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Cosmological data suggest the universe has become ‘messier and more complicated’

Across cosmic history, powerful forces have acted on matter, reshaping the universe into an increasingly complex web of structures. Now, new research led by Joshua Kim and Mathew Madhavacheril at the University of Pennsylvania and their collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests our universe has become “messier and more complicated” over the roughly 13.8 […]

NASA JPL prepping for full year of launches, mission milestones

With 2024 receding into the distance, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is already deep into a busy 2025. Early in the new year, the Eaton Fire came close to JPL, destroying the homes of more than 200 employees, but work has continued apace to maintain mission operations and keep upcoming missions on track.

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Scientists use black-hole mergers to test symmetries of the universe

In an article published in Physical Review Letters on Thursday, scientists carried out an innovative study testing the existence of mirror asymmetries in our universe by studying the handedness of the gravitational-wave emission from black-hole mergers detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo.

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What will it take to reach zero space debris?

The space debris problem won’t solve itself. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for years as we continue launching more rockets and payloads into space. In the last couple of years, organizations—especially the European Space Association—have begun to address the problem more seriously.

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The moon has been listed as a threatened historic site, but the value of ‘lunar heritage’ needs defining

Scientific and commercial activities on the moon could permanently change the lunar environment. These activities include sending vehicles to the moon, extracting its resources through mining the lunar surface, building facilities and extracting water from areas on the moon where sunlight never shines.

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Suborbital flight experiments test dust particle agglomerates to study planet formation

Planets are formed when dust and rock in a disk around a young star collide and combine to form ever larger bodies. This so-called accretion is not yet fully understood. Astrophysicists at the University of Duisburg-Essen were able to make significant observations of collision speed and electrical charge of the particles through experiments on a […]

Astronauts set to swab the exterior of station for microbial life

Astronauts are scheduled to venture outside the International Space Station to collect microbiological samples during crew spacewalks for the ISS External Microorganisms experiment. This investigation focuses on sampling at sites near life support system vents to examine whether the spacecraft releases microorganisms, how many, and how far they may travel.

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New radio transients discovered with MeerKAT

Using the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, an international team of astronomers has detected 26 new Galactic radio transients. Most of them turned out to be rotating radio transients (RRATs). The finding is detailed in a research paper published Jan. 14 on the arXiv preprint server.

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M87* observations catch the black hole’s turbulent accretion flow

Using observations from 2017 and 2018, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has advanced our understanding of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*). This study marks a significant step toward multi-year analysis at horizon scales, in order to investigate the black hole’s turbulent accretion flow. It utilizes a vastly improved […]

Did the COVID-19 lockdowns really affect lunar temperatures?

Almost five years ago, much of the world went quiet for several weeks due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. It went so quiet, in fact, that scholars published a 2024 article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters claiming the lack of human activity likely led to the moon’s surface temperatures cooling down […]

NASA rockets to fly through flickering, vanishing auroras

Two NASA rocket missions are taking to the Alaskan skies in hopes of discovering why some auroras flicker, others pulsate, and still others are riddled with holes. Understanding these peculiar features is part of NASA’s goal to understand the space environment around our planet, which can affect both spacecraft and astronauts.

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A tether covered in solar panels could boost the ISS’s orbit

The ISS’s orbit is slowly decaying. While it might seem a permanent fixture in the sky, the orbiting space laboratory is only about 400 km above the planet. There might not be a lot of atmosphere at that altitude. However, there is still some, and interacting with that is gradually slowing the orbital speed of […]

Extreme supersonic winds measured on a planet outside our solar system

Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33,000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jet stream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile and provides unique […]

How the new NASA and India Earth Satellite NISAR will see Earth

When NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) new Earth satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) launches in coming months, it will capture images of Earth’s surface so detailed they will show how much small plots of land and ice are moving, down to fractions of an inch.

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Black holes are spinning faster than expected, researchers find

There’s a universe full of black holes out there, spinning merrily away—some fast, others more slowly. A recent survey of supermassive black holes reveals that their spin rates reveal something about their formation history.

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