov. But can we see it? Such a spectacle as actually seeing an interstellar comet would be a true rarity to cross off your skywatching life list.

Categories: Astronomy

Tracking Molecules In the Interstellar Medium

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Stars don’t form out of nothing, but tracking the gas and dust that do eventually form stars is hard. They float around the galaxy at almost absolute zero, emitting essentially no light, and generally making life difficult for astronomers. But, part of how they make life difficult is actually the key to studying them - they have “absorption lines” that detail what kind of material the light is passing through on its way to Earth. A new paper from Harvey Liszt of America’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Maryvonne Gerin of the Sorbonne details how tracking those absorption lines via radio astronomy can trace the “dark neutral medium” of interstellar gas throughout the galaxy.

Categories: Astronomy

Ancient Moon Rock Reveals Missing Chapter in Lunar History

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

A 2.35 billion year old rock that fell from the sky in Africa is rewriting our understanding of the Moon's past. This ancient meteorite, blasted off the lunar surface has revealed that our closest neighbor remained volcanically active for nearly a billion years longer than scientists previously knew. With its unique chemical fingerprint pointing to deep lunar origins, this rare space rock proves that sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries don't require billion dollar missions, they literally drop into our laps, carrying secrets from space.

Categories: Astronomy

A Small Satellite Could See a Perfect Solar Eclipse Every Month

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Why wait for rare solar eclipses? ESA's Proba mission can now create an artificial solar eclipse once a day. Now, a UK-led mission could do the same trick, but using the Moon's shadow to provide a 48-minute total eclipse once every lunar orbit (29.6 days). Named the Moon-Enabled Sun Occultation Mission (MESOM), the small spacecraft would align its orbit with the Moon, blocking the Sun perfectly, allowing observations of the solar atmosphere.

Categories: Astronomy

The Roman Space Telescope is Coming Together as Engineers Install its Solar Panels

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

On June 14 and 16, technicians installed solar panels onto NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, one of the final steps in assembling the observatory. Collectively called the Solar Array Sun Shield, these panels will power and shade the observatory, enabling all the mission’s observations and helping keep the instruments cool. “At this point, the […]

Categories: Astronomy

Celebrate the JWST's Third Anniversary With This Stunning Image

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

It's crazy to think that the JWST has already been working for three years. It's repeatedly impressed us not only with its powerful science observations, but also with stunning images that capture our interest even if we didn't know what we were seeing. Now, the telescope is celebrating its third anniversary with a glorious image of the Cat's Paw Nebula.

Categories: Astronomy

Observing the Dark Ages of the Universe from the Far Side of the Moon

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Shortly after the Big Bang, after the CMB was released, there was a time that's tricky to observe called Cosmic Dark Ages. Clouds of hydrogen could be detected at that time using a specific frequency of radio waves, but Earth's radiation introduces too much noise. Researchers are proposing a CubeSat called Cosmo Cube that could orbit the Moon, observing when it's in the quiet radio shadow cast by the Moon. It could help detect the first structures coming together, leading to the formation of the first galaxies.

Categories: Astronomy

Binary Stars Out of Sync: One Hosts a Giant Planet, While its Companion is Still Forming Planet

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker in the Netherlands has imaged a young gas giant exoplanet near a 12-million-year-old star. The planet is orbiting a star whose planet formation has finished, while a same-aged companion star in this double star system still has a planet-forming disk.

Categories: Astronomy

Breakthrough Listen Releases Results for 27 Eclipsing Exoplanets

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

In a recent study, a team of astronomers examined 27 confirmed and candidate exoplanets identified by TESS for signs of radio transmissions during star-planet occultations. The purpose was to see if radio signals from these targets of interest (TOIs) were interrupted as they passed behind their stars, thereby indicating that they were artificial in origin.

Categories: Astronomy

Where Does Cosmic Dust Come From? The JWST Provides an Answer

Sat, 07/12/2025 - 5:41pm

Cosmic dust does far more than float through space. It's the raw material from which stars, planets and possibly even life emerge. Yet astronomers have long puzzled over where this vast amount of dust comes from and what it's made of.

Categories: Astronomy