Space News & Blog Articles

For the first time, scientists have created a quantum computing experiment for studying the dynamics of wormholes — that is, shortcuts through spacetime that could get around relativity’s cosmic speed limits.

A tiny spacecraft is ready to head out for a big job: shining a light on water ice at the Moon’s south pole.

Young protostars are wrapped in what could be called a womb of gas and dust. The gas and dust nearest to them form a circumstellar disk as the stars grow. The disk is a reservoir of material that the star accretes as it grows.

A sleeping giant of a volcano woke up this past week on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Loa, which last erupted in the early 1980s, has been rattling the island with earthquakes for weeks. Finally, on November 27th, the mountain opened up. Not only did residents see this eruption, but NASA and NOAA satellites captured an infrared view of it.

There are 8 billion of us now. The UN says when the population peaks around the year 2100, there’ll be 11 billion human souls. Our population growth is colliding with the natural world on a greater scale than ever, and we’re losing between 200 and 2,000 species each year, according to the World Wildlife Federation.

NASA just released a new supercut of high-resolution video from the Artemis I launch on November 16, 2022. Much of the footage is from cameras attached to the rocket itself, allowing everyone to ride along from engine ignition to the separation of the Orion capsule as it begins its journey to the Moon.

If you like shiny things, some of the most gorgeous objects in space are globular clusters, with their bright, densely packed collections of gleaming stars. And if you like globular clusters, you’re in luck: two different Hubble images of globular clusters were featured this week by NASA and ESA.

At least once, you’ve looked up at the night sky and asked the same longstanding question we’ve all asked at least once, “Are we alone?” With all those points of light out there, we can’t be the only intelligent beings in the universe, right? There must be at least one technological civilization aside from us in the great vastness that we call the cosmos.

Not all stars are members of galaxies. Some stars exist in the space between galaxies, though they didn’t form there. They’re called intra-group stars, and astronomers study them by observing their light, called intra-group light (IGL.)

According to the most widely-accepted theory, planetary systems form from large clouds of dust and gas that form disks around young stars. Over time, these disks accrete to create planets of varying size, composition, and distance from their parent star. In the past few decades, observations in the mid- and far-infrared wavelengths have led to the discovery of debris disks around young stars (less than 100 million years old). This has allowed astronomers to study planetary systems in their early history, providing new insight into how systems form and evolve.

New technologies bring new astronomical insights, which is especially satisfying when they help answer debates that have been ongoing for decades. One of those debates is why exactly the plasma emitted from pulsars “collimates” or is brought together in a narrow beam. While it doesn’t provide a definitive answer to that question, a new paper from an international group of scientists points to a potential solution, but it will require even more advanced technologies.

A team of astronomers has caught glimpses of gas giants forming around a very young star.

Researchers from Ohio State University have come up with a novel method to detect dark matter, based on existing meteor-detecting technology. By using ground-based radar to search for ionization trails, similar to those produced by meteors as they streak through the air, they hope to use the Earth’s atmosphere as a super-sized particle detector. The results of experiments using this technique would help researchers to narrow down the range of possible characteristics of dark matter particles.

There’s a little galaxy in the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood called Leo 1. It’s a dwarf spheroidal that lies less than a million light-years away from us. Surprisingly, it has a supermassive black hole about the same mass as Sagittarius A* in our galaxy. That’s unusual in several ways, and astronomers want to know more about it.

A new particle accelerator at Michigan State University is producing long-awaited results. It’s called the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and it was completed in January 2022. Researchers have published the first results from the linear accelerator in the journal Physics Review Letters.

Have you ever seen a lunar eclipse of the Earth from the far side of the Moon? Now we have.

Here’s an absolutely stunning new view from the James Webb Space Telescope of a dusty spiral galaxy, NGC 1566. Amateur (but expert!) image editor Judy Schmidt took the raw data from JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and teased out this eerie, spider-web-like view of this distant galaxy. The swirling and symmetrical arms are so full of dust that not many stars are visible.

China is starting to become a force in space exploration. Its main focal point of lunar exploration has started bearing fruit, with several successes, including a sample return mission and the first-ever craft to land on the far side. So what’s next for the Lunar Exploration Program? Establishing a research base may be on the cards, but the country doesn’t just plan to stop at the Moon – they are looking far beyond.

Humanity is getting better a planetary defense. At least from external threats from outer space. As long as they’re just dumb rocks that follow the laws of physics. And a group of extraordinary humans proved it last week when the planetary defense community jumped into action to accurately track and predict exactly where a relatively small meteor would fall on November 19th.

One of the benefits of having a cluster of satellites orbiting another planet is that scientists can then analyze that planet’s weather. Sometimes in that process, they find patterns that are strikingly similar to those found on our home planet. That was the case recently when a group of scientists from ESA used data from Mars Express to analyze cloud formation on Mars. To no one’s surprise, dust seemed to be at the core of that formation. But the resultant clouds looked very much like those found here on Earth – in the tropics. 

In 2015, the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) became the subject of controversy when it was revealed that the namesake (NASA’s administrator between 1961 and 1968) was involved in the infamous “Lavender Scare.” This refers to the period in the late 1940s and early 50s when the U.S. State Department purged thousands of individuals from their positions due to allegations of homosexuality. In 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson requested a formal and public report and tasked NASA’s Chief Historian Brian C. Odom with investigating the matter.