Space News & Blog Articles

BepiColombo is slowly uncovering more and more fun facts about Mercury as it continues its preliminary mission. One of the more interesting things found so far is a magnetic “chorus” that appears similar to a phenomenon found in Earth’s much larger magnetic field. A new paper in Nature Communications from the researchers responsible for the probe’s Mio instrument that is studying Mercury’s magnetic field describes what could be thought of as a form of magnetic birdsong.

How can microorganism communities known as biofilms, and have been hypothesized to be responsible for early life on Earth, be used for space exploration? This is what a recent study published in *npj Biofilms and Microbiomes* hopes to address as an international collaboration of researchers investigated the pros and cons of using biofilms in spaceflight. This study has the potential for scientists to better understand the role of biofilms in spaceflight while mitigating health risks of astronauts.

Astronomers have puzzled over Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) since the Lorimer Burst (the first confirmed FRB) was detected in 2007. These rapid bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies last between milliseconds and a few seconds and release as much energy as the Sun produces in days. Whereas most FRBs are one-off events, astronomers have found some rare cases where FRBs were repeating in nature. For years, scientists have speculated as to what causes these events, with theories ranging from neutron stars and black holes to extraterrestrial communications.

When astronomers look out into the cosmos, they see supermassive black holes (SMBH) in two different states. In one state, they're dormant. They're actively accreting only a tiny amount of matter and emit only faint, weak radiation. In the other, they're more actively accreting matter and emitting extremely powerful radiation. These are normally called active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Deep in the frozen heart of Antarctica, the South Pole Telescope has been watching one of the most extreme neighbourhoods in our Galaxy, and it's just caught something extraordinary happening there. Astronomers have detected powerful stellar flares erupting from stars near the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. These aren't your average stellar flares, we're talking about energy releases so intense they make our Sun's most dramatic outbursts look like flickering candles.

When Halley's Comet blazed across English skies in April 1066, an elderly Benedictine monk named Eilmer watched from Malmesbury Abbey with growing recognition. "You've come, have you?" he reportedly said, crouching in terror at the glowing apparition. "You've come, you source of tears to many mothers." But Eilmer's words carried weight beyond mere dread, he realised he had seen this exact comet before, during its previous appearance in 989 when he was just a young man.

Dark matter doesn't emit light, it doesn't absorb light and it doesn't even block it, passing through ordinary matter like a ghost through walls (I’m very proud of that sentence.) Yet this invisible substance makes up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe, and its gravitational influence has shaped everything from galaxy clusters millions of light years across down to the rocky planet beneath our feet.

AI faces daily criticism from people worried about its ill-effects. But the type of AI that draws this ire are Large Language Models (LLMs). There are other types of AI with specialized functions that don't make it onto the front pages. Combing through vast troves of astronomical data is a perfect task for AI that is unlikely to be replicated by human minds.