Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Neural networks predict planet mass

To find out how planets form astrophysicists run complicated and time consuming computer calculations. Scientists have now developed a totally novel approach to speed up this process dramatically. They use deep learning based on artificial neural networks, a method that is well known in image recognition.

March 13, 2019 Read more

What scientists found after sifting through dust in the solar system

Two recent studies report discoveries of dust rings in the inner solar system: a dust ring at Mercury's orbit, and a group of never-before-detected asteroids co-orbiting with Venus, supplying the dust in Venus' orbit.

March 12, 2019 Read more

Massive twin star discovered snuggling close to its stellar sibling

Astronomers have discovered a binary star system with the closest high-mass young stellar objects ever measured, providing a valuable 'laboratory' to test theories on high mass binary star formation.

March 11, 2019 Read more

What does the Milky Way weigh? Hubble and Gaia investigate

We can't put the whole Milky Way on a scale, but astronomers have been able to come up with one of the most accurate measurements yet of our galaxy's mass, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite.

March 7, 2019 Read more

'Goldilocks' stars may be 'just right' for finding habitable worlds

A new study finds a particular class of stars called K stars, which are dimmer than the Sun but brighter than the faintest stars, may be particularly promising targets for searching for signs of life.

March 7, 2019 Read more

Physicists analyze the rotational dynamics of galaxies and the influence of the mass of the photon

Could the effect of photon mass on the gaseous components in galaxies be as strong as that of dark matter?

March 5, 2019 Read more

The case of the over-tilting exoplanets

For almost a decade, astronomers have tried to explain why so many pairs of planets outside our solar system have an odd configuration -- their orbits seem to have been pushed apart by a powerful unknown mechanism. Researchers say they've found a possible answer, and it implies that the planets' poles are majorly tilted.

March 4, 2019 Read more

Asteroids are stronger, harder to destroy than previously thought

A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a study that used a new understanding of rock fracture and a new computer modeling method to simulate asteroid collisions.

March 4, 2019 Read more

Using stardust grains, scientists build new model for nova eruptions

Scientists make breakthrough in modeling how stars erupt thanks to studies of microscopic stardust grains.

February 28, 2019 Read more

Hiding black hole found

Astronomers have detected a stealthy black hole from its effects on an interstellar gas cloud. This intermediate mass black hole is one of over 100 million quiet black holes expected to be lurking in our Galaxy.

February 28, 2019 Read more

Dark matter may be hitting the right note in small galaxies

Dark matter may scatter against each other only when they hit the right energy. This idea helps explain why galaxies from the smallest to the biggest have the shapes they do.

February 27, 2019 Read more

Ingredients for water could be made on surface of moon, a chemical factory

When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind careens onto the Moon's surface at 450 kilometers per second, they enrich the Moon's surface in ingredients that could make water.

February 20, 2019 Read more

Hundreds of thousands of new galaxies

A new survey reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve.

February 19, 2019 Read more

Spacecraft measurements reveal mechanism of solar wind heating

A new study describes the first direct measurement of how energy is transferred from the chaotic electromagnetic fields in space to the particles that make up the solar wind, leading to the heating of interplanetary space.

February 14, 2019 Read more

Merging neutron stars - How cosmic events give insight into fundamental properties of matter

Two international research groups report on their calculations of what the signature of a phase transition in a gravitational wave, where neutrons dissolve into their constituents, would look like.

February 13, 2019 Read more

Liberal sprinkling of salt discovered around a young star

A team of astronomers and chemists has detected the chemical fingerprints of sodium chloride (NaCl) and other similar salty compounds emanating from the dusty disk surrounding Orion Source I, a massive, young star in a dusty cloud behind the Orion Nebula.

February 7, 2019 Read more

Researchers find evidence for a new fundamental constant of the Sun

New research shows that the Sun's magnetic waves behave differently than currently believed.

February 7, 2019 Read more

Discovering new particles using black holes

The presence of energy level transitions in the hypothetical boson cloud would induce a characteristic 'fingerprint' in the gravitational wave signals produced by merging black holes.

February 7, 2019 Read more