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Tech - Universe Today - 23 hours ago

How Will Martian Gravity Affect Skeletal Muscle?

Marie Mortreux, an assistant professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Health Sciences, is part of an international team of researchers studying how the Mars’s gravity would affect astronauts’ skeletal muscle.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

Saturn-mass world discovered orbiting two low-mass stars

You just established a settlement on an Earth-like planetary body far from our solar system. You did your evening chores after eating dinner, and you want to go out for the evening view, which consists of two setting stars, reminiscent of the infamous scene in Star Wars. However, there’s one major difference: a large planetary body is in the sky. As you were aware before arriving, you’re on an exomoon orbiting a Saturn-sized exoplanet, both of which orbits two stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

This Pair Of Brown Dwarfs Can't Get Enough Of Each Other

Astronomers have found the first case of a brown dwarf binary pair experiencing mass transfer. The pair are very close to one another, with an orbital period of only 57 minutes. The pair will eventually merge into one, brighter star, or the accretor will become massive enough to trigger fusion. At only 1,000 light-years away, the system is a strong candidate for more detailed, follow-up observations.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

This Super-Puff Planet is Hiding its True Nature Behind Thick Haze

Super-puff planets have extremely low densities, and exoplanet scientists aren't sure why. They seem to defy our understanding of how planets form. Researchers used the JWST to observe the atmosphere of Kepler-51d, one of the puffiest of the super-puffs. Unfortunately, even the powerful space telescope found a featureless spectrum. What does it mean?

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

The Sun’s Long-Lived Active Regions Are Massive Flare Factories—But We Don’t Know Why

Space weather is a fascinating subject, but one we still have a lot to learn about. One of the main components of it is the active regions (ARs) of the Sun. These huge concentrations of magnetic fields show up throughout the Sun’s photosphere and are the primary source of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). They can be simple pairings of magnetic flux or huge, magnetically complex tangles that spend weeks creating massive solar storms before dissipating. But tracking the longest live...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Canada Allocates $200 Million Towards the Creation of Nation's First Spaceport

Minister of National Defence David McGuinty announced on Monday, March 16th, that the Canadian government is committing $200 million to develop Canada's first commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia, which will be run by Maritime Launch Services.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

The Crab Pulsar's Puzzling Emissions Finally Explained.

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. The Crab Pulsar, an often studied supernova remnant, is known for its unusual radio emission patterns. New researchs says it's because of a "tug-of-war" between magnetism and gravity. Gravity acts as a focusing lens and plasma in the magnetosphere acts as a defocusing lens.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Sometimes You Get Lucky, Just Like the Hubble Did When It Caught This Comet Disintegrating

A team of astronomers were fortunate when their original comet target couldn't be observed with the Hubble. They quickly pivoted to a different target, and caught Comet K1 in the process of breaking apart. This gave them an excellent opportunity to learn more about the doomed object.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

The Moon's Going To Get Crowded - We Should Protect Our Heritage On It While We Still Can

In 1959, the Luna 2 probe from the Soviet Union became the very first human-made object to reach our closest celestial neighbor. In the decades since, we have been leaving footprints - both literally and figuratively - all over the Moon. Today, there are over 100 metric tons of human-made material resting on the Moon’s surface - everything from advanced cameras and sensors to literal human waste. But that’s nothing compared to what’s to come. NASA predicts the next decade will see over 100 new l...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Eclipse Study Tracks Turbulence Through the Solar Corona

It was an amazing sight witnessed by many during the April 2024 total solar eclipse. For a few precious moments, it seemed like a celestial dimmer switch was thrown, as the Moon eclipsed the Sun. It was one of the very few times you could actually see prominences and the pearly white corona of the Sun in person, without the aid of special equipment. Now, a recent study out of the University of Hawai’i has linked high resolution images taken during totality with observations from missions orbitin...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

JUICE is Planning To Do Science On Jupiter's "Minor" Moons Too

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) probe is on its (very long) way to Jupiter, and will finally arrive at the King of Planets in 2031. Its primary mission is to focus on the “big three” icy moons - Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. But while JUICE is busy mapping Ganymede’s magnetic field, it will also be keeping a sharp eye on the other 94 moons in the Jupiter system. A recent paper published in Space Science Reviews by Tilmann Denk of DLR, Germany’s space rese...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Something is Changing the Small Magellanic Cloud

A strange lack of stellar orbits around the core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mystified astronomers for decades. Not only that, but the SMC has a strange, irregular shape, and sports a tidal. Now, a team of observers led by graduate student Himansch Rathore at the University of Arizona, has tracked down the reason why the stars don't orbit. It's because the SMC crashed directly through its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the distant past. That huge collision disrupted stel...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

A New Type of Exoplanet Has a Magma Ocean That's Lasted 5 Billion Years

A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The magma ocean has lasted 5 billion years so far, while Earth's magma ocean likely lasted only tens of millions of years.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

NASA Exoplanet-Hunting CubeSat Delivers "First Light" Images

With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Astronomers Search for "Exotrojans" Hiding in Extreme Pulsar Systems

Greek mythology has given a name to a great many objects in our solar system. But perhaps one of the least well understood are the Trojans, named after the people of Troy featured in The Iliad. When astronomers refer to them, they are normally talking about a group of over 10,000 confirmed asteroids orbiting at the Lagrange points both in front of and behind Jupiter on its orbit around the Sun. But, more generally, astronomers can now use the term to refer to any co-orbital setup - indeed almost...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Why Conventional SETI Needs A Major Refocus

After decades of searching for alien signals in narrow radio and microwave bandwidths, a new paper suggests that we take a wholly different approach. The idea is to broaden the search to a much wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

CERN Adds a New Particle to Large Hadron Collider's Subatomic Zoo

Scientists at Europe's CERN research center say the Large Hadron Collider's LHCb experiment has discovered a "doubly charmed" particle that's like a proton, but four times as weighty.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 4: Hiding in Plain Darkness

The WHAT? Yeah, the vortons. It’s not an anime monster-hunting show. It’s not some AI startup company. It’s a…it’s a thing. I think.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

New Study Complicates the Search for Alien Oxygen

Oxygen has been the most important gas in our search for life among the cosmos thus far. On Earth, we have it in abundance because it is produced by biological synthesis. But that might not be the case on other planets, so even if we do find a very clear high oxygen signal in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it might not be a clear indication that life exists there. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from Margaret Turcotte Seavey and a team of researchers from institutions like the NAS...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

The Coming Age of Space Stations

With the ISS set to retire in 2030, several plans are in place to replace it. These include existing space stations, proposals by rising national space agencies, and commercial space stations. With multiple outposts in orbit, the potential for research, development, and even conflict is considerable!

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Are Rogue Exomoons the Newest Frontier in the Search for Habitability?

There may be as many rogue planets or free-floating planets in the Milky Way as there are stars. If there are billions of these worlds, some of them have likely held onto their moons. New research reveals a pathway to habitability for these rogue exomoons.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Microscopic "Ski-Jumps" Could Shrink Spacecraft LiDAR to the Size of a Microchip

Every ounce counts when launching a rocket, which is why considerations for the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) of every component matters so much. For decades, one of the heaviest and most power-hungry components on a spacecraft has been its optical and communications hardware - specifically the bulky mechanical mirror used for LiDAR and free-space laser communications. But a new paper, published in Nature by researchers at MIT, MITRE, and Sandia National Laboratories, might have just fundamenta...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 3: The Great Vanishing Act

And yeah, we have a problem.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

A 60-Year Old Mystery About the Moon's Magnetosphere Is Finally Solved

One particularly well known fact about the Moon is that it doesn’t have much of a magnetosphere to speak of. There’s no blanket to protect it from the solar wind ravaging its surface, blowing away its atmosphere and charging the notoriously dangerous dust particles that make up its regolith. However, scientists have also known for around 60 years that some parts of the moon do experience sudden spikes in a magnetic field - some of which are up to 10 times stronger than the background magnetizati...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Reading Europa's Fingerprints

Beneath Europa's cracked and frozen shell lies a vast ocean of liquid water and what's seeping up through that ice may be one of the most compelling clues we have ever found about the moon's potential for life. A new analysis of James Webb Space Telescope observations has revealed that carbon dioxide on Europa's surface is far more widespread than previously thought, spreading across multiple regions of geological terrain in a distinctive lens like pattern. The findings are rewriting what we tho...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Life, But Not As We Know It

For sixty years, the search for life beyond Earth has been built on the single assumption that alien life will look enough like us to recognise. A radical new idea called Assembly Theory is challenging that assumption. A team from the Arizona State University has proposed applying it to the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, not to look for specific gases, but to measure how much complexity a planetary atmosphere contains, and whether blind chemistry alone could plausibly have produced it. If it...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

The Sun's Great Escape

Our Sun didn't always call this quiet corner of the Milky Way home. New research using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite has uncovered evidence that the Sun fled the chaotic heart of our Galaxy four to six billion years ago and it didn't go alone. A vast migration of stars almost identical to our own swept outward together, a great exodus that may have made life on Earth possible. The story of how astronomers pieced this together is as remarkable as the discovery itself.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 2: The Persistence of Memory

But here’s the thing about these defects. They can’t just go away. They’re stuck.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

The Seven Hour Explosion Nobody Could Explain

On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers the explanation that a star torn apart by an intermediat...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

NASA's DART Mission Also Changed Didymos' Orbit Around Sun

The spacecraft changed the binary system’s orbit, confirming that a kinetic impactor can be an effective planetary defense technique for deflecting a near-Earth object.

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 1: The Good Old Days

Every time you flip a light switch, or check the time, or feel the sodium ions wiggling in your brain don’t think about that one too much—you’re assuming something fundamental. You’re assuming the universe is a finished product. A completed work. You think the Big Bang happened, the forces of nature settled into their seats, and we’ve been cruising on a smooth, predictable ride ever since.

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

The Universe's Most Powerful Particle Accelerators Were Here All Along

Every planet with a magnetic field has a radiation belt, a region of space where charged particles get trapped and flung around at extraordinary speeds. Earth has two of them, and they've been puzzling scientists for decades. Now, a physicist at the University of Helsinki has built a model that defines a universal upper limit to just how energetic those belts can ever get. The answer applies not just to Earth, but to every planet in the Solar System, every gas giant, and even the strange objects...

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

A Glorious Spiral of Star Formation

Stars peek through the dusty, winding arms of NGC 5134, a spiral galaxy located 65 million light-years away, in this Feb. 20, 2026, image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. The telescope’s Near Infrared Camera records shorter-wavelength near-infrared light, mostly from the stars and star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spir...

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

Why Are Interstellar Comets So Weird? Part 4: We Finally Turned On the Porch Lights

So that's all nice. But why now? That's the question everyone asks. We went decades centuries, millennia really without seeing a single rock that didn't have a "Made in the Solar System" sticker on it. Then, in the span of less than ten years, we get the Big Three: 'Oumuamua, Borisov, and now 3I/ATLAS.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

Scientists Find Evidence of Worlds Colliding ... 11,000 Light-Years Away

Astronomers say unusual readings from a star system 11,000 light-years away suggest that two of the planets circling the star crashed into each other, creating a huge, light-obscuring cloud of rocks and dust.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

ESA's Mars orbiters watch solar superstorm hit the Red Planet

What happens when a solar superstorm hits Mars? Thanks to the European Space Agency’s Mars orbiters, we now know: glitching spacecraft and a supercharged upper atmosphere.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

This Isn't Just Another Rocky World Orbiting a Red Dwarf. This One's Special

Rocky planets are found in abundance around M-type stars (red dwarfs), so finding another one doesn't always generate headlines. But an international team of astronomers say that one recent M-dwarf rocky planet found by TESS is especially noteworthy. This one can serve as a benchmark for comparative studies of this type of exoplanet and their at-risk atmospheres.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Only A Supercomputer Can Understand the Extremely Energetic Chaos of a Neutron Star Merger

A neutron star merger is an extraordinary event. It features extremely powerful, chaotic magnetic fields that generate extremely energetic photons. Supercomputer simulations show that the extreme gamma-ray photons created in the mayhem can't even escape the chaos.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Why Are Interstellar Comets So Weird? Part 3: They SHOULD Be Weird

So why should we expect interstellar comets like 3I/ATLAS and 'Oumuamua and even to some extent Borisov to be different-different?

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Early Universe was Hot, Dense, and Soupy

MIT physicists have observed the first clear evidence that quarks create a wake as they speed through quark-gluon plasma, confirming the plasma behaves like a liquid.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

CHEOPS Discovery Defies Planetary Formation Rules

We’re starting to see just how exceptional our own solar system and its history is, as more exoplanets are discovered. A fourth exoplanet discovery in the LHS 1903 system made by ESA’s CHEOPS mission places a rocky world right where it shouldn’t be. This ‘inside-out system’ could challenge our current understanding of planetary formation.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Most Energetic Ghost Particle Ever Seen

Three years ago, a detector sitting on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea recorded a single subatomic particle carrying more energy than anything of its kind ever seen before. Where it came from has been a mystery ever since. Now, scientists working with the KM3NeT detector off the coast of Sicily think they may have found the culprit, a population of blazars, some of the most violent objects in the universe, each one powered by a supermassive black hole firing a jet of plasma directly toward Ea...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Sun That Never Flips

For 45 years, astronomers believed that stars like our Sun would eventually flip their rotation pattern as they aged with the poles speeding up and the equator slowing down. It was one of those theoretical predictions that seemed rock solid, written into textbooks and built into stellar models. Now, researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have run the most powerful simulations of stellar interiors ever attempted, and the theory has collapsed. Stars like the Sun, it turns out, seem to keep the ...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

"Ionic Liquids" Could Redefine the Habitable Zone

“Follow the water” has been a guiding mantra of astrobiology, and even space exploration more generally for decades. If you want to find life, it makes sense to look for the universal solvent that almost all types of life on Earth use. But what if life doesn’t actually need water to live or even evolve? A recent paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by researchers at MIT, including Dr. Sara Seager, and the University of Cardiff, proposes an alternative to water as the basis for life - ionic liq...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

New Study Says There's a Way to Make Dyson Bubbles and Stellar Engines Stable

While megastructures are clearly speculative, new research shows that they can (in theory) be built in a way that ensures long-term stability. These findings can provide insight into the properties of potential technosignatures in search for extraterrestrial intelligence studies.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Finding Gold In A Stellar Explosion

NASA telescopes have detected what could be the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected. A merging pair of neutron stars generated when they merged and exploded as a kilonova. It happened in an unusual location: a tidal stream of debris created by a group of merging galaxies.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Why Are Interstellar Comets So Weird? Part 2: Why Comets Are Like Cats

Once you start listing the properties of 3I/ATLAS, it becomes clear pretty quickly that this thing is distinctly different from any other comet we've ever seen. Here's just a small taste.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Looking for Supermassive Black Hole Binaries with a Flash of Starlight

Supermassive black hole binaries can be difficult to detect in many galaxies, but a new approach could find them by looking for the regular flashes of starlight caused by the gravitational lensing of these black holes.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Researchers Create a Nanoengineered Light Sail That Won't Melt

Traditional chemical rockets, though they are the most commonly used propulsion method for space exploration today, are beholden to the tyranny of the rocket equation. Every ounce of thrust they use must also start out as fuel, which means the rocket itself will have to weigh more, and weight is one of the limiting factors in how fast a propulsion system can go. So, scientists have been searching for, and actively testing, alternatives for decades. One of the most promising is the solar sail - ...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

China's Space Programme Prepares for Its Busiest Year Yet

China has just laid out one of its most ambitious spaceflight schedules yet and the details reveal a programme that is accelerating. Two crewed missions, a cargo resupply flight, a year long solo endurance experiment, and the first ever space station flight by astronauts from Hong Kong or Macao are all on the cards for 2026. Beyond Earth orbit, the countdown to a Chinese crewed Moon landing is ticking louder than ever. Here's what's coming up and why it matters.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

The Final Journey of Van Allen Probe A

A NASA spacecraft that spent seven years mapping Earth's invisible radiation shields has made its final journey home and it came back years ahead of schedule. Van Allen Probe A, launched in 2012 to study the powerful belts of charged particles that wrap around our planet, re-entered Earth's atmosphere in March 2026, most of it burning up in a blaze of friction and heat. What brought it down early wasn't a malfunction or a mission decision. It was the Sun and that twist in the story tells us some...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Reading the Sun's Mind Weeks Before It Erupts

When a powerful solar storm erupts, the warning system we currently rely on gives us just hours to respond, barely enough time to protect the satellites, power grids, and communication networks that modern life depends on. But a new tool developed by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute and the National Science Foundation could change that entirely, pushing advance warnings of dangerous space weather from hours to weeks. The secret lies not at the Sun's surface, but deep in its hidden ...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

AI Could Make Alien Contact More Likely for SETI's 'Project Hail Mary'

A new movie called "Project Hail Mary" tells the story of an unlikely astronaut who teams up with an alien to deal with a common cosmic threat. In the latest Fiction Science podcast, SETI astronomer Seth Shostak provides a status report on the real-world quest for alien contact.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

The Sun Has a Heartbeat

For forty years, a network of telescopes has been listening to the Sun hum and scientists have finally decoded what those sounds reveal about our star's hidden interior. A new study from the University of Birmingham and Yale University has found that the Sun's internal structure quietly shifts between solar cycles, leaving measurable fingerprints deep beneath its surface. It's a discovery that could transform how we forecast space weather and its impact here on Earth.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Sunday Morning's European Fireball Was Probably Only a Few Meters in Diameter

Multiple mobile phones, dashcams, and dedicated meteor cameras capture a fireball over part of Europe on Sunday night. Thousands of people witnessed it, and the ESA's Planetary Defence Team is analyzing it. So far, it looks like it was a few meters in diameter. It lit up the sky, and some debris even struck some buildings in Koblenz, Germany.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

The Rubin Observatory's LSST Will Detect Imminent Impactors Before They Crash Into Earth

One of the Vera Rubin Observatory's objectives is to detect incoming objects. It's decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time will detect one-meter class objects about to impact Earth and allow more detailed observations of them. That will help determine their impact sites with greater accuracy, allowing for more recovery.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

New Study Addresses Clotting Risks for Female Astronauts

Just a few days in simulated microgravity can subtly change the way women’s blood clots, sparking bigger questions about health monitoring protocols for astronauts who can spend six months or more in orbit, say Simon Fraser University researchers.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Why Are Interstellar Comets So Weird? Part 1: The Strangers Blowing Through Town

Imagine you live in a small town. Maybe it’s easy for you to imagine because you actually do. You’ve spent your whole life there. You know all the people, and all the people know you. Years go by. Decades. The same faces at the same corner store, the same routes to the same places, the same sky overhead. It’s comfortable. Predictable. You could walk the whole thing blindfolded and never trip.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

The Answer is Written in the Stars

Astronomers have turned to some of the oldest stars in our Galaxy to tackle one of cosmology's most stubborn puzzles and their answer might surprise you. By analysing precise age data for more than 200,000 Milky Way stars, researchers have placed the age of the universe at around 13.6 billion years. It's a deceptively simple idea that the universe cannot be younger than the stars it contains. What they found doesn't just give us a number, it adds a compelling new dimension to a decades long arg...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Aliens Might Have Their Radio Signals Blurred By Their Star's Solar Wind

Back in the early 2000s, my computer screen, like that of many other space enthusiasts, was typically covered in a series of rainbow-colored spectral signals. As my computer crunched through thousands of data points of radio signals collected by the SETI@Home initiative, I was hoping I was in some small way contributing to one of humanity’s greatest scientific endeavours - the search for extraterrestrial life. But, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal by Vishal Gajjar ...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Scientists Find the First Direct Evidence of Binary Asteroids Sharing Material

Scientists occasionally have a hard time figuring out whether data they are seeing is an actual physical phenomenon or just a trick of their instrumentation. A new paper in The Planetary Science Journal from Jessica Sunshine and their colleagues at the University of Maryland describes one such confusing scenario. In this case, the researchers noted some fan-like patterns across the surface of Dimorphos, the asteroid hit by NASA’s DART mission, and thought it might be a trick of their camera. But...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

How Jagged Moon Dust Could Support Future Astronauts

Lunar dust can be a pain - but it’s also literally the ground we will have to traverse if we are ever to have a permanent human settlement on the Moon. In that specific use case, it’s clingy, jagged, staticky properties can actually be an advantage, according to a new paper, recently published in Research from researchers at Beihang University, who analyzed the mechanical properties of samples returned by Chang’e 6 mission to the far side of the Moon.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

The JWST Reveals Some Puzzling Surprises in Jupiter's Northern Aurora

Jupiter's powerful, continuous aurorae dwarf those of Earth. Scientists know that Jupiter's Galilean moons created bright spots on Jupiter's northern aurora. The JWST observed these bright spots and generated infrared spectra of them for the first time. Those observations showed that Io's bright spot is extremely variable in both temperature and density, and researchers want to know why.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Terraforming Mars Isn't a Climate Problem—It's an Industrial Nightmare

Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion - we’re not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a good explainer as ...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Starshade concept could reveal Earth-like exoplanets

Finding Earth-like exoplanets with the composition and ingredients for life as we know it is the Holy Grail of exoplanet hunting. Since the first exoplanets were identified in the 1990s, scientists have pushed the boundaries of finding exoplanets through new and exciting methods. One of these methods is the direct imaging method, which involves carefully blocking out the host star within the observing telescope, thus revealing the orbiting exoplanets that were initially hiding within the star’s ...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Astronomers Produce the Largest Image Ever Taken of the Heart of the Milky Way

Astronomers have captured the central region of our Milky Way in a striking new image, unveiling a complex network of filaments of cosmic gas in unprecedented detail. Obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), this rich dataset—the largest ALMA image to date—will allow astronomers to probe the lives of stars in the most extreme region of our galaxy, next to the supermassive black hole at its center.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

Astronauts Use Bacteria and Fungi to Harvest Metals in Space

If humankind is to explore deep space, one small passenger should not be left behind: microbes. In fact, it would be impossible to leave them behind, since they live on and in our bodies, surfaces and food. Learning how they react to space conditions is critical, but they could also be invaluable fellows in our endeavor to explore space.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

VLT Image Captures a "Cosmic Hawk" Spanning its Wings.

Today’s Picture of the Week, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), seems to have captured a cosmic hawk as it spans its wings.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Making New Solar Activity Connections From Old Data

It’s tough sometimes, living with a tempestuous star. Modern human civilization and technology lives at the whim of the Sun, as it sends solar storms and punishing coronal mass ejections our way. And while we understand the overall pitch of the 11 year solar cycle, it's hard to predict exactly what the Sun is going to do next. Now, a recent study has reached back and examined over a century of solar observations, in an effort to make more accurate near-term predictions of solar activity.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

The 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Tape Recorder Hidden Inside Asteroid Dust

Asteroids are critical to unlock our understanding of the early solar system. These chunks of rock and dust were around at the very beginning, and they haven’t been as modified by planetary formation processes as, say, Earth has been. So scientists were really excited to get ahold of samples from Ryugu when they were returned by Hayabusa-2 a few years ago. However, when they started analyzing the magnetic properties of those samples, different research groups came up with different answers. Theo...

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Mars Express Images Reveal Mars' Pockmarked Surface

Craters, craters, and yet more craters: this snapshot from ESA’s Mars Express is packed full of them, each as fascinating as the last.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Astronomers Using MeerKAT Spot a Cosmic Laser Halfway Across the Universe

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a new radio astronomy frontier.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Phew! NASA Rules Out Asteroid Smashup on the Moon in 2032

Here’s one less thing to worry about or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Scientists Publish the First Direct Measurement of Space Debris Pollution

Back in February 2025, a SpaceX rocket that had delivered 22 Starlink satellites to orbit had a malfunction. It failed to execute a planned deorbit burn and drifted for 18 days in orbit before beginning an uncontrolled descent about 100km off the west coast of Ireland. Some parts of the rocket landed in Poland, and while they didn’t injure anybody, there was enough concern about the lack of communication that Poland dismissed the head of its space agency. But that wasn't the only lasting impact ...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Illinois and UChicago Physicists Develop a New Method for Measuring Cosmic Expansion

A team of astrophysicists, cosmologists, and physicists has developed a novel way to compute the Hubble constant using gravitational waves. As our capability to observe gravitational waves improves in the future, this new method could be used to make even more accurate measurements of the Hubble constant, bringing scientists closer to resolving the Hubble tension.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

What Goes On Inside A Massive Star Before It Explodes As A Supernova?

When people think of supernova explosions, they're most-often thinking of Type II core-collapse supernovae, where a massive star becomes a red supergiant before collapsing on itself and exploding. New research uncovers what's going on inside the star before it explodes, and explains why SNe light curves can be different from one another.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie Project Releases Full Data on 2024 Solar Eclipse

On April 8, 2024, volunteers participating in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project all around the United States hurried to photograph the solar eclipse with the latest, greatest equipment, capturing groundbreaking images of the Sun’s corona.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Introducing the 'Interplanetary Habitable Zone'

Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the “Goldilocks Zone” around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet’s surface - a good approximation for what we thought of as the early conditions for life on Earth. But what happens if that life doesn’t stay on an Earth analog? If they, like we, start to move towards their neighboring planets, the idea of a habitable zone becomes much more compli...

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Cosmic Collaboration: Euclid and Hubble Team Up to Capture the Cat's Eye Nebula

It's hard to turn away from a picture of the Cat's Eye Nebula, even if you've seen it dozens of times. It may be the most visually compelling planetary nebula out there, with its billowing, layered shrouds and its intricate structure. NASA and the ESA have combined images of the Cat's Eye from the Euclid and Hubble space telescopes for a fresh look at a favourite and historical cosmic object.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Red Dwarf Stars Might Starve Alien Plants of the "Quality" Light They Need to Breathe

Red dwarfs make up the vast majority of stars in the galaxy. Such ubiquity means they host the majority of rocky exoplanets we’ve found so far - which in turn makes them interesting for astrobiological surveys. However, there’s a catch - astrobiologists aren’t sure the light from these stars can actually support oxygen-producing life. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Giovanni Covone and Amedeo Balbi, suggests that they might not - when it comes to stellar light, quality is just a...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Some Extremophiles Could Survive an Asteroid Impact on Mars, and the Dangerous Journey to Earth

Panspermia is the idea that life was spread from world to world somehow. New research shows that one type of Earthly extremophile can survive the extremely high pressure from asteroid impacts on Mars, be blasted into space, and maybe even survive the journey to Earth.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

NASA Tests Prototype 3D Printed Titanium Antenna in Space

With a simple motion, a jack-in-the-box-like spring designed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the potential of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to cut costs and complexity for futuristic space antennas. Called JPL Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), the spring deployed on the small commercial spacecraft Proteus Space's Mercury One on Feb. 3, 2026. An onboard camera captured a video of the spring popping out of its container as the spacecraft passed over the Pacific Oc...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

NASA Tests Prototype 3D Printed Titanium Spring in Space

With a simple motion, a jack-in-the-box-like spring designed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the potential of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to cut costs and complexity for futuristic space antennas. Called JPL Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), the spring deployed on the small commercial spacecraft Proteus Space's Mercury One on Feb. 3, 2026. An onboard camera captured a video of the spring popping out of its container as the spacecraft passed over the Pacific Oc...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Adolescence Is Tumultuous, Even For Exoplanets

Planetary systems such as our solar system take hundreds of millions of years to evolve. But we see most exoplanet systems either very early in their development, or long after the systems have settled down. There's an information gap about what happens in the middle, and a rarely observed "adolescent" system is a valuable opportunity to learn more and to test models of planetary evolution.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

The Coldest "Stars" in the Galaxy Might Actually Be Alien Megastructures

Ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept in 1960, the “Dyson sphere” has been the holy grail of techno-signature hunters. A highly advanced civilization could build a “sphere” (or, in our more modern understanding, a “swarm” of smaller components) around their host star to harvest its entire energy output. We know, in theory at least, that such a swarm could exist - but what would it actually look like if we were able to observe one? A new paper available in pre-print on arX...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Astronomers Devise a New Way to Measure Cosmic Expansion with Lensed Supernovae

Researchers in Munich have used the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona to capture five images of one and the same supernova in a single picture. The gravity of two foreground galaxies has deflected the light from a supernova far in the background along different paths to Earth.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

How Saving Earth Could Ruin Orbit

Satellite imaging is increasingly important to every field from crop monitoring to poverty reduction. So it’s no surprise that there have been more and more satellites launched to try to meet that growing demand. But with more satellites comes more risk for collision - and the debris field that comes after the collision. A new paper in Advanced in Space Research from John Mackintosh and his co-authors at the University of Manchester looks at how we might use mission design to mitigate some of th...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Tiny Dust Grains From Massive Stars: How the Smallest and Largest Are Linked

Star dust is at the root of everything that exists, and is produced in large quantities around Wolf-Rayet binaries. But there are some puzzling observations of dust grain sizes that require explanations. New research shows why different observations have found different dust grain sizes.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

How to Weigh a Killer Asteroid at 22 Kilometers per Second

Estimating a mass for a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is perhaps the single most important thing to understand about it, after its trajectory. Actually doing so isn’t easy though, as the mass for objects in the tens to hundreds of kilometers in size are too small to have their mass calculated by traditional radio-frequency tracking techniques. A new paper from Justin Atchison of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his co-authors proposes a method that could find th...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Predicting the Sun's Most Violent Outbursts

In the first four days of February this year the Sun unleashed six powerful X-class flares in rapid succession including an X8.1 that was the strongest in several years. And now, scientists have announced a new forecasting system that could give us up to a year's warning before the most dangerous solar storms arrive. The extraordinary thing is that the system has already been proved right by eruptions nobody knew about until after the forecast was made.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

How Long Do Civilisations Last?

In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with colleagues and asked a question that has haunted astronomers ever since. If the universe is so vast, so old, and so full of stars, where is everybody? A new study has turned that question around and come up with an answer that is quietly unsettling. If intelligent life is common in the Galaxy, the mathematics suggests it cannot last very long.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

What the Moon Rocks Were Hiding

The rocks that twelve astronauts carried home from the Moon fifty years ago have just rewritten our understanding of lunar history. A new analysis of Apollo samples has finally resolved one of the most stubborn debates in planetary science and the answer turns out to be one that neither side of the argument was entirely right about.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Laser-Based 3D Printing Could Build Future Bases on the Moon

Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

The Toughest Animals in the Universe Just Got a New Job

They are the toughest animals on Earth and possibly the key to surviving on Mars. Tardigrades, the microscopic creatures nicknamed 'water bears', have survived the vacuum of space, the crushing pressure of the deep ocean and temperatures that would kill virtually anything else. Now a new study has put them to work as unlikely pioneers, testing whether the hostile soil of Mars could ever support life and the results are full of surprises.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

The Comet From Another Star

A visitor from another star system has just had its portrait taken by a spacecraft on its way to Jupiter and the image is superb. Comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object ever discovered passing through our Solar System, has been captured in stunning detail by ESA's JUICE mission, revealing a glowing halo of gas, a sweeping tail, and hints of jets erupting from its ancient, icy heart. But the picture itself is just the beginning of the story.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Europe's Answer to Starship

SpaceX's Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built and it may be about to change everything. But researchers at the German Aerospace Centre have been asking a question: does Europe have an answer? Their new study, built on meticulous analysis of Starship's own flight data, suggests the answer is yes although it will require a fundamentally different approach, and a willingness to think differently.

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

Growing Future Meals in Space Will Require Human Waste

Future farmers on the Moon and Mars will have a big challenge: how to grow healthy food in two extremely unhealthy environments. That's because the soil on both worlds isn't at all hospitable to plants and animals. Neither are other conditions. Both are irradiated worlds, Mars has a thin atmosphere and the Moon has none at all. So, how will future colonists on either world grow their food?

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

Get Ready For The Rubin Observatory's Deluge Of Discoveries

We've been waiting a long time for the Vera Rubin Observatory to begin its work. The observatory features the largest digital camera ever built. It'll create a time-lapse of the southern night sky for ten years with its 3.2 gigapixel camera. An untold number of discoveries awaits.

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

The Universe's Most Extraordinary Construction Site

Astronomers have discovered a extraordinary celestial construction site hiding behind a natural magnifying glass in space and what they've found is unlike anything seen before. A cluster of at least 11 galaxies, all building stars at a ferocious rate in the early universe, has been caught in the act of becoming one of the most massive structures in the universe.

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

The Stars That Lit Up the Early Milky Way

Astronomers have used a special class of ancient, pulsating stars as celestial lighthouses to map the earliest chapter of our Galaxy's life and what they've found is rewriting what we thought we knew about how the Milky Way was born. By building the largest ever catalogue of these stellar beacons and tracing their movements back billions of years, the team has uncovered surprising similarities between our Galaxy's earliest structures, and even found evidence of the same story playing out in our ...