Universe Today

High-precision oxygen isotopes in Apollo lunar soils reveal a persistent impactor fingerprint, showing that impacts contributed only a tiny fraction of Earth’s water.

The Hubble Mission Team has released another image of the space telescope's study of star formation. This image shows the dark cloud Lupus 3, a star-forming region about 500 light-years away. Lupus 3 contains bright young T-Tauri stars, and 2 hot young stars that are creating a beautiful nebula.

The resolution of the Event Horizon Telescope is limited by the diameter of Earth, and our observations of the black hole in M87 and in our own galaxy are at the edge of that limit. To observe other, more distant black holes we will need radio telescopes on the Moon.

Back in 2014, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured an image of a young protoplanetary disk around a young star named HL Tauri. The image showed gaps and rings in the disk, substructures indicating that young planets forming there. This meant that planet formation began around young stars a lot sooner than thought. ALMA is continuing its investigation of protoplanetary disks in its ARKS survey (ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures).

Material science plays an absolutely critical role in space exploration. So when a new type of self-healing composite is announced, it’s worth a look–especially when the press release specifically calls out its ability to repair microtears associated with micrometeoroid impacts on satellites. It sounds like just such a composite material was recently invented at North Carolina State University - and it’s even already been spun out into a start-up company.

How can scientists estimate the pH level of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean without landing on its surface? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a team of scientists from Japan investigated new methods for sampling the plumes of Enceladus and provide more accurate measurements of its pH levels. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the subsurface ocean conditions on Enceladus and whether it’s suitable for life as we know it.

Newly developing stars shrouded in thick dust get their first baby pictures in these images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble took these infant star snapshots in an effort to learn how massive stars form. Protostars are shrouded in thick dust that blocks light, but Hubble can detect the near-infrared emission that shines through holes carved in the gas by the young stars themselves.

The Ring Nebula is a well-studied planetary nebula about 2,570 light-years away. Nnew observations of the nebula with a new instrument have revealed a previously unseen component. The William Herschel Telescope used its WEAVE instrument to detect a massive 'iron bar' inside the nebula's inner layer.

The US’s federally funded space program has been struggling of late. With the recent cancellation of the Mars Sample Return mission, and mass layoffs / resignations taking place at NASA, the general sense of a lack of morale at the agency is palpable, even from a distance. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire software entrepreneur and rocket enthusiast who was recently confirmed as NASA administrator during his second confirmation hearing, hopes to change that, and one of his priorities is pushing the Artemis missions for a permanent human presence on the Moon. However, at least one big technical hurdle remains before being able to do so - how to power a base during the two week long lunar night. A recent press release describes how NASA, and another branch of the federal government (the Department of Energy - DoE) hope to solve that problem - with a lunar-ready nuclear fission reactor

We recently discussed the different types of worlds that the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is expected to find that might have noticeable biosignatures. However, no matter how good the instrumentation on board the observatory is, the data it collects will be useless if scientists don’t know how to interpret it. A paper explaining what data they need to collect before analyzing HWO data was authored by Niki Parenteau, a research biologist at NASA, and her co-authors, which is now available in pre-print on arXiv.

Astronomers at the University of Warwick have discovered that black holes don’t just consume matter—they manage it, choosing whether to blast it into space as high-speed jets or sweep it away in vast winds.

Hydrogen Cyanide, which is toxic, may have played an important role in the emergence of life. Its unique properties, especially in frigid environments in space, may have helped generate the complex molecules necessary for life to appear.

Humans have always been fascinated with space. We frequently question whether we are alone in the universe. If not, what does intelligent life look like? And how would aliens communicate?

Deep beneath the surface of distant exoplanets known as super-Earths, oceans of molten rock may be doing something extraordinary: powering magnetic fields strong enough to shield entire planets from dangerous cosmic radiation and other harmful high-energy particles.

The early stage of giant telescope development involves a lot of horse-trading to try to appease all the different stakeholders that are hoping to get what they want out of the project, but also to try to appease the financial managers that want to minimize its cost. Typically this horse-trading takes the form of a series of white papers that describe what would be needed to meet the stated objectives of the mission and suggest the type of instrumentation and systems that would be needed to achieve them. One such white paper was recently released by the Living Worlds Working Group, which is tasked with speccing out the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), one of the world’s premiere exoplanet hunting telescopes that is currently in the early development stage. Their argument in the paper, which is available in pre-print on arXiv, shows that, in order to meet the objectives laid out in the recent Decadal survey that called for the telescope, it must have extremely high signal-to-noise ratio, but also be able to capture a very wide spectrum of light.

Inside the cores of ice giant planets, the pressure and temperature are so extreme that the water residing there transitions into a phase completely unfamiliar under the normal conditions of Earth. Known as “superionic water”, this form of water is a type of ice. However, unlike regular ice it’s actually hot, and also black. For decades, scientists thought that the superionic water in the core of Neptune and Uranus is responsible for the wild, unaligned magnetic fields that the Voyager 2 spacecraft saw when passing them. A series of experiments described in a paper published in Nature Communications by Leon Andriambariarijaona and his co-authors at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Sorbonne provides experimental evidence of why exactly the ice causes these weird magnetic fields - because it is far messier than anyone expected.

A new census of more than 8,000 galaxies finds active black holes rising in frequency with galaxy mass, jumping sharply in galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way.

Our nearest neighbor, the Moon, is still something of a mystery to us. For decades, scientists have wondered why it appears so lopsided, with dark volcanic plains on the near side (the side we see) and rugged, cratered mountains and a thicker crust on the far side. Now we might be closer to knowing why.

Physicists at the University of Oxford have contributed to a new study which has found that iron-rich asteroids can tolerate far more energy than previously thought without breaking apart - a breakthrough with direct implications for planetary defence strategies.

This collection of new images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases protoplanetary disks, the swirling masses of gas and dust that surround forming stars, in both visible and infrared wavelengths. Through observations of young stellar objects like these, Hubble helps scientists better understand how stars form. These visible-light images depict dark, planet-forming dust disks […]