Space

Jan 25th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Comets have a reputation for being cold, dirty snowballs lingering far from the Sun. Yet for years, astronomers have puzzled over one strange fact. Many comets contain crystalline silicates – minerals that form only under intense heat. That reality clashes with life in the deep freeze at the edge of a solar system. The puzzle has lingered for decades. How do materials that need extreme heat end up locked inside objects that spend most of their lives in bitter cold? ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Quick facts What it is: The Helix Nebula (also called NGC 7293 and Caldwell 63), a planetary nebula Where it is: 655 light-years away, in the ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Fast radio bursts are some of the strangest signals we pick up from space. They last just a few thousandths of a second, but they can outshine whole galaxies in radio light while they're happening. For years, one big question kept hanging around: what kind of object can make something that loud and fast – and sometimes do it again and again? Now, a long set of telescope observations has added a major piece to the puzzle. The key idea is simple. Some of these ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2026 - Inside an incredibly bright cluster of galaxies, a long-dormant supermassive black hole has come back to life. Radio images captured a one-million-light-year-long stream of star-forming particles and gas emanating from the black hole at the center of the galaxy J1007+3540—which apparently is erupting for the first time in about 100 million years. "Although some 'restarted' radio galaxies are known in the literature, J1007+3540 stands out," says lead study author Shobha Kumari of Midnapore ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes It's difficult to overstate the significance of NASA's upcoming Artemis 2 mission . For the first time in over 50 years, astronauts will fly by the Moon on the first crewed test of the rocket and spacecraft that will eventually enable humanity's long-awaited return to the lunar surface. But Artemis 2 won't just test spaceflight systems and hardware. This mission will also put NASA's in-space science operations to the test. During their 10-day trip around the Moon, the ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, January 23 Pluto reaches conjunction with the Sun at 5 A.M. EST. Also this morning, the Moon passes 4° north of Saturn at 8 A.M. EST and passes 4° north of Neptune at 11 A.M. EST. You can catch the trio in the southwestern sky after sunset. Earlier is better — around 6:30 P.M. local time, they are still 40° high, affording clear views of Neptune through binoculars or a telescope before it gets too close to the more ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Earth's atmosphere may feel permanent, but it is slowly leaking into space. New research suggests some of that lost air does not disappear. Instead, it drifts outward and settles onto the Moon, quietly accumulating in lunar soil over billions of years. That process matters for both science and exploration. The Moon may preserve a chemical record of Earth's ancient atmosphere, and those same materials could one day support future lunar missions. Using computer simulations, ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - The biggest explosions in the universe, ranked The universe is exploding. Or parts of it are. The night sky may seem calm, even serene, but that masks events of a catastrophic and nearly unimaginable scale. Across the galaxy and even the cosmos itself, immense outbursts of energy occur that could easily vaporize our planet. Happily, space is vast, and the terrible distance between these events and us diminishes what we see to a faint glow—usually. It's very rare for our Earth to be ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Colossal monsters lurk in the centers of all galaxies. Known as supermassive black holes, these gravitational beasts can have millions to billions ... [Read More]

Jan 23rd, 2026 - The northern sky's greatest galaxy gets its familiar name from the northern constellation where it resides, Andromeda the Princess. This star system is our nearest large spiral galaxy, and it sits at the far end of the Local Group of galaxies. Observations Observers have described M31 as something other than starlike as far back as 964. In that year, Persian astronomer Abdal-Rahman Al-Sufi called it a ''little cloud'' in his  Book of Fixed Stars . German astronomer Simon ... [Read More]

Jan 22nd, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Two of the universe's most mysterious particles may be colliding invisibly throughout the cosmos — a discovery that could solve one of the ... [Read More]

Jan 22nd, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes On September 30, 2024, the Sun unleashed a powerful explosion, causing magnetic field lines to break and reconnect in a criss-cross pattern. A Sun-observing probe was there to watch it unfold, gathering unprecedented data that's helping scientists better understand the mechanism behind solar flares. Using the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a team of scientists discovered that solar flares are triggered by initially weak disturbances that grow more ... [Read More]

Jan 21st, 2026 - A new all-sky census reveals thousands of stable, long-lived stars that might be life's best bet. Some astronomers have made it their life's work to find "Earth 2.0," a rocky planet orbiting a star just like our own Sun. It makes sense; we know life works here, so why not look for a mirror image of our own solar system? But a massive new survey suggests we might have been looking at the wrong stars. The sweet spot for life isn't necessarily a yellow sun like ours, nor the volatile red dwarfs ... [Read More]

Jan 21st, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a stunning time-lapse of a trio of solar eruptions exploding into space from the sun during an ... [Read More]

Jan 21st, 2026 - Inside a famous nebula, astronomers find an iron structure they cannot yet explain. The Ring Nebula is a bright shell of gas in the constellation Lyra. It has long served as a textbook example of how stars similar to the Sun shed their outer layers at the end of their lives. It's also perhaps one of the most adored nebulae by space enthusiasts, as well as amateur and professional astronomers alike. Now it has surprised scientists with something wholly unexpected: a massive bar of iron atoms ... [Read More]

Jan 21st, 2026 - Earth exists in a bubble. Our atmosphere forms a protective barrier between everything on the planet's surface and the near-empty vastness of space. But it's not the only bubble Earth sits inside. Beyond our familiar atmospheric cocoon lies a much larger bubble, an invisible boundary carved by the Sun itself. This bubble, known as the heliosphere , is enormous. It encompasses the entire Solar System , spanning such a vast distance that only two spacecraft have ever managed to leave it. Launched ... [Read More]