Universe Today

Since the James Webb Space Telescope switched on, astronomers have been puzzled by hundreds of tiny, ancient, red objects lurking at the edge of the observable universe. Nobody could agree on what they were but now, a single extraordinary discovery of a lone object that behaves differently from all the others may have just solved one of the biggest mysteries of the modern telescope era. In doing so it has revealed a previously unknown chapter in the life story of the universe's most extreme objects.

In February 2013, a 20 metre asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk without warning, injuring more than 1,600 people and releasing energy equivalent to 33 Hiroshima bombs. Nobody saw it coming but that sobering wake up call directly motivated ESA's Meerkat Asteroid Guard, an automated system watching the skies around the clock for rocks on a collision course with Earth.

A new study by planetary scientists at Harvard offers an explanation for one of Earth’s great climate puzzles: how the Sturtian glaciation, an ancient ice age when the planet was nearly entirely frozen, could have lasted 56 million years. A large igneous province in Canada helped them figure it out.

A new international scientific study by the Hellenic Space Center (HSC) has identified some of the most promising candidate cryovolcanic regions on Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. These regions represent important targets for future observations by the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE).

Life on Earth depends on a critical dance of elements throughout the biosphere. One of these elements is Molybdenum, a transition metal that speeds up important biochemical reactions in cells. New research shows that despite its ancient scarcity, and despite the greater availability of other, similar metals, life "chose" Molybdenum earlier than thought.

By the 1960s, two major contributions were made to the field of SETI, both of which considered how more advanced civilizations could be found based on the types of structures they might build and the levels of energy they could harness.

The search for Earth 2.0 has begun in earnest. But there’s a huge variety of exoplanets out there, so narrowing down the search to focus valuable telescope time on only the best candidates is critical. One variable of a planet that will have a huge impact on its habitability is its size. A new paper, now available in pre-print on arXiv, by researchers at the University of California Riverside, looks into the impact of a planet’s size on one of its more critical features for habitability - whether it holds onto an atmosphere - and determines that slightly smaller than Earth is likely the smallest a planet can be and still be viable for life to develop.

Ever since JWST first began peering out at the early Universe a few years ago, astronomers have been spotting strange "little red dots" (LRDs) in its infrared images. There are hundreds of these compact blobs at very high redshifts at distances of about 12 billion light-years. Astronomers think they began forming some 600 million years after the Big Bang. That makes them players in the infancy of the cosmos. They appear red in optical light and blue in the ultraviolet. So, what are these strange objects?

A spiral galaxy seen close up and tilted at an angle, so that its disc fills the view from corner to corner. Its disc is yellow near to the centre and pale blue farther out, showing cooler and hotter stars, respectively. Thin brown clouds of dust, glowing pink spots of star formation, and sparkling blue patches filled with star clusters swirl through the galaxy. Behind it, small orange dots are very distant galaxies.

There’s a specific sequence in the anime Dragonball Z that for some reason has stuck in my head for over two decades. Goku, the main character of the show, travels to King Kai’s planet and can barely stand up when he arrives because the planet’s gravity is 10 times stronger than Earth’s. Over time, he trains in this gravity, and his body begins to adapt to it. Eventually, after leaving the planet, he’s stronger, faster, and more agile than he ever was before. But would that really happen if you were exposed to 10G over a long period of time? Researchers at the University of California Riverside (UCR) decided to test that idea and report their results in a recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology. But instead of using anime characters, they used fruit flies as their test subjects.

Fifteen years after Western astronomers first discovered ‘buckyballs’ in space, they’re back with stunning images and rich data generated by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results of their study have revealed the cosmic origin of these strange molecules.

You’re a long-necked Titanosaurs grazing the plains and chomping away on tree leaves about 100 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous in what would eventually become a future Starbucks location. You look up at the night sky and notice a bright dot that seems slightly larger and brighter than usual since you’ve seen it a bunch. You grunt at your cousin (official dinosaur language) asking if he notices it, too. Your cousin grunts back that it does seem bigger and brighter and wonders what’s up.

By the mid-20th century, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence would emerge as an established field of scientific research. The era witnessed the first experiments, and many of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of SETI were proposed during this time.

More than 300 million kilometres from the nearest mechanic, NASA's Curiosity rover found itself in a situation that would make any engineer break into a cold sweat. A rock got stuck to its drill and wouldn't let go. What followed was a week long, long distance rescue operation that says as much about the ingenuity of the people behind the machine as it does about the extraordinary challenges of exploring another world.

Astronomers are puzzling over another oddball on the edge of the solar system: This time, it's an icy object less than a quarter of Pluto's size with a thin atmosphere – a layer of gas that's not typically found around objects so small.

The Department of Defense has released a fresh batch of images and transcripts relating to reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as UFOs, including pictures and descriptions from NASA's Apollo missions to the moon.

Black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation, meaning their days are numbered. But a new study finds they could enter a metastable stage where they look similar to white holes.

Aerospace engineers have to consider numerous factors when designing a spacecraft, but one that comes up more and more often is the need to design against Micro-Meteoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD). While most designers understand the threat, designing structural solutions capable of withstanding the hypervelocity impacts these undercontrolled pieces of material can cause can take a significant bite out of a mission’s mass budget. A new paper from Binkal Kumar Sharma of the University of Bremen and Harshitha Baskar, an independent researcher, provides a detailed review of cutting-edge options for defending against those deadly particles.

When researchers look up at the sky and wonder if we’re not alone, they also realize the origins of life here on Earth might hold the key to finding out. The chaotic chemical soup of our early world eventually led to the staggering complexity of modern life, but how exactly did it start? Proteins were one of the key ingredients in the early years, but we’re still only just discovering how these marvels of modern biology first managed to fold, function, and survive. A new review paper, The borderlands of foldability: lessons from simplified proteins, published recently in Trends in Chemistry, showcases how scientists are attempting to answer this question - by researching “simplified proteins”.

The history of SETI is long and varied, with countless contributions made by some of the most brilliant minds humanity has ever produced. In this series, we will look into the milestones and principles that have led the field to where it is today.