Categories

Listening to the sun reveals previously hidden changes to solar cycle

Internal changes due to the sun’s “active biorhythm” have become increasingly “skin-deep” over the past four solar activity cycles, according to a new study.

Go to Source

Where are all the intermediate mass black holes? Microlensing fast radio bursts might reveal them

Astrophysicists think that black hole masses are hierarchical. The largest are supermassive black holes (SMBH) like the one at the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies. Stellar mass black holes are born of collapsing stars, and are smaller. The smallest of all are the theoretical primordial black holes, which only formed in the […]

Rare observations reveal an X9 solar flare before it erupts

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun’s surface, which can wreak havoc on Earth’s power grids, damage orbiting satellites, and pose serious radiation risks to astronauts. Yet despite decades of study, the processes that trigger these eruptions remain poorly understood.

Go to Source

Moon base missions face an unseen threat, and these simulations show where it could strike first

Researchers have developed a novel virtual model for simulating how astronauts in future moon base operations might interact with each other and with their environment, with preliminary simulations revealing potential opportunities to boost the chances of a successful mission. Raymond Vera and colleagues at George Mason University in Virginia, U.S., present these findings in PLOS […]

Hubble spies faint irregular galaxy ESO 490-017

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017, roughly 12,000 light-years in diameter and some 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The galaxy’s low surface brightness makes it appear as a faint, starry swarm behind brighter foreground stars that are easily recognized by their diffraction spikes. Numerous […]

Could aliens ever visit Earth? An aerospace scientist unpacks the challenges of interstellar spaceflight

On May 22, 2026, the Pentagon released a second batch of previously classified photos and videos showing what appear to be unexplained flying objects. These file dumps were the culmination of a process that was set in motion back in July 2023, when a group of government whistleblowers testified before Congress that the U.S. government […]

NASA lays out moon base plans with landers, buggies and drones at the top of the list

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II’s record-breaking lunar flyaround.

Go to Source

Astrophysicists strike black gold with treasure trove of gravitational wave detections

Researchers from the University of Glasgow’s Institute for Gravitational Research are celebrating the publication of a vast new treasure trove of gravitational wave detections, hailed as a milestone marking the coming of age of gravitational astronomy.

Go to Source

Mercury’s water ice may have been deposited by a larger, slower impactor than previously thought—in only one day

The source of the significant water ice deposits hidden in Mercury’s polar regions has been a topic of debate among researchers. A new study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, suggests that these deposits were accumulated in only one Mercurian day (176 Earth days) by a large impactor, such as a comet or […]

Just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were already shaped by where they lived

A large protocluster of galaxies that existed 12.6 billion years ago, first discovered with the Subaru Telescope, has been examined in detail using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The study found that galaxies in crowded regions are more extended than similar galaxies in less dense environments. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters […]

Triply-eclipsing triple star system discovered with TESS

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have discovered a triply-eclipsing star system. The newfound system, designated TIC 295741342, consists of two sun-like stars in an eclipsing binary and a giant tertiary companion, which orbits the binary. The finding was reported in a paper published May 19 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Go to […]

How Mars can help us understand ‘marginal’ exoplanets

Mars holds a special place in the solar system. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable.

Go to Source

Supermassive black holes can render exoplanets uninhabitable at great distances

The thinking around exoplanet habitability is mostly concerned with a planet’s distance from its star. Too close, and any surface water is boiled away into space. Too far, and surface water is frozen. Both are severe limits on the prospects for life. Habitability depends on an exoplanet being in the Goldilocks Zone, a distance range […]

Universe’s most distant ‘Hot DOG’ yet may owe extreme infrared glow to polar dust, Webb reveals

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed fresh details about one of the most luminous known objects in the universe: the dust-shrouded quasar W2246−0526, seen just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The paper outlining the results was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May 14. […]

New material could help NASA melt moon rocks, harness lunar resources

A material recently discovered and tested at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland could help astronauts pack lighter for future missions to the moon. NASA is researching ways explorers could “live off the land” by harnessing lunar resources, including melting moon rocks to extract metals for building infrastructure and oxygen for fuel and life support. […]