Space News & Blog Articles

In November 2022, Lauren Berger loaded a rental truck with GPS equipment, a drone, notebooks, sample bags, and a flat spatula affectionately called a "scoopula." Her destination was California's Algodones Dunes, a sandy region bordering California, Arizona, and Mexico. Her mission was to unlock the secrets of Mars by studying Earth's desert patterns.

Astrobiology can be split into two very distinct fields. There’s the field that astronomers are likely more familiar with, involving large telescopes, exoplanets, and spectroscopic signals that are pored over to debate whether they show signs of life. But there is another camp, collective known as the Origins researchers that focus on developing a scientific understanding of how life originally developed on Earth. A new paper from Cole Mathis at Arizona State and Harrison B. Smith at the Institute of Science in Tokyo suggests a new path forward to tackling those challenges - set them up as competitions and let a hefty prize motivate scientific teams and individuals to pursue them.

Stars don’t form out of nothing, but tracking the gas and dust that do eventually form stars is hard. They float around the galaxy at almost absolute zero, emitting essentially no light, and generally making life difficult for astronomers. But, part of how they make life difficult is actually the key to studying them - they have “absorption lines” that detail what kind of material the light is passing through on its way to Earth. A new paper from Harvey Liszt of America’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Maryvonne Gerin of the Sorbonne details how tracking those absorption lines via radio astronomy can trace the “dark neutral medium” of interstellar gas throughout the galaxy.

Looking at the prospects for seeing the latest interstellar visitor to our solar system for yourself.

There's very little scientific debate about the existence of surface water on Mars in its past. The evidence at this point is overwhelming. Orbiter images clearly show river channels and deltas, and rovers have found ample minerals that only form in the presence of water. Now the scientific debate has moved on. Scientists are trying to learn the extent of Martian surface water, both on the planet's surface and through time.

Though our Solar System and the movement of its planets appears relatively sedate, there are many things that could upset it. Anything with enough mass that got close enough could disrupt planetary orbits. This includes primordial black holes (PBH).