Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Hard disk from space - Hidden magnetic messages in meteorites

Geologists uncover hidden magnetic messages from the early solar system in meteorites. The team of scientists has captured information stored inside tiny magnetic regions in meteorite samples.

January 22, 2015 Read more

Inside the big wormhole (w/video)

Based on the latest evidence and theories our galaxy could be a huge wormhole (or space-time tunnel) and, if that were true, it would be 'stable and navigable'. This is the hypothesis put forward in a new study.

January 21, 2015 Read more

Dawn - heading for icy Ceres

Planetary scientists may find a thick ice crust with an ocean underneath when the NASA Dawn spacecraft arrives at Ceres in March 2015.

January 20, 2015 Read more

Ocean floor dust gives new insight into supernovae

Extraterrestrial dust from the depths of the ocean could change the way we understand supernovae. Scientists have found the amount of plutonium in the dust is much lower than expected.

January 20, 2015 Read more

Magnetic fields help in formation of massive stars

Astronomers observe polarised dust emission of two dark clouds in the Milky Way.

January 20, 2015 Read more

Cosmic radio burst caught red-handed

A short, sharp flash of radio waves from a mysterious source up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth has been detected by the Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia.

January 19, 2015 Read more

Square Kilometre Array: The cosmology engine

Scientists from around the world have joined forces to lay the foundations for an experiment of truly astronomical proportions: putting together the biggest map of the Universe ever made. The experiment will combine signals from hundreds of radio dishes to make cosmic atlas.

January 19, 2015 Read more

HiRISE camera spots long-lost space probe on Mars

On Christmas Day 2003, a kitchen table-size lander descended onto the surface of the red planet on a mission to study the Martian surface and potential clues for life. The probe never called home, and no one knew what happened to it. Until now.

January 16, 2015 Read more

New evidence for anthropic theory that fundamental physics constants underlie life-enabling universe

The theory that an Anthropic Principle guided the physics and evolution of the universe was initially proposed by Brandon Carter; this theory was later debated by Cambridge scholar Stephen Hawking and a widening web of physicists around the world. German scholar Ulf-G Meissner adds to a series of discoveries that support this Anthropic Principle.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Abell 4067 shows collision of two galaxy clusters

The catalogues of celestial objects contain a galaxy cluster called 'Abell 4067'. Recent observations with the XMM-Newton space observatory, however, reveal evidence that this object actually constitutes of the merger of two clusters. The smaller system appears to be losing the greater part of its gas.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Galactic 'hailstorm' in the early universe

Astronomers have looked back nearly 13 billion years, when the Universe was less than 10 percent its present age, to determine how quasars - extremely luminous objects powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns - regulate the formation of stars and the build-up of the most massive galaxies.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought

A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets are more likely to have liquid water and be more habitable than we thought.

January 15, 2015 Read more

New telescopes to search for planets outside the Solar System

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescope at the Paranal Observatory, operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, has achieved 'first light'.

January 15, 2015 Read more

A twist on planetary origins

New study finds meteorites were byproducts of planetary formation, not building blocks.

January 14, 2015 Read more

Stargazers begin hunt for planets

University of Warwick scientists have begun searching for planets after the unveiling of twelve robotically controlled telescopes.

January 14, 2015 Read more

Photonic booms may help illuminate astronomical secrets

If you sweep a laser pointer across the Moon fast enough, you can create spots that actually move faster than light. Anyone can do it.

January 9, 2015 Read more

Map of mysterious molecules in our galaxy sheds new light on century-old puzzle

By analyzing the light of hundreds of thousands of celestial objects, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galaxy that are responsible for puzzling features in the light from stars.

January 9, 2015 Read more

Astronomers use vanishing neutron star to measure space-time warp (w/video)

In an interstellar race against time, astronomers have measured the space-time warp in the gravity of a binary star and determined the mass of a neutron star - just before it vanished from view.

January 8, 2015 Read more