When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts
as with creating images.

— Niels Bohr

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New Findings Indicate that the Origin of Life Started in Space

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

In the young V883 Orionis system, ALMA observations have revealed signatures of complex organic compounds such as ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile – potential precursors to amino acids, DNA, and RNA. These findings indicate that the building blocks of life may not be limited to local conditions but could form widely throughout the Universe under suitable circumstances.

Categories: Astronomy

Mars' Seasonal Frost Could Briefly Host Liquid Water

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

What can brine (extra salty) water teach scientists about finding past, or even present, life on Mars? This is what a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment hopes to address as a researcher from the University of Arkansas investigated the formation of brines using 50-year-old data. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand how past data can be used to gain greater insights on the formation and evolution of surface brines on the surface of Mars.

Categories: Astronomy

Seasonal Frosts Could Lead to Patches of Briny Water on Mars' Surface

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 22, 2025 Recent research led by Vincent Chevrier of the University of Arkansas offers new evidence that brines-salt-rich liquid water-could form on the Martian surface under specific seasonal conditions. Drawing on decades of research, Chevrier used atmospheric data from NASA's Viking 2 lander alongside advanced computer simulations to demonstrate that seasonal frost could briefly melt, creating small qu

Categories: Astronomy

The Universe's Brightest Flash Reveals the Secrets of Cosmic Jet

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Scientists studying the brightest gamma ray burst ever recorded have discovered evidence that these explosions produce complex, layered jets rather than simple uniform beams. This remarkable finding helps solve a long standing puzzle about how the universe's most powerful explosions work and opens new possibilities for observing similar events under challenging conditions.

Categories: Astronomy

Astronauts' Hearts Stay Healthy Years After Space Missions

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

A new five year study of 13 NASA astronauts shows that their arteries remain healthy and disease free long after returning from the International Space Station, offering reassuring news for future long duration space missions and suggesting the human cardiovascular system is more resilient to spaceflight than previously thought.

Categories: Astronomy

Ice in Space Isn't the Same as Ice on Earth

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Next time you're drinking a frosty iced beverage, think about the structure of the frozen chunks chilling it down. Here on Earth, we generally see it in many forms: cubes form, sleet, snow, icicles, slabs covering lakes and rivers, and glaciers. Water ice takes all these fascinating forms, thanks to its hexagonal crystal lattice. That makes it less dense than nonfrozen water, which allows it to float in a drink, in a lake, and on the ocean.

Categories: Astronomy

Is An Elusive Intermediate Mass Black Hole Eating a Star in This Distant Galaxy?

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected evidence of what could be an Intermediate Mass Black Hole eating a star. It's in a galaxy 450 million light-years away, and unusual x-ray emissions highlight its location.

Categories: Astronomy

When Moon Dust Becomes a Weapon!

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Every time a spacecraft touches down on the moon, it creates a spectacular but dangerous light show of dust and debris that could threaten future lunar bases. Now, after decades of mystery, scientists have finally figured out why these dust clouds form such distinctive patterns and the answer could be crucial for humanity's return to the Moon.

Categories: Astronomy

A New Supernova Study Suggests Dark Energy Might be Weakening

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Scientists have created the largest catalogue of exploding stars ever assembled, and it's telling us something surprising about the mysterious force driving our universe apart. After analyzing over 2,000 stellar explosions spanning billions of years, researchers have found hints that dark energy, the force making up 70% of our universe, may not be the constant we once thought. Instead, it appears to be changing over time, potentially even weakening!

Categories: Astronomy

ExoMars Tests Its Parachute By Dropping From The Stratosphere

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Recreating the environment that most spacecraft experience on their missions is difficult on Earth. Many times it involves large vacuum chambers or wind tunnels that are specially designed for certain kinds of tests. But sometimes, engineers get to just do larger scale versions of the things they got to do in high school. That is the case for a recent test of ExoMars’s parachute system. A team of ESA engineers and their contractors performed a scaled up egg-drop test common in physics classes across the world. Except this one involved a stratospheric balloon the size of a football field and a helicopter.

Categories: Astronomy

Astronomers Find Five Rocky Planets Around a Small Red Dwarf, Including a Super-Earth in the Habitable Zone

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) detected three rocky planets around the M-dwarf L 98-59 in 2019. While two are expected to be hot, rocky worlds, the third could be covered by a global ocean. A fourth planet was discovered in 2021, and now, additional study has revealed a fifth planet, a super-Earth in the star's habitable zone.

Categories: Astronomy

NASA’s Artemis Albatross

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

While all the technology of the Apollo program still exists in the form of blueprints and designs, all the human expertise that went into crafting those rockets and spaceships is now either retired or passed away.

Categories: Astronomy

NASA's Junocam Heals Its Radiation Damage

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

The JunoCam on NASA's Juno spacecraft has given us fantastic images of Jupiter and its moons, especially volcanic Io. But the instrument is suffering after years of exposure to Jupiter's intense radiation. There are few options for repairing that damage from such a great distance, but it looks like NASA's done it.

Categories: Astronomy

Zero-Boil Fuel Storage Undergoes System Testing

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

From an engineering perspective, space is surprisingly hot. Or, more specifically, solar energy can make systems that need to be kept at a very cold temperature heat up much more quickly than expected, given the reputation that space has of being cold. In some cases, this heating causes issues with long-term missions, which is why NASA is actively testing a two-stage active cryogenic system to keep one important consumable as cold as possible - fuel.

Categories: Astronomy

Astronomers Discover Mysterious Radio Pulsing White Dwarf

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

A team of astronomers using the Netherlands' powerful LOFAR radio telescope has found a white dwarf that's defying everything we thought we knew about them. Located over 3,500 light-years away, it’s pulsing out radio signals every 14 minutes with a twist, its radio waves mysteriously switch between spinning in circles and vibrating in straight lines. It's like discovering a lighthouse that randomly changes the shape of its beam, except this lighthouse is a star that died long ago and should be quietly cooling in space.

Categories: Astronomy

Deep Sea Volcanic Vents Could Provide Clues About Alien Life

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 22, 2025 NASA has awarded $621,000 to University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist James Holden to investigate what life might look like on Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon. To pursue answers, Holden is focusing his research on Earth's deep-sea volcanic hydrothermal vents-environments that may closely resemble Europa's subsurface conditions. Europa, beneath its frozen exterior, is believed

Categories: Astronomy

This Trans-Neptunian Object Moves in Sync With Neptune. Was it Captured by Neptune?

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Astronomers have detected a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) that's moving in rhythm with Neptune. It's called 2020 VN40 and is the first confirmed object that orbits the Sun once for every ten Neptune orbits. It could be an example of an object caught by Neptune's gravity.

Categories: Astronomy

What Surprises Will The Star-Studying CHARA Array Reveal In Its Third Decade?

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

After 20 years of observations, Georgia State University's CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) has proven its worth. In 2005, The Astrophysical Journal published the first results based on its observations. Since then, more than 275 papers based on CHARA observations have been published, and the facility is still going strong heading into its third decade of operations.

Categories: Astronomy

Before These Clouds Form Stars, They Form A Complex Network of Filaments

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

Researchers working with China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) have revealed some of the complexity in a type of cloud in the ISM. They've detected a network of filaments in one Very High Velocity Cloud (VHVC). The observations hint at the complexity that can evolve in these clouds, all without the influence of gravity.

Categories: Astronomy

A New Fuel for Nuclear Power Systems Could Enable Missions to Mars and Beyond

Universe Today - Sat, 07/26/2025 - 10:44pm

To explore the unknown in deep space, millions of miles away from Earth, it’s crucial for spacecraft to have ample power. NASA’s radioisotope power systems (RPS) that rely on are a viable option for these missions and have been used for over 60 years. Now, NASA is testing a new type of RPS fuel that could become an additional option for future long-duration journeys to extreme environments.

Categories: Astronomy