Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Tungsten as interstellar radiation shielding?

Metallophilic microorganisms could benefit from the heavy metal in harsh survival conditions.

July 9, 2019 Read more

Supercomputer shows 'Chameleon Theory' could change how we think about gravity

Supercomputer simulations of galaxies have shown that Einstein's theory of General Relativity might not be the only way to explain how gravity works or how galaxies form.

July 8, 2019 Read more

Massive stars grow same way as light stars, just bigger

Astronomers obtained the first detailed face-on view of a gaseous disk feeding the growth of a massive baby star. They found that it shares many common features with lighter baby stars. This implies that the process of star formation is the same, regardless of the final mass of the resulting star.

July 8, 2019 Read more

New method may resolve difficulty in measuring universe's expansion

Astronomers have demonstrated how a combination of gravitational-wave and radio observations, along with theoretical modeling, can turn the mergers of pairs of neutron stars into a 'cosmic ruler' capable of measuring the expansion of the Universe and resolving an outstanding question over its rate.

July 8, 2019 Read more

Methane vanishing on Mars: Researchers propose new mechanism as an explanation

Scientists have proposed a previously overlooked physical-chemical process that can explain the rapid disappearance of methane from Mars' atmosphere.

July 2, 2019 Read more

Radio telescope ALMA finds earliest example of merging galaxies

Researchers using ALMA observed signals of oxygen, carbon, and dust from a galaxy in the early Universe 13 billion years ago. This is the earliest galaxy where this useful combination of three signals has been detected.

July 1, 2019 Read more

The first AI universe sim is fast and accurate - and its creators don't know how it works

The new model can envision universes with unique parameters, such as extra dark matter, even without receiving training data in which those parameters varied.

June 26, 2019 Read more

Astronomers make first detection of polarised radio waves in Gamma Ray Burst jets

The polarisation signature reveals magnetic fields in the universe's most powerful explosions to be much more patchy and tangled than first thought.

June 19, 2019 Read more

Astronomers investigate missing matter and the workings of the galactic ecosystem

Astronomers have investigated how galactic halos interact with the rest of their galaxies.

June 18, 2019 Read more

Radically different telescope design offers deeper look into space

A radically different type of X-ray space telescope has been designed by scientists in Sweden, using advanced optic techniques that were originally developed in medical imaging research.

June 18, 2019 Read more

New evidence shows crash with Antlia 2 gave the Milky Way the ripples in its outer disc

The newly-discovered dark dwarf galaxy Antlia 2's collision with the Milky Way may be responsible for our galaxy's characteristic ripples in its outer disc.

June 12, 2019 Read more

Citizen scientists re-tune Hubble's galaxy classification

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped to overturn almost a century of galaxy classification, in a new study using data from the longstanding Galaxy Zoo project.

June 11, 2019 Read more

A new candidate for dark matter and a way to detect it

Two theoretical physicists have a new candidate for dark matter and a possible way to detect it.

June 10, 2019 Read more

Direct from distant planet: Spectral clues to puzzling paradox

Spectrographic analysis yields empirical benchmark for newborn 'hot Jupiter'.

June 10, 2019 Read more

Fast and furious: detection of powerful winds driven by a supermassive black hole

This is the first publication based entirely on data obtained with EMIR, an instrument, which analyses the infrared light gathered by the Gran Telescopio Canarias.

June 7, 2019 Read more

Name an exoplanet

IAU100 NameExoWorlds gives every country in the world the opportunity to name an exoplanet and its host star.

June 6, 2019 Read more

Cool, nebulous ring around Milky Way's supermassive black hole

New ALMA observations reveal a never-before-seen disk of cool, interstellar gas wrapped around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This nebulous disk gives astronomers new insights into the workings of accretion.

June 5, 2019 Read more

Solving the sun's super-heating mystery with Parker Solar Probe

It's one of the greatest and longest-running mysteries surrounding, quite literally, our sun--why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface? Researchers believe they have the answer, and hope to prove it with help from NASA's Parker Solar Probe.

June 4, 2019 Read more