NASA’s nearly complete Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has made another set of critical strides toward launch. This fall, the outer portion passed two tests—a shake test and an intense sound blast—to ensure its successful launch.

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Scientists working with the James Webb Space Telescope discovered three unusual astronomical objects in early 2025, which may be examples of dark stars. The concept of dark stars has existed for some time and could alter scientists’ understanding of how ordinary stars form. However, their name is somewhat misleading.

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In the early 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed galaxies in space moving faster than their mass should allow, prompting him to infer the presence of some invisible scaffolding—dark matter—holding the galaxies together. Nearly 100 years later, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope may have provided direct evidence of dark matter, allowing the invisible matter to […]

Whether it’s a sprained ankle or a backpack at the airport, X-ray images are an everyday occurrence in many areas. Empa researchers at the Center for X-Ray Analytics have succeeded in taking images that are far less commonplace: In collaboration with the Swiss Space Center (now Space Innovation at EPFL) and the Swiss Museum of […]

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are important carriers of organic matter throughout the universe. As organic molecules, they play a central role in interstellar chemistry and are closely related to the origin of prebiotic molecules. Understanding how these organic compounds evolve in molecular clouds—the cold, dark cradles of star formation—is essential for tracing the origins of […]

Using various ground-based and space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has observed a recently discovered fast X-ray transient designated EP 241021a. Results of the multiwavelength observational campaign, published November 17 on the pre-print server arXiv, shed more light on the behavior and nature of this transient.

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Primordial black holes (PBHs) are black holes theorized to have formed shortly after the Big Bang. Compared to black holes emerging from collapsing stars, PBHs could have very different masses, ranging from very small to extremely large.

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A geomagnetic superstorm is an extreme space weather event that occurs when the sun releases massive amounts of energy and charged particles toward Earth. These storms are rare, occurring about once every 20–25 years. On May 10–11, 2024, the strongest superstorm in over 20 years, known as the Gannon storm or Mother’s Day storm, struck […]