Space

Nov 26th, 2025 - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have detected what they believe to be lightning on Mars by eavesdropping on the whirling wind recorded by NASA's Perseverance rover. The crackling of electrical discharges was captured by a microphone on the rover, a French-led team reported Wednesday. The researchers documented 55 instances of what they call "mini lightning" over two Martian years, primarily during dust storms and dust devils . Almost all occurred on the windiest Martian sols, or ... [Read More]

Nov 26th, 2025 - The Gemini South telescope in Chile captured this stunning view of NGC 6302, highlighting the nebula's intricate structure and dynamic gas flows. Reading time 2 minutes This newly released image from the Gemini South telescope captures a well-known planetary nebula—a massive star fizzling out at the end of its life. These celestial displays often take on a circular or globular shape, but NGC 6302, as it's formally known, bears a distinct resemblance to a butterfly. And what a beautiful ... [Read More]

Nov 26th, 2025 - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A telescope in Chile has captured a stunning new picture of a grand and graceful cosmic butterfly. The National Science Foundation's NoirLab released the picture Wednesday. Snapped last month by the Gemini South telescope, the aptly named Butterfly Nebula is 2,500 to 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. A single light-year is 6 trillion miles. At the heart of this bipolar nebula is a white dwarf star that cast aside its outer layers of gas long ... [Read More]

Nov 26th, 2025 - Scientists trace the moon's parent planet to the inner solar system. About 4.5 billion years ago, Earth had a violent neighbor. A young, still-forming planet named Theia slammed into our world with enough force to melt vast portions of its mantle and scatter a huge amount of debris into orbit. This molten debris would eventually coalesce into the Moon we know today. Theia itself didn't survive the impact, but new evidence suggests that it wasn't some distant wanderer from the outer solar ... [Read More]

Nov 26th, 2025 - For nearly a century, astronomers have been convinced that most of the universe is made of something we can't see. This invisible "stuff" seems to glue galaxies together and shape the cosmos, yet it doesn't shine, reflect, or block light. Now, fresh analysis of data from a NASA space telescope suggests we may have caught our first real glimpse of it, not directly, but through a very specific kind of high-energy light coming from the heart of our own Milky Way. If this result holds up, it could ... [Read More]

Nov 26th, 2025 - InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport, landed on Mars Nov. 26, 2018, tasked with a simple yet challenging mission: unlock the mysteries of Mars' interior. Top priorities included uncovering Mars' internal structure by measuring the thickness of the crust, obtaining the size and density of the core, and sussing out the structure and composition of Mars' mantle.  In addition to  bountiful seismic data , which include more than ... [Read More]

Nov 25th, 2025 - black hole with gravitational lens effect in front of bright stars. 3d illustration, Elements of this image are furnished by NASA Perched on the very outer fringes of our solar system, a Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) telescope, sometimes dubbed a Curved Space Telescope, would use the gravity of our own Sun to obtain extraordinary optical images at a focal point some 650 Earth-Sun distances (astronomical units) away. From this vantage point, such a telescope (or telescopes) could, in theory, ... [Read More]

Nov 25th, 2025 - 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. In space, death can be a beautiful thing. That's certainly the case for the recently deceased "other" comet ATLAS, which is slowly breaking apart after meeting its explosive end earlier this month, stunning new images reveal. C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is a comet originating from the Oort Cloud beyond ... [Read More]

Nov 25th, 2025 - Scientists working with the James Webb Space Telescope discovered three unusual astronomical objects in early 2025, which may be examples of dark stars . The concept of dark stars has existed for some time and could alter scientists' understanding of how ordinary stars form. However, their name is somewhat misleading. "Dark stars" is one of those unfortunate names that, on the surface, does not accurately describe the objects it represents. Dark stars are not exactly stars, and they are ... [Read More]

Nov 25th, 2025 - 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. Astronomers have observed a pair of stars locked in a death spiral, and their dance of doom is revealing more about how gravity works. The system, called ZTF J2130, sits about 4,000 light-years away. Although astronomers have known about this system for a while, this is the first time they ... [Read More]

Nov 25th, 2025 - A rigid ice shell over a shrinking interior makes for pressures low enough to boil. Our exploration of the outer Solar System has revealed a host of icy moons, many with surface features that suggest a complex geology. In some cases, these features—most notably the geysers of Enceladus—hint at the presence of oceans beneath the icy surfaces. These oceans have been ascribed to gravitational interactions that cause flexing and friction within the moon, creating enough heat to melt the ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - How will the universe end? Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com . How will the universe end? – Iez M., age 9, Rochester, New York Whether the universe will "end" at all is not certain, but all evidence suggests it will continue being humanity's cosmic home for a very, very long time. The universe – all of space and time, and all matter and energy – began about ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - 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. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) may have discovered the most distant supermassive black hole ever seen. The enormous object, hosted by the galaxy GHZ2, is so far away that astronomers see it as it was just 350 million years after the Big Bang. The team's research, ... [Read More]

Nov 23rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A telescope can show a lot, but astronomers always want to see more detail in the sky. They look not only at stars, but also at the faint structures around them, including thin disks of gas. A new trick with light has now helped capture the sharpest-ever measurement of a disk around a nearby star, beta Canis Minoris. The study revealed a strange, lopsided shape that had never been seen before. The method was used with a ground-based telescope , which is impressive because ... [Read More]

Nov 23rd, 2025 - 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. NASA 's Perseverance rover has discovered a highly unusual rock lying on the surface of Mars. The lumpy boulder, which has a metal-rich composition, is most likely a meteorite that crash-landed on the Red Planet — and it's the first one that Perseverance has found during its four-year ... [Read More]

Nov 22nd, 2025 - Queen guitarist Sir Brian May's latest book explores the history, mystery and evolution of galaxies in a way never tried before – through 3D photography that takes years of painstaking work to create. Many of us have looked at images of the galaxies around us and been overawed by the vastness of the Universe they hint at. Seeing in 3D The images in this article are from Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3D, and can be viewed in stereo with a special viewer. If you happen to have a viewer at ... [Read More]