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Spiral galaxy’s brilliant heart shines bright in a new picture from NASA’s Webb telescope

A spiral galaxy’s brilliant heart outshines everything within sight in a new picture from NASA’s Webb Space Telescope.

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Vast atmospheric waves on Venus are caused by largest known ‘hydraulic jump’

The mysterious origin of an impressive cloud disturbance on Venus has now been revealed by a team including the University of Tokyo. Researchers used numerical models to show that an enormous 6,000-kilometer-wide atmospheric wave front, which circumnavigates the planet for days at a time, is caused by a large “hydraulic jump.” This is when a […]

Meet the fleet: NASA Armstrong continues legacy of flight research

NASA’s home for experimental flight is welcoming more flyers to its already high-performing fleet as it continues to support science and aeronautics test missions—continuing the legacy of pioneers like Neil Armstrong.

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How Dante’s Inferno modeled a planetary impact 500 years before modern science

New research reveals that Dante Alighieri’s Inferno wasn’t just a masterpiece of literature: it was a gedankenexperiment in impact physics. From multi-ring craters to shockwaves that reshaped the globe, discover how a 14th-century poet modeled a planetary impact 500 years before the birth of modern meteoritics.

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Ultrahigh-energy cosmic messengers may carry ultraheavy secrets

There may be an ultraheavy explanation for the mystery surrounding the origins of the highest-energy particles ever observed. Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are particles from space that strike Earth with energies far beyond those reachable by human-made particle accelerators. One of the most extreme events ever recorded is the “Amaterasu particle,” detected by the Telescope Array […]

Next-gen Mars helicopter rotor blades exceed Mach 1

The rotor blades that will carry NASA’s next-generation helicopters to new Martian heights broke the sound barrier during March tests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Data from the tests, which took place in a special chamber that can simulate environmental conditions on the Red Planet, indicate that the fastest traveling part of […]

These monster black holes did not form the usual way—their history of violence is written into spacetime ripples

The most massive black holes in the universe detected by the ripples they make in spacetime were not born directly from collapsing stars, according to a new study. These cosmic giants instead build up through a series of repeated and extremely violent collision events in very densely populated star clusters, an international team of researchers […]

How the rise of continents may have set the stage for life on Earth

Earth’s earliest continents may have set the chemical stage for life by regulating boron levels in ancient oceans, a new study in Terra Nova suggests.

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Roman Space Telescope poised to transform hunt for elusive neutron stars

Astronomers have long known that neutron stars, the crushed cores left behind after massive stars explode, should be scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. However, most of them are effectively invisible. A new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics suggests that NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could spot them anyway.

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How quasars shut down star formation in the early universe

Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Puzzlingly, supermassive black holes more than a billion times the mass of the sun appear to exist just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 5% of its current age. As interstellar […]

A new way to read the universe could sharpen understanding of cosmic expansion and dark energy

An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy.

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Data fusion provides a high-definition look at Mars’ temperature maps

In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is our best bet for “living off the land” for a future Martian base, but tracking down those resources is no easy task. As of now, we have two options—send a rover to a specific location to scout it, or monitor it from orbit. Since rovers are expensive, and there are […]

J1152 is an unusual long-period dwarf nova with recurring eclipses, observations find

Astronomers from the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and elsewhere have conducted photometric and spectroscopic observations of a cataclysmic variable system designated SRGA J115215.0−510656. Results of the new observations, published April 29 on the arXiv pre-print server, indicate that the investigated system is an unusual long-period dwarf nova.

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Why we need to treat Earth like a spaceship

Four humans recently looped around the moon. Their vessel, an Artemis capsule, was a thin metal shell whose life-support system kept them alive: it provided a carefully balanced atmosphere, a closed water loop, a finite supply of food, and a means for disposing of human waste. The life support was not optional. It was a […]

Webb and Hubble find massive star clusters emerge faster

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away […]