Universe Today

We can understand how Earth formed by watching other planets form in distant solar systems. Powerful telescopes like the VLT are making that possible. New observations show a baby planet sculpting patterns in the gas and dust around its star.

It is true that crewed missions to the Moon are expensive, difficult, and dangerous.

It seems the Moon has been protecting itself from cosmic erosion all along! Using Apollo moon dust for the first time, a team of researchers found that the lunar surface's rough, porous texture acts as a natural shield against solar wind bombardment, thus reducing erosion rates by up to ten times more than previously thought. This groundbreaking finding not only solves a long standing puzzle about the Moon's thin atmosphere but also rewrites our understanding of how rocky planets lose material to space, with major implications for upcoming missions to the Moon and Mercury.

Sometimes serendipity happens in science. Whether it’s an apple falling from a tree or a melting chocolate bar, some of the world’s greatest discoveries come from happy accidents, even if their stories may be apocryphal. According to a new paper on arXiv, there’s a new story to add to the archives of serendipitous scientific discoveries - Rubin happened to make observations of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS before its official discovery, while the telescope was still in its Science Validation survey, marking the earliest, high resolution images we will likely get of the comet at that time.

Astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse using the NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ‘Alopeke' instrument on Gemini North, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the NSF and operated by NSF NOIRLab. This discovery answers the longstanding mystery of the star’s varying brightness and provides insight into the physical mechanisms behind other variable red supergiants.

The New Horizons spacecraft is humanity's fastest-moving spacecraft and headed to interstellar space. Since its exploration of Pluto 10 years ago and subsequent flyby of Arrokoth in 2019, it's been traversing and studying the Kuiper Belt while looking for other flyby objects. That's not all it's been doing, however. New Horizons also has an extended program of making heliophysics observations. The mission science team has also planned astrophysical studies with the spacecraft's instruments. Those include measuring the intensity of the cosmic optical background and taking images of stars such as Proxima Centauri. As the spacecraft moves, the apparent positions of its stellar navigation targets have changed, but that hasn't bothered New Horizons one bit. It knows exactly where it is thanks to 3D observations of those nearby stars.

What are the JWST's Little Red Dots? While they appear to be galaxies, there's no observational certainty. New research examines the idea that they're actually stars, suggesting that they're actually the progenitors for supermassive black holes.

Magnetic fields play an important, if sometimes underappreciated, part in planetary systems. Without a strong magnetic field, planets can end up as a barren wasteland like Mars, or they could indirectly affect massive storms as can be seen on Jupiter. However, our understanding of planetary magnetic fields are limited to the eight planets in our solar system, as we haven’t yet accrued much data on the magnetic fields of exoplanets. That could be about to change, according to a new preprint paper by a group of research scientists from Europe, the US, India and the UAE.

Just imagine it, the news stories are all over your phone when you wake! The day will surely come that we will discover that we are not alone in the Universe! What happens the day after though? A new research paper from the SETI Post Detection Hub at the University of St Andrews tackles this question, outlining how NASA and the global scientific community should prepare for the moment humanity detects signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Scientists have achieved a breakthrough that could revolutionise space exploration with a "smart" metal alloy that remembers its shape even in the bone chilling cold of outer space. This remarkable copper based material can be twisted and deformed when cold, then automatically snap back to its original form when heated, maintaining this mechanical "memory" at temperatures as extreme as -200°C. The discovery solves a critical challenge that has limited spacecraft design for decades, opening the door to more reliable satellites, space telescopes, and future missions to the frozen reaches of our Solar System and beyond.

Astronomers have seen exoplanetary systems at almost every stage, from extremely young to older than the Solar System. But now, they've spotted the exact moment when planet formation is initiated around a young star. Meteorites store a history of when the first minerals formed in the Solar System, and the ALMA telescope has seen the signal of these minerals forming in a protostellar system, about 1,300 light-years from Earth.

NASA has discovered that 7 out of 10 astronauts returning from the International Space Station have been unable to see clearly, with vision problems that can last for years! As we prepare for multi year Mars missions, scientists are racing to solve this mysterious "space blindness" before it derails humanity's greatest journey. It seems the cause could be as simple as the effects of weightlessness and the distribution of fluids around the body. Thankfully, it seems there are some possible solutions to what could become one of our greatest health challenges as we reach out further among the planets.

Astronomers found evolutionary links that connect three well-known star clusters. The Orion Nebular Cluster, the Pleiades, and the Hyades are located roughly in the same region in space, but have different ages. New research shows that they're connected and have similar origins.

Lunar regolith is the crushed up volcanic rock that buries the surface of the Moon. Remote observations and sample analysis have shown there are trace amounts of water ice mixed in with the regolith, which can be extracted. By mixing this water with CO2 exhaled by astronauts, scientists have demonstrated this can be turned into hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. This can then be turned into fuels and oxygen to support the astronauts. Everything we need is there on the Moon. We just need to learn how to use it.

A Chinese team presents a new model for accurately predicting the performance of Sterling engines, which are being investigated as a possible means of powering

If astronomers can find ancient, pristine galaxies with no metals, they will confirm our understanding of the Big Bang. Those galaxies have proven elusive, but a team of astronomers think they've found one. It may be the first Population 3 galaxy.

We’re getting better views of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, as it makes its speedy passage through the inner solar system. This week, astronomers at the Gemini North observatory located on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i turned the facility’s enormous 8.1-meter telescope on the object, with amazing results.

Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope have discovered a new object in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto. Designated 2023 KQ14, it's categorized as a "sednoid," with an extremely eccentric orbit - only the 4th ever discovered. Its orbit is much different from other sednoids, which challenges the hypothesis that Planet Nine could be aligning their orbits. It was found at 72 AU, but its path takes it all the way out to 438 AU, taking almost 4,000 years to complete one orbit.