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Venus’s polygonal plains could point to a watery past

Venus may be overwhelmingly inhospitable today, but many planetary scientists believe that it wasn’t always this way. Billions of years ago, some observational evidence suggested that our planetary neighbor may have looked far more like Earth, complete with oceans potentially capable of harboring life.

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Total eclipse gives scientists chance to probe sun’s mysteries

Scientists plan to use a total solar eclipse that will be visible in Spain next week as a rare chance to learn more about the stormy, unpredictable nature of our star.

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‘Like the end of the world’: The eclipse chasers flocking to Spain

Suddenly, the world is plunged into an eerie, violet darkness. The temperature drops. Birds and other animals, bewildered by unforeseen night, start behaving strangely. Stars and planets appear in the sky next to the blotted-out sun.

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NASA’s PUNCH sharpens solar storm forecasting in first test

Using continuous imagery from NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, scientists predicted the near-Earth arrival of a solar eruption to within 30 minutes in an initial proof-of-concept test. The results, presented Tuesday at the Committee on Space Research Scientific Meeting and under review at the journal Space Weather, could revolutionize the […]

Mapping the upper atmosphere with public Starlink satellite data

The space around Earth is becoming increasingly crowded, with thousands of satellites and pieces of debris now sharing low Earth orbit. Even above this region—at altitudes of several hundred kilometers—the extremely thin upper atmosphere can slow satellites, making accurate information on atmospheric density essential for predicting satellite motion and preventing collisions.

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Designing memory-centric chips for future space telescopes

Two proposed computer chip designs could efficiently process data on future space telescopes while they search for Earth–like exoplanets, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study that will be presented at the IEEE Space Computing Conference in August.

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Mapping monsters: Data release unveils all-sky views of supermassive black holes

Data released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) marks a landmark expansion in the study of accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). As part of the fifth generation of the survey (SDSS-V), the Black Hole Mapper (BHM) program is providing unprecedented insights into the masses, growth and physics of quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) […]

Astronomers catch massive star’s death from the first explosive moment

In March 2026, the Einstein Probe detected a brief flash of soft X-rays emitted from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. The flash, dubbed EP260321a, immediately triggered a worldwide observing campaign. Within an hour, ground-based telescopes began monitoring the source, revealing a rapidly brightening supernova, later designated SN 2026gzf. Two teams of scientists used […]

Asteroid Nysa’s rare three-lobed structure challenges formation models

Named for the mythical valley where the god Dionysus was raised in secret by nymphs, the asteroid 44 Nysa inhabits the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Through observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have determined it to be the largest and brightest known member of a rare category of asteroids called “E-types,” made […]

Rubin Observatory opens a deep window on a famous cosmic field

A new Vera C. Rubin Observatory image featuring hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies in and around the COSMOS field marks the observatory’s first LSST Camera image and catalog release for science.

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Zodiacal dust in exoplanetary systems could hinder our search for life on other worlds

If you’ve ever been under a dark sky in the early morning before dawn, you may have seen a faint glow, almost like a column of light rising from the east. It’s sometimes known as the false dawn because it appears before true dawn. It can also appear in the west after sunset, though it […]

How to keep the Earth habitable when the sun dies

In a billion years, the sun will start to run out of fuel and expand to become a red giant. Earth’s oceans and atmosphere will be burned away, and Earth will likely be engulfed by the sun altogether. The sun will then shrink to a dim white dwarf, and all light and warmth in the […]

Simulations hint at a hidden population of companionless black holes

So far, almost all stellar-mass black holes detected by astronomers have been found in binary systems. However, astronomers have long suspected that these binary black holes are the exception and that, within the Milky Way, most exist on their own.

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Astrobiologist uses Apollo lunar samples as mirror onto early Earth

Roll back the tape of Earth’s history, and geologists and astrobiologists remain perplexed about the environmental conditions on early Earth. That’s because conventional pathways for understanding Earth’s history have been lost to time owing to the planet’s active geology and atmospheric weathering.

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Spaceflight could change how astronauts swallow, eat and drink in subtle ways

Imagine trying to swallow a sip of water while your face feels stuffed with congestion, your sense of taste is dulled and your body is floating 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

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