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Famous ‘Pink Planet’ harbors a salty surprise

Northwestern University-led astronomers have discovered salty skies surrounding the universe’s famous “Pink Planet.” For more than a decade, the ancient, rosy-hazed world kept astronomers guessing. One of the coldest known planetary-mass companions ever directly imaged, the elusive object is too faint for astronomers to dissect its light from Earth. But new observations from the James […]

Ripple-like rings of the ‘Bullseye galaxy’ could be explained by dark matter

Two U.S. physicists have suggested that the nine concentric rings surrounding the galaxy LEDA 1313424, also known as the Bullseye galaxy, could have emerged through the quantum behavior of particles of dark matter. Through analysis published in The Astrophysical Journal, Pierre Sikivie and Yuxin Zhao at the University of Florida argue that the extraordinary structure […]

Texas wine grapes launch to space for research mission

Researchers from Texas A&M AgriLife are sending hundreds of grape seeds to the International Space Station, where the seeds will spend approximately six months exposed to cosmic radiation before returning to Earth for planting and study. The project could produce what researchers believe to be the first wine made from grapes grown from seeds that […]

Young stellar activity drives galactic evolution across the universe

Astronomers have revealed new details about how young stars shape their galactic surroundings in a new study. Researchers analyzed about 18,000 star-forming regions in nearby spiral galaxies using data from powerful instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, whose observations were made as part of the […]

Lava planet has hydrogen-rich, active atmosphere

It’s 2158, and you’re chugging away on your Ph.D. in planetary volcanology from the University of Utopia Planitia on Mars. Graduate students still get paid a sub-living wage, so you’ve been stuck eating freeze-dried ramen for the past three years. You’ve completed studying Jupiter’s moon Io, but now you have to leave the solar system […]

Mars mission simulations reveal key to teamwork under pressure

Whether it’s to the moon or Mars, a NASA mission requires some essential preparations: designing and developing the spacecraft, astronaut training and safety checks, clear goals, and strategies and procedures for maintaining communication between crews on Earth and in space.

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Supernova origins explored through primordial black holes

Dr. Shing-Chi Leung, assistant professor of physics at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has published the article “Primordial Black Hole Triggered Type Ia Supernovae II: Comparison with Supernova Remnants and Galactic Chemical Evolution” in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper was co-authored by SUNY Poly student Seth Walther, a senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering and applied […]

Dozens of active dust devils caught swirling across Mars canyon system

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has captured part of Mars’s Mamers Valles, a fascinating valley system speckled with brief, tornado-like whirlwinds known as dust devils.

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LOFAR reveals spike-like repeating radio burst pairs in the solar corona

The solar atmosphere is a turbulent and magnetized environment, with the release of magnetic energy readily manifesting as emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Solar radio emission dominates the radio sky, with the brightest solar radio bursts generated via the plasma emission process. The emission has a complex frequency-time structure with many features that are yet […]

‘High-res’ is the secret to finding alien life with the next great space telescope

We’re still in the definition phase of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), but it seems like every week a new research group comes out with a paper helping to shape what is becoming one of the most important space telescopes of the 2040s. A new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server from a team […]

Groundbreaking US astronaut Christina Koch wins top Spanish award

US astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to take part in a lunar mission, was named Wednesday the winner of a top Spanish prize for having “helped extend the frontiers of humanity.”

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Payload electronics and flight software being developed for NASA’s Landsat 10 spacecraft

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is developing electronics and flight software for the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat 10 satellite, which is set to launch in 2031 to collect new and improved Earth observation data. The mission continues NASA’s and USGS’s partnership on the ongoing Landsat program, which has launched nine satellites since 1972 and provided […]

Dark matter cannot be ruled out as cause of gamma ray glow at the Milky Way’s center, machine learning shows

An international research collaboration between the University of Vienna and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States has used machine learning to re-examine one of the most debated signals in astrophysics. The so-called Galactic Center Excess (GCE), a faint, roughly spherical glow of gamma rays at the center of the Milky Way, has fascinated […]

Mineral garnet discovered in Mars meteorite may reveal how the red planet evolved billions of years ago

An international team of scientists has identified a completely new type of rock from the red planet and, for the first time, discovered the mineral garnet in a Martian sample. The breakthrough offers a rare glimpse into Mars’ ancient past and could help researchers piece together the planet’s 4.5-billion-year geological history. The discovery was made […]

Radar echoes from Europa reveal secrets beneath the ice

A team of scientists has used NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar and the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT) to carry out the most extensive radar study to date of Europa, the ocean world orbiting Jupiter. By repeatedly “pinging” Europa with 3.5-centimeter (1.4-inch) radio waves between 2011 and 2024, the team measured […]