Space

Jan 28th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . science and culture for people who love beautiful writing. S pace travel began as a struggle against gravity, a bid to overcome this fundamental law of the universe. Scientists kept building bigger and faster rockets so they could overcome the pull of the Earth and voyage into the vast unknown. But it soon became apparent that gravity is one of cosmic exploration's greatest accomplices. For more than 50 years, this elemental force has been helping ... [Read More]

Jan 28th, 2025 - Organic molecules, consisting primarily of carbon and hydrogen and small amounts of other elements, are widely regarded as essential ingredients for life. On Earth, these compounds form the basic building blocks of all living organisms.  Over the last few decades, scientists have discovered similar molecules on distant objects in the solar system, including trans-Neptunian bodies, comets, and far-flung asteroids.  Because these entities are believed to be largely unchanged since the ... [Read More]

Jan 28th, 2025 - Found by Dr Michael Cretignier of the University of Oxford, the planet has a mass six times greater than Earth's and orbits in a "habitable zone" of a star similar to the sun. A "super-Earth" planet found outside of our solar system could have conditions suitable for life, according to experts at the University of Oxford. Researchers said the planet has a mass six times greater than our Earth's and orbits in a "habitable zone" of a star similar to the sun. While located 20 light-years away, ... [Read More]

Jan 27th, 2025 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . A small space rock that lingered near Earth last year and was referred to as its temporary "mini-moon" may actually be a chunk of the moon that chipped off thousands of years ago. The celestial near-Earth object, known as 2024 PT5, measures about 33 feet (10 meters) wide; however, it's not in any danger of colliding with Earth now or over the next few ... [Read More]

Jan 27th, 2025 - Monstrous dust storms often ravage Mars , engulfing the Red Planet for months. Now, a new study suggests these global storms may be related to a peculiar energy imbalance recently discovered across the Martian surface. The solar system's planets and moons absorb energy from the sun, but they also emit energy back into space. The difference between these two is called the radiative energy budget , or REB. "The REB and its spatial distribution [across latitudes] directly influence the thermal ... [Read More]

Jan 27th, 2025 - Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets—almost half of the total—in its almost 10 years of operation. However, most data analysis focused only on one of the 150,000 targets it "intended" to look at. While it was making those observations, there were a myriad of background stars that also had their light captured incidentally. John Bienias and Robert Szabó of Hungary's Konkoly Observatory have spent a ... [Read More]

Jan 26th, 2025 - What it is: The Antlia Cluster of galaxies (also called Abell S636) Where it is: 130 million light-years distant in the constellation Antlia, also known as the Air Pump When it was shared: Jan. 1, 2025 Why it's so special: Astronomers used a telescope in Chile equipped with a highly sensitive camera to capture the best-ever image of a cluster of galaxies near our Milky Way . The researchers pointed the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope's Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at the Virgo Cluster ... [Read More]

Jan 26th, 2025 - The recent detection of a cosmic explosion by the Einstein Probe is stirring excitement among space watchers everywhere. Early last year, the probe's Wide-field X-ray Telescope spotted a mysterious X-ray burst that defies the usual patterns. The strange event lasted over 15 minutes before fading from view. Astronomers suspect it could reshape theories on how these cosmic blasts begin. Yuan Liu is an expert in the National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAO, ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2025 - Billions of years ago, while the solar system was still young, a massive object may have drifted into it. It's not a spaceship, but it is an alien visitor in its own right—a colossal interstellar body hundreds of times heavier than Earth. For a brief cosmic moment, it interacts with our Sun's planets before continuing its journey into the galaxy. This hypothesis has recently been shared by researchers Garett Brown, Hanno Rein, and Renu Malhotra, who suggest that such an event could ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2025 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . Thousands of mysterious mounds on Mars preserve layers of evidence pointing to ancient water on the red planet that likely sculpted the towering formations. More than 15,000 mounds jut skyward from the lowlands of Mars' Chryse Planitia, located near a natural dividing line between the planet's southern and northern hemispheres. The geological features ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2025 - How much does a black hole change in a year? Scientists may now have an idea, after taking a fresh look at the first-ever black hole to be imaged — the supermassive black hole M87*, , which resides at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy. Having previously observed the bright halo of matter whipping around the black hole at near-light-speeds, the team now takes an even closer look at the movement of material within that halo. The new observations, taken with the Event Horizon Telescope ... [Read More]

Jan 25th, 2025 - Across cosmic history, powerful forces have shaped matter into the intricate structures that define the universe. From the earliest moments after the Big Bang to the present-day cosmic web, the distribution of galaxies, clusters, and filaments has evolved in ways largely consistent with Einstein's theory of gravity. However, new research suggests that the universe's large-scale structure has developed in an unexpected way – becoming "messier and more complicated" over time. Led by Joshua ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2025 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . Mysterious fast radio bursts , or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, have intrigued astronomers since the first detection of the phenomenon in 2007. The enigmatic signals, known as FRBs, release as much energy in less than the blink of an eye as the sun emits in one day. Researchers are still trying to unravel what the ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2025 - Astronomers have spotted a "supersonic jetstream" on a nearby alien world, with winds reaching 20,500 mph (33,000 km/h) — the fastest planetary gusts detected anywhere in the cosmos. The record-breaking weather is raging on WASP-127b, a "puffy" gas giant around 500 light-years from Earth that is slightly larger than Jupiter but has a fraction of the mass. The exoplanet, discovered in 2016, has a large band of strong winds, or jetstream, circling its equator — similar to the winds ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2025 - Solar flares are fierce flashes of plasma erupting from the Sun, releasing jets and loops of charged particles into space – a breathtaking cosmic phenomenon. But as awe-inspiring as these solar eruptions are, they also carry potential dangers for technology and astronauts in space and to humans on Earth. Solar flares and flickering loops A group of dedicated researchers has made a significant breakthrough in understanding solar flares. The team has been using NASA's Solar Dynamics ... [Read More]

Jan 24th, 2025 - Last week at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland, astronomers presented some of their most recent and exciting finds from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). One such discovery was the identification of the most distant so-called core-collapse supernova ever confirmed. These explosions mark the end of life for massive stars, and this supernova occurred when the universe was just a toddler, some 1.8 billion years old. David Coulter, a ... [Read More]