What happens to the climate when Earth passes through interstellar clouds?

Noctilucent clouds were once thought to be a fairly modern phenomenon. A team of researchers recently calculated that Earth and the entire solar system may well have passed through two dense interstellar clouds, causing global noctilucent clouds that may have driven an ice age.

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Perseverance rover spots unusual striped rock on Mars

Last week, team scientists and the internet alike were amazed when Perseverance spotted a black-and-white striped rock unlike any seen on Mars before. Is this a sign of exciting discoveries to come?

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Sources of water and hydroxyl are widespread on the moon, new analysis of maps finds

A new analysis of maps of the near and far sides of the moon shows that there are multiple sources of water and hydroxyl in the sunlit rocks and soils, including water-rich rocks excavated by meteor impacts at all latitudes.

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Proof-of-concept study uses X-rays to target mock-up asteroids in a vacuum

An X-ray pulse may be able to vaporize the surface of an asteroid and change its trajectory, according to a proof-of-concept paper published in Nature Physics. A laboratory experiment that mimics the deflection of an asteroid model using this technique suggests that this technology could potentially be used for future planetary defense missions.

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A magnetic halo in the Milky Way: New discoveries about galactic outflows

A new study led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and with contributions from Radboud University's Marijke Haverkorn, has unveiled significant insights into the Milky Way: a magnetized galactic halo.

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New millisecond pulsar discovered

Using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), astronomers have observed a globular cluster known as Terzan 6. They detected a new millisecond pulsar that is likely associated with this cluster. The finding was reported in a research paper published September 17 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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Florida company's space balloon takes big step toward 1st human flight

The weekend trip was a success for Space Perspective, the company that already has more than 1,800 people waiting for their chance to take balloon rides in a posh capsule up to the edge of space.

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Exoplanets could be hiding their atmospheres

Most of the exoplanets we've discovered orbit red dwarf stars. This isn't because red dwarfs are somehow special, simply that they are common. About 75% of the stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs, so you would expect red dwarf planets to be the most abundant. This also means that most habitable worlds are going to orbit these small, cool stars, and that has some significant consequences for our search for life.

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Observers detect intraday variability of blazar 1ES 1426+42.8

Astronomers report the detection of optical intraday variability of a blazar known as 1ES 1426+42.8. The new findings, presented in a paper published in the September issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could shed more light on the properties and nature of this blazar.

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Astronomers just detected the biggest black hole jets ever seen—and named them Porphyrion

The largest known black hole jets, 23 million light years across, have been discovered in the distant universe. This pair of particle beams launched by a supermassive black hole is over a hundred times larger than our galaxy, the Milky Way.

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NASA's Chandra finds galaxy cluster that crosses the streams

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found a galaxy cluster has two streams of superheated gas crossing one another. This result shows that crossing the streams may lead to the creation of new structure.

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Scientists scan TRAPPIST-1 for technosignatures

If you are going to look for intelligent life beyond Earth, there are few better candidates than the TRAPPIST-1 star system. It isn't a perfect choice. Red dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 are notorious for emitting flares and hard X-rays in their youth, but the system is just 40 light-years away and has seven Earth-sized worlds.

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Artemis I mission data show astronauts sent to the moon aboard Orion will be protected from radiation

According to a large team of technical and health specialists, astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will be well protected from radiation when the Artemis II mission travels to the moon and back next year.

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Observations provide crucial insights into the nature of a white dwarf–brown dwarf binary

Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have performed spectrophotometric observations of an eclipsing white dwarf–brown dwarf binary known as WD1032+011. Results of their observational campaign, published September 10 on the preprint server arXiv, yield important information regarding the nature of this system.

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New cosmic distance catalog could unlock the mysteries of universe formation

A new catalog providing information on millions of distant galaxies, which determines their distances with unprecedented precision over a field of view and depth never before explored, has been published today.

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Webb Telescope provides another look into galactic collisions

An interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright "eyes" and the wide semicircular "smile." The region has been observed before in infrared by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005. However, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope displays it at much higher resolution. This image is a composite, combining observations from Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera).

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Scientists have found evidence of past extreme solar storms—they could be disastrous for technology-based society

In September 1859, the same year that Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," telegraph systems across Europe and North America stopped working and started sparking, leading to fires in some cases.

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Future gravitational wave observatories could see the earliest black hole mergers in the universe

In February 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed they made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GWs). These events occur when massive objects like neutron stars and black holes merge, sending ripples through spacetime that can be detected millions (and even billions) of light-years away.

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Astronomers discover new feature in exoplanet distribution that's between the Neptunian Desert and Savanna

Astronomers have uncovered the "Neptunian Ridge," a newly identified feature in the distribution of exoplanets. This discovery, led by an international team including members of the University of Geneva, The NCCR PlanetS and the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), highlights the complex dynamics within the Neptunian Desert, a region with a scarcity of hot Neptunes, and the Neptunian Savanna, where these planets are more commonly found.

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Europa Clipper: 8 things to know about NASA's mission to an ocean moon of Jupiter

The first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth, Europa Clipper aims to find out whether the ice-encased moon Europa could be habitable.

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Spacewalk an 'emotional experience' for private astronauts

The commander of the daring space voyage that included the first-ever spacewalk by private astronauts described opening the hatch into the void as an "emotional experience" that left him in awe, yet deeply aware of the dangers.

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An ambitious mission to Neptune could study both the planet and Triton

Mission concepts to the outer solar system are relatively common, as planetary scientists are increasingly frustrated by our lack of knowledge of the farthest planets. Neptune, the farthest known planet, was last visited by Voyager 2 in the 1980s.

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A wobble from Mars could be sign of dark matter, study finds

In a new study, MIT physicists propose that if most of the dark matter in the universe is made up of microscopic primordial black holes—an idea first proposed in the 1970s—then these gravitational dwarfs should zoom through our solar system at least once per decade. A flyby like this, the researchers predict, would introduce a wobble into Mars' orbit, to a degree that today's technology could actually detect.

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Studying stars from the lunar surface with MoonLITE, courtesy of NASA's commercial lunar payload services

Optical interferometry has been a long-proven science method that involves using several separate telescopes to act as one big telescope, thus achieving more accurate data as opposed to each telescope working individually. However, the Earth's chaotic atmosphere often makes achieving ground-based science difficult, but what if we could do it on the moon?

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The skies are about to get a new star as a result of a cosmic cataclysm

Any night now, the astrophysicists tell us, a new star will appear in the night sky—about as bright as the North Star—the result of a cosmic explosion in a distant constellation millennia ago.

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Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago

In a discovery that challenges our understanding of Earth's ancient history, researchers have found evidence suggesting that Earth may have had a ring system that formed around 466 million years ago, at the beginning of a period of unusually intense meteorite bombardment known as the Ordovician impact spike.

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New tidally tilted pulsator discovered by astronomers

Astronomers have detected a new tidally pulsator star (TTP) by analyzing the data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The newfound pulsator, designated TIC 435850195, belongs to the rare class of tri-axial TTPs. The finding was detailed in a research paper published September 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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Astronomers detect black hole 'starving' its host galaxy to death

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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Cosmology is at a tipping point—we may be on the verge of discovering new physics

For the past few years, a series of controversies have rocked the well-established field of cosmology. In a nutshell, the predictions of the standard model of the universe appear to be at odds with some recent observations.

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Catch a partial lunar eclipse during September's supermoon

Get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one.

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Boeing 'ran out of time' on Starliner: astronaut stuck on ISS

A US astronaut stuck on the International Space Station said Friday he believed Boeing's Starliner could have carried him home, if more time had been available to work through the beleaguered spacecraft's issues.

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Stuck-in-space astronauts make first public comments since Boeing capsule left without them

Stuck-in-space astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Friday it was hard to watch their Boeing capsule return to Earth without them.

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Early dark energy could resolve cosmology's two biggest puzzles

A new study by MIT physicists proposes that a mysterious force known as early dark energy could solve two of the biggest puzzles in cosmology and fill in some major gaps in our understanding of how the early universe evolved.

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Want to walk in space? It might cost you more than money

A tech billionaire has become the first layperson to perform a space walk. Hundreds of miles above Earth, Jared Isaacman took part in an intricate performance of science and engineering that often comes with some serious health risks, even for professional astronauts.

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Combination and summary of ATLAS dark matter searches within 2HDM+a framework

In the 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed that the velocities of galaxies in the Coma Cluster were too high to be maintained solely by the gravitational pull of luminous matter. He proposed the existence of some non-luminous matter within the galaxy cluster, which he called dark matter. This discovery marked the beginning of humanity's understanding and study of dark matter.

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Image: Chili flowers bloom in International Space Station

In July 2021, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station started growing chili peppers in the Advanced Plant Habitat, as part of the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment.

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Projecting what Earth will look like 1,000 years from now could assist in search for advanced civilizations

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is regularly plagued by the fact that humanity has a very limited perspective on civilization and the nature of intelligence itself. When it comes right down to it, the only examples we have to go on are "life as we know it" (aka Earth organisms) and human civilization.

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Do we live in a shell universe?

The universe might not be as you think. Until recently, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model seemed to have a lock on cosmology. Like earlier Big Bang models, it supposes that the universe expanded from a hyperdense state and that the expansion of spacetime causes the Hubble redshift of light. Dark matter and dark energy are added to overcome problems relating to the cosmic microwave background and the unexpected dimness of remote supernovae.

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Billionaire's spacewalk with SpaceX delayed several hours hundreds of miles above Earth

A billionaire will have to wait a little longer to perform the first private spacewalk after SpaceX delayed Thursday's spacewalk by a few hours.

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NASA scientists recreate Mars's spider-shaped geologic formations in lab for the first time

Tests on Earth appear to confirm how the red planet's spider-shaped geologic formations are carved by carbon dioxide.

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Space travel: Protection from cosmic radiation with boron nitride nanotube fibers

With the success of the Nuri launch last year and the recent launch of the newly established Korea Aerospace Administration, interest in space has increased, and both the public and private sectors are actively investing in space-related industries such as space travel. However, exposure to cosmic radiation is unavoidable when traveling to space.

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Keeping mold out of future space stations

Mold can survive the harshest of environments, so to stop harmful spores from growing on future space stations, a new study suggests a novel way to prevent its spread.

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Amid Boeing's Starliner troubles, WA space industry thrives

It'd be reasonable to think Washington's space economy has a lot riding on Boeing's Starliner, the spacecraft that left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station and headed back to Earth with an empty cabin Friday.

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Who is on SpaceX's historic private spacewalk mission?

Four US civilians are set to attempt the first-ever private spacewalk on Thursday—a risky endeavor usually reserved for trained astronauts from government agencies.

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Using a space elevator to get resources from Ceres

Here at UT, we've had several stories that describe the concept of a space elevator. They are designed to make it easier to get objects off Earth and into space. That, so far, has proven technically or economically infeasible, as no material is strong enough to support the structure passively, and it's too energy-intensive to support it actively.

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New measurements of gravitational anomaly at low acceleration favor modified gravity, researcher claims

Wide binary stars as direct probes of the nature of gravity at low acceleration weaker than about 1 nanometer per second squared have been hotly debated. The nature of gravity at such low acceleration is of utmost importance because the concept of dark matter, the gravitational dynamics of astrophysical systems, fundamental theories of physics and cosmology are all inextricably intertwined with it.

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New dense sub-Saturn exoplanet discovered

Using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, India and elsewhere, have detected a new sub-Saturn exoplanet with a relatively high density. The finding was reported in a research paper published September 2 in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

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NASA spacecraft to study Jupiter moon's underground ocean cleared for October launch

NASA on Monday approved next month's launch to Jupiter's moon Europa after reviewing the spacecraft's ability to withstand the intense radiation there.

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Formation of super-Earths proven limited near metal-poor stars

In a new study, astronomers report novel evidence regarding the limits of planet formation, finding that after a certain point, planets larger than Earth have difficulty forming near low-metallicity stars.

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Could comets have delivered the building blocks of life to ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus and Titan?

Throughout Earth's history, the planet's surface has been regularly impacted by comets, meteors, and the occasional large asteroid. While these events were often destructive, sometimes to the point of triggering a mass extinction, they may have also played an important role in the emergence of life on Earth. This is especially true of the Hadean Era (ca. 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) and the Late Heavy Bombardment, when Earth and other planets in the inner solar system were impacted by a disproportionately high number of asteroids and comets.

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