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Tech - Universe Today - 1 hour ago

Perseverance Reveals How Complex Water Systems Shaped the Jezero Crater on Early Mars

A new study reveals that Jezero Crater’s enigmatic ‘Margin Unit’ was shaped by a complex sequence of ancient lakes, groundwater systems, and hydrothermal fluids.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 hours ago

Swiss Engineers Just Designed a Better 'Shock Absorber' for Spacecraft

Rocket launches are some of the most violent travel methods man has ever created. They generate millions of pounds of thrust and convert that into intense g-forces. Humans must undergo serious training to withstand those experiences, but machines have to do so as well, but by design rather than training. If a delicate mirror or solder joint cracks before a multi-billion dollar satellite even begins its mission, the years of effort that went into its design and assembly could be lost. Now, resear...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 hours ago

Stanford Engineers Teach Spacecraft to "Dream" Their Way to the Space Station

Docking with the ISS may seem simple. However, actually doing so is a showcase in how difficult orbital mechanics can be. It’s equivalent to traveling down a highway at 28,000 km/hr and parallel parking into an open garage on a multi-billion dollar laboratory traveling at the same speed. If you try to accelerate forward you actually drift up, and there’s no air friction to naturally slow you down. Oh, and if you hit the lab, everyone onboard both your craft and the station dies, and the resultan...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 hours ago

Strange Galaxies in the Early Universe Were Shaped by Weird Stars

Galaxies and their stars in the early Universe look a lot weirder than those we see today, and astronomers want to know why. A team of researchers at the University of Utah decided to survey certain stars in nearby galaxies as analogs of those that existed when the Universe was still in its infancy. The survey, called the "Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars (TEMPOS), used the ultraviolet (UV) light streaming from those relatively close-by stars as detected by the Hubble Space Telescope's C...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 hours ago

New Lunar Crater Offers Keys To Moon’s Shallow Subsurface

Asteroids which strike the Moon and create new craters offer lunar scientists a window onto the workings of our natural satellite’s shallow subsurface.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

JUICE Mission to Swing by Earth on September 28

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will return to Earth on 28 September, with flight controllers guiding the spacecraft close to our home planet to alter its speed and direction en route to Jupiter.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

Following Neptune Through Opposition 2026

Never seen Neptune for yourself? Late September 2026 presents an ideal opportunity to cross the outermost ice giant off of your ‘life list,’ as the planet reaches opposition for 2026, rising opposite to the setting Sun and riding high to the south towards local midnight.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

Astronomers Directly Image the Youngest Exoplanet Ever

Most exoplanets we find have been around a long time. They’ve cleared out their orbital path (one of the requirements of planethood, as fans of Pluto well know), have their own gravitational pull, and in many cases shine with their own infrared light. But it takes a long time to get to that point - finding “young” planets is much harder. But a new paper available in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by a research team led by Andrea Bernardi of Diego Portales University in Chile describes a new p...

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

How Diffractive Solar Sails Could Stop a Killer Asteroid at 100 km/s

Asteroids don’t come with a warning label that they might one day hit Earth. While we don’t know of any currently on course to do so, we are finding thousands of new ones each year, and there’s always a potential that one could. We proved a viable technique for dealing with that eventuality - the DART mission successfully moved a small asteroid using a “kinetic impactor” - basically a big rod designed to push the asteroid off its trajectory. But DART had one big flaw - it was traveling in the sa...

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

SKA May Detect Magnetic Fields on Distant Exoplanets

Studying exoplanets has provided astronomers with a plethora of insights regarding what characteristics need to be searched to find life beyond Earth. For the longest time, astronomers merely thought an exoplanet in a star’s habitable zone was a sufficient criterion for an Earth-like world. However, astronomers have learned that certain stars are more active than our Sun, resulting in exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone being blasted with far more radiation than Earth could handle. In rece...

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

First Diagnostic X-Rays in Space Mark New Era for Astronaut Health

A team of researchers acquired the first diagnostic X-ray images during a commercial spaceflight, demonstrating that X-ray medicine can be performed in space.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

3I/ATLAS Has An Extreme Taste For Heavy Water

More and more details about 3I/ATLAS are filtering through the scientific process as time goes on. Our third known interstellar visitor attracted the attention of some of the most powerful observatories in the world when it was discovered in July 2025, and some of those telescopes found something peculiar - the isotopes it contained appeared different. A new paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters (and available in pre-print on arXiv) by Kenji Furuya of the RIKEN Pioneering Research...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Space Rocks Carry Hundreds of Thousands of Complex Organic Molecules—and We Just Photographed Them

Scientists have known for a while that meteorites contain the “building blocks” of life - complex organic molecules such as amino acids, simple sugars, or even the chemical rungs of DNA. But anyone who has taken an organic chemistry class knows there are plenty of other carbon-based molecules out there, and a new study from Joseph W. Frye-Jones of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Florida State, which was published in The Planetary Science Journal, found tens of thousands of types ...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

A Rare, Distant Clump of Early Galaxies Reveals Ancient Cosmic Secrets

The discovery of a very early and rare proto-supercluster of infant galaxies may help give clues to the formation of such clusters and their connection to the Cosmic Web.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Smashed Icy Moons Cool Too Rapidly to Retain Oceans

There are more than 450 confirmed moons orbiting the eight major planets, but only a handful of them provide unique scientific value to pique the interests of the scientific community, specifically their potential for hosting life as we know it. This is due to the subsurface oceans that exist beneath icy crusts, including Jupiter’s Europa and Ganymede, and Saturn’s Enceladus. But what processes are responsible for producing these subsurface oceans, or potentially preventing them from forming in ...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Scientists Release Details About Moon's New Massive Crater

It's easy to think of the Moon as the static constant companion in the night sky. Its face hasn’t visibly changed in millennia, and always faces us with the same side. But looks can be deceiving, as our closest companion is constantly bombarded by asteroids and comets that make small craters across the lunar landscape. While they might not be large enough for us to see with our naked eye, professional Moon watchers can pick up on them. And a recent paper published in Science Advances, describes ...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Earth's Center of Mass Drifts Less Than We Thought

Earth's center of mass isn't stationary. It drifts seasonally and over the course of years. A new study measures this down to the scale of millimeters and finds the seasonal drift is smaller than we thought.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Solar Orbiter Catches the Sun’s Missing High-Speed Vibrations

The Sun’s magnetic fields are a twisty, curvy, ever changing mess. In particular, our star’s polar regions host regions called polar coronal holes that host invisible magnetic highways that stretch out into interplanetary space. But there’s a lot we don’t know about how those highways actually work, and in particular how they give the particles that form the fast solar wind an extra “kick” that sends them zooming at hundreds of kilometers per second. A new paper from a team led by Dr. Yuhang Gao...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Astronomers Uncover "Hypersoft" X-ray Sources

X-rays showcase some of the most unique astronomical objects in the universe. Neutron stars and black holes siphoning gas from companion stars stick out like sore thumbs at this level of radiation. However, according to a new paper by Mustafa Muhibullah and Jimmy Irwin from the University of Alabama and Rosanne Di Stefano from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and the Smithsonian, there appears to be another group of ultra-bright X-ray emitters that we’ve completely missed until now. They c...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

The Sun Is Physically Capable of Producing a "Superflare" According To A New Study

We have long known that the Sun is active. It “flares” quite often, sending huge amounts of energy off in a certain direction - sometimes directly at Earth. But we also know that, compared to other Sun-like stars, it seems relatively quiet, and not capable of producing the “superflares” we sometimes see in its stellar equivalents. That sounds like great news for humanity, and some scientists have even argued that lack of superflares was a critical impetus for the development of complex life on E...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

MIT Research Could Lead to Refueling Depots on Mars

MIT PhD candidate Lanie McKinney is developing technology to convert the chemicals in the Martian atmosphere into propellant to bring astronauts home.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Researchers Measure the Environment Where the First Supermassive Black Holes Formed

Scientists theorize that the rapid emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early Universe can be explained by the direct-collapse black hole (DCBH) scenario. In a recent study, astronomers investigated the potential host environments of DCBHs and found that this scenario is a plausible explanation for how the "seeds" of SMBH formed.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

BepiColombo Makes Up-Close Measurement of Mercury's Solar Bombardment

BepiColombo's measurements of particle bombardment at Mercury will help assess the impact of space storms on Mercury's surface and on Earth's atmosphere.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

The Red Planet Has a Purple Side

Mars appears red because of iron oxides in the regolith. But it's not uniformly red. Different lighting conditions and different materials accumulated on the surface can make it appear purple, as in these images from Mars Express and its High-Resolution Stereo Camera.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

To Understand The Solar Cycle, Notice How The Sun Sleeps

Astronomer Sandra Chapman has found a connection between the quiet period of one solar cycle and the active period of the next. Her data shows how a critical cutoff point is the key, but the real test will be the solar maximum of Cycle 26 in the 2030s.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Astronomy’s Decades-Long Quest To Understand Cosmic Topology

Cosmic topology is as esoteric as cosmology can get. But a growing number of astrophysicists think it holds keys to understanding the universe on its largest scales.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Researchers Develop a Way to Check the Weather on a Exoplanet

Scientists from Trinity have developed a powerful way to unravel the changing weather patterns on distant worlds. Using this approach, they discovered that the weather on a well-studied brown dwarf, “SIMP 0136”, previously linked with Northern Lights-like phenomena, is largely shaped by just two dominant processes: changes in temperature and the vertical structure of its clouds.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

A Zombie White Dwarf Star is Born Again. Hallelujah!

30 years ago, an amateur astronomer noticed a white dwarf star suddenly getting brighter. New research shows this is due to a Very Late Thermal Pulse, a type of helium flash. The star has heated up and become brighter, and is now called a 'born again' star. It's evolved into a Wolf-Rayet type star, and astronomers will get to watch as it continues to evolve on human timescales.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Catching 2026 Jovian Moon Mutual Eclipse Season

It’s that time of the decade again. Late 2026 going into early 2027 is a special time for the major Jovian moons, as they trade places passing one in front of another as seen from our Earthly point of view. We call this mutual transit-eclipse season, a favorable time to catch the complex interplay of Jupiter’s major moons.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Little Red Dots Are The Seeds of Quasars and Supermassive Black Holes

Computer simulations find that overmassive black holes form readily in the early universe. Their spectra match that of Little Red Dots, which later become powerful quasars and supermassive galactic black holes.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Genetically Engineered Yeast Could Build the First Martian Outposts

If we are ever to have a permanent presence on Mars, we will have to learn to build there. Shipping the material from Earth to build something as simple as a pressurized habitat is prohibitively expensive, so we will have to make sure of the materials available on Mars’ surface. A research team led by Ning Liu at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently published a paper in Chem Circularity that uses biology to do much of the heavy lifting for the structural materials we would...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

The Sun May Have Swallowed a Planet

New research suggests that some unusual characteristics of the Sun may be explained if it swallowed a large planet sometime during the Solar System’s formation.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Mercury is Shrinking, But Faster Than Previously Thought

The rough, impact-debris-covered surface of Mercury has hidden the true rate at which Mercury has been shrinking, which scientists previously underestimated by 30%

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

When Stars Engulf Rocky Planets, Beryllium Gives It Away

Astronomers know that stars can engulf planets when they stray too close. But how can they know, by looking at a star, if it has ever done so? The answer lies in Beryllium, an element not synthesized inside stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

Webb Searches for Brown Dwarfs in a Stunning Star-Forming Region

How small can brown dwarfs be before the definition breaks down? That question is at the heart of new research, and new JWST images. Using the space telescope, researchers have discovered a new class of brown dwarfs with low masses, marked by a peculiar hydrocarbon feature.

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

For Trans-Neptunian Objects, The Past Is Written On Their Surface

Some Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) formed closer to the Sun and migrated to the outer solar system, while others formed there originally. A new study finds that "hot" and "cold" origin TNOs can be distinguished not only by their orbits, but also by their surface color.

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

Saturn's South Pole Features Newly Formed Atmospheric Decagon

The planet Saturn is arguably the most recognizable planetary object in the entire solar system because of its massive rings. Anytime a child is asked what their favorite planet is, the answer is often “The one with the rings!” But, while Saturn’s rings are its most striking feature, the famed planet has a myriad of other unique features that often get overlooked, specifically its polar activity. This includes a long-known rotating hexagon in its north polar region, but what kinds of activity co...

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

If Venus Had An Ancient Moon, It Was Doomed

Earth has a big beautiful Moon, while Venus, its 'sister planet', doesn't. Why is that? Did it ever have one? If it did, new research shows it was never going to last very long.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

From 10 to 22 years: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's Mission Has Just Been Extended.

More good news for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The telescope's first mid-course correction was extremely efficient, using only 10% of the fuel allotted for it. This efficiency, coupled with other factors, means the powerful space telescope will likely have an additional ~12 years of observing time.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

If Black Holes Have Hair, We Will See It in the Ringdown of Their Mergers

Researchers have found that if black holes have certain features, known as "hair," then we could prove it by observing the gravitational ringdown of merging black holes. Future studies could test the no-hair theorem of general relativity.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

ALMA is Watching a Massive Binary Star System Form

Astronomers used 8 years of observations to create a 3D image of a very young, very massive binary star as it forms. The image shows that the disks in the system are all misaligned. Those misalignments, together with the orbit, are clues to the system's chaotic history.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

CubeSat Instrument Extends Solar Storm Warnings 10x

Our Sun is the very reason life exists on our small, blue planet. It provides solar radiation that warms the planet and ignites the intricate biochemical processes like photosynthesis producing oxygen for life to breathe. However, while the Sun is known for giving life, it can also potentially take it away with its solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and solar radiation storms, all of which are referred to as space weather. But how can space weather be forecasted so industries can better prepare a...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Don't Get Your Hopes Up for a City on the Moon

Bezos said we should move heavy industry to the Moon. Musk says we'll have sustainable lunar cities. We know there's ancient water ice in craters on the Moon's poles, but there's not enough water to support a city.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Tens of Thousands of Fast Radio Bursts Could Help Solve the Greatest Cosmic Mysteries

A new study led by researchers from Caltech demonstrates the effectiveness of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as a tool for measuring cosmological distances and the clustering of matter.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Could the Clues to Ancient Alien Civilizations Be Hiding in a Bucket of Moon Dust?

Most of our experience with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been focused on capturing radio signals that alien species have sent out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. That creates a huge “synchronicity” problem - what if there aren’t any alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals now, but there were a billion years ago? The Milky Way is around 13 billion years old - hoping that we exist at the same time as an alien civilization that happens to be actively mes...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

A New Catalog of Close to 3,000 Supernova Challenges Theories on Dark Energy

The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Earth From Orbit Is Unpredictable and Messy. Could 'Liquid' AI Clear the View?

Monitoring Earth from above is a messy, inconsistent business. Clouds can block a satellite view, the angle of the Sun can create huge shadows, and orbital paths might not take a system across the same general area for weeks. That inconsistency is hard to deal with for traditional software, and can even confuse standard deep learning algorithms. But, according to a new review paper by researchers Raul-Alexandru Gorgan and Dorian Gorgan of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, there’s a new ty...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

A New Design For A Plasma Engine Fuels On Only Thin Air

Choosing what orbit to put a satellite in always comes with trade-offs. When it comes to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 100-450 km, there are distinct advantages. Remote sensing cameras can take better pictures, comms and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag will automatically clean up dead satellites. But there’s also a cost - air friction requires any satellite in this orbit to use an engine near constantly to stay in orbit, which in turn requires fuel - typically in the form o...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Venus Moon Would Have Been Doomed From The Start, Says New Paper

Venus likely never had a moon and even if it did, it would have soon been torn asunder by the planet’s own gravity, says prominent planetary astrophysicist.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Dense Galaxies Are Carving Out A Bubble in the Early Universe

Light could only travel freely in the Universe after cosmic reionization. Before that, neutral hydrogen stopped photons from travelling. The JWST has found evidence of an overdensity of galaxies carving out a bubble of reionization. Is this how it all started?

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

How Big Can The Universe's First Starbursts Get?

As our telescopes have improved and we’ve been able to peer farther back in time, we’ve begun finding more fascinating features of the universe. But one thing we definitely haven’t found yet is Population III (Pop III) stars. These were the earliest stars in the universe, formed completely from pristine hydrogen and helium, with no “metals” (i.e. elements heavier than those two) polluting their processes. They are also theorized to be absolutely massive, and “die with passion” as Bill Wurtz once...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

What's Carving Active Gullies on Mars? It's Not Water

Scientists were shocked when they received the first images of Martian gullies. They were even more shocked as those gullies appeared to change over time. Their similarities to gullies seen on Earth were uncanny, but all of Earth’s gullies are formed by the water run-off, and Martian is too cold and has too sparse an atmosphere to have liquid water on its surface. Whatever has been causing those changing gullies couldn’t have been water, so what was it? A new paper from Apolline Leclef of the In...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

NASA's Next Great Observatory Could Spot Oceans on Distant Worlds

We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets so far. Dozens of them have been in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where, at least in theory, they could host an ocean. But we’ve never definitively found a liquid ocean on another planet. A new paper from researchers Eleanor Cornish and Tyler Robinson of the University of Arizona, available in pre-print on arXiv and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, looks at a unique way we might be able to find one - by looking for its “glint”.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

eROSITA's Second Data Release Catalog Delivering the Most Comprehensive High-Energy Census of the Cosmos to Date

The eROSITA Consortium has issued the survey's second data release (DR2), nearly doubling the previously known eROSITA X-ray sources to two million.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

Unexplained Gamma-Rays from the Galactic Center Could be from Self-Annihilating Dark Matter

Over a decade ago, the Fermi satellite detected an excess of gamma-ray emissions in the galactic center. Potential explanations included Sgr. A*, the Milky Way's SMBH, pulsars, and even self-annihilating dark matter. There's no clear answer yet, since the region is so difficult to observe. But recent research shows that dark matter can't be ruled out.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

A New Surface Atlas of Phobos Will Help JAXA's MMX Mission Collect its Samples

JAXA's Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) will be on its way to Mars and Phobos next month. It will collect samples from Phobos and return them to Earth. A new morphodynamic atlas of the small moon will help scientists collect and understand the samples.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

JWST Ruled Out Finding Tiny Moons Around An Exoplanet - That's Great News

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened up many wonders of the cosmos to scientists since it began its science operations a few years ago. But one thing that it hasn’t done is find an “exomoon”. These, as yet still theoretical, moons orbit exoplanets in other star systems, and JWST was supposed to find a plethora of them. However, so far it has found precisely none. It seems the cause is noise in the telescope’s instrumentation or noise from the star itself. But a new paper, available i...

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

Ancient Swedish Goths Had Surprisingly Accurate Calendars

Ancient Swedish pagans had surprisingly accurate calendars and the ability to measure phases of the Moon to an incredible precision.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

New Revelations About the Origin of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/Atlas – only the third known object from beyond our Solar System ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

New Research Says that Early Galaxies Could be Sending us Neutrinos

Those "Little Red Dots" discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, galaxies that existed during the very early Universe, could be sending neutrino particles that are reaching us today.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Astronomers Unmask a Supernova Impostor

Astronomers observe faint light signals from stellar objects, study it intently, and try to understand what's behind these signals. In one case, the signals they detected masqueraded as an imminent supernova explosion. But more observations revealed a different reality.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Widespread Turbulence is Upsetting Star Formation in Stephan's Quintet

Stephan's Quintet contains the most well-studied compact galaxy group. Japanese researchers have mapped star forming gas in the Quintet, along with its turbulence. The results show that the Quintet is an evolved group of interacting galaxies where gas struggles to settle down and form stars. Even where gas is concentrated, turbulence from interactions throttles star formation.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

If Alien Civilizations Use Hyper-Efficient Computers, They Will Have A Distinct Energy Signal We Can Detect

Astronomers have long searched for Dyson spheres as a sign of advanced alien civilizations. But if an alien civilization is dependent on advanced computing, we may be better served by looking for a Slysh halo.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Tiny Salt Crevices Could Act As Miniature "Greenhouses" For Martian Microbes

We’ve been searching for life on Mars for a long time now, but so far we’ve come up empty. The fundamental problem is a Catch-22 of two of the key ingredients for life. Life as we know it needs liquid water and reasonable temperatures, both of which are available on Mars, but hardly ever at the same time. But a new paper from lead author Anna Bognar and her team at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University and the Konkoly Observatory describes a way for life to have access to both requirements at the same t...

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

BepiColombo Successfully Begins Its Final Descent To Mercury

The latest mission to the innermost planet in the solar system hit a milestone last week. After an eight year journey, BepiColombo finally separated from its propulsion stage to set itself up for an orbital insertion to Mercury. Taking place on September 3rd, the separation, which is part of a much longer series of logistical steps over the next few months, seemed to go without a hitch. But getting to that point was certainly a process, and still more challenges lie ahead.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Next-Gen Gravitational Wave Detectors Could Spot the First Black Holes

A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars ignited - literally the “let there be light” moment for the universe. Now known to astronomers as Population III, or Pop III, stars, these giants were very different from the stars we know today. They were formed out of pristine hydrogen and helium, with almost no “metal” (i.e. other elements) holding them back. They were also huge, growing to tens to hundreds of times larger than the Sun. And they died young, in many cases collapsi...

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Japan's Hayabusa2 Achieves First-Ever Laser Ranging Experiment with an Asteroid

On Sunday July 5th, 2026, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieved the first-ever successful laser ranging experiment while making a flyby of an asteroid.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Icy Exocomets Around a Distant Star Help Explain Earth's Water

Did icy comets deliver water to the young Earth? That idea won't go away. Now, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets orbiting a young star named PDS 70. The observations suggest that these comets are delivering water to that system's inner regions.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

How to Land a Rocket Launch ‘Space Jellyfish’

What used to be a rare sight gracing the twilight sky is now becoming strangely commonplace. If you live on either U.S. coast, you have to good chance at seeing what’s become a common sky scene in our modern technocene era: a space launch jellyfish.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Scientists Are Still Trying To Understand How the Moon Formed

The Earth and the Moon have nearly identical isotopic compositions, and the Giant Impact Hypothesis strives to explain this. New research into the ancient impact shows how the temperature of both worlds, and how it affects the strength of the materials involved in the collision, shaped the outcome, including the isotopic compositions.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Some Black Holes Grow Much Faster Than Their Galaxies

New observations find that a few supermassive black holes are unexpectedly large given the size of their galaxies. This suggests the connection between black holes and galaxies isn't as strong as we thought.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

A New Mission Could Rendezvous With Halley's Comet In 2061

Halley’s comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the Sun (admittedly when this author, who is now middle-aged, was one year old in 1986), humanity responded with a fleet of spacecraft known informally as the “Halley Armada”. Yet, because of the comet’s trajectory, those spacecraft were only able to visit their target for a fleeting few hours, leaving planetary scientists wanting more. Now, a new paper by researchers at...

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Do Black Holes Grow Along With the Universe? A New Study Says Yes

We know the universe is constantly expanding. We also know that gravitationally bound objects, such as solar systems and black holes, seem to be immune to that expansion. But a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by theoretical physicists Valerio Faraoni and Massimiliano Rinaldi challenges that assumption. They suggest that black holes can’t just ignore the expanding universe around them. Instead they have to expand along with it.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

The World's First Spacefaring Commercial Cardiologist Has Lessons for Would-Be Astronauts

Say what you want about the changes to the space industry that’s happened over the past 10-20 years, but one thing is for certain - there are a lot more people that have access to space now than there ever has been before. Some of them have some absolutely crazy stories about how they got there, and plenty of those have written their own books about their experiences, before, during, and after their flight. Add to that list A Heart for Space by Dr. Eiman Jahangir - a cardiologist that officially...

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

China Postpones the Chang’e-7 Mission

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - space is hard. Another example, albeit lacking in the destructive displays of some past examples, is China’s recent delay of its Chang’e-7 lunar mission. The agency announced the mission would miss its late-August launch window with a very brief press release from the China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Engineering Office. While that means a slight delay in China’s plan for the Moon, it’s only a matter of time before the c...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Rubin Observatory Peers Deep Into the Famous COSMOS Field

A new image from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory offers a spectacularly deep view into a famous region of sky known as the COSMOS field.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Quiet Black Holes With a Stellar Companion Raise Questions About How They Form

Gaia has discovered three stellar mass black holes, each with a small stellar companion. For two of these systems the companions orbit closer that we would expect. Just how these systems form is a bit of a mysteries, but there are clues.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Astronomers Hear the Faint Whispers of Cosmic Hydrogen from the Distant Past.

Astronomers have directly detected an extremely faint radio signal from hydrogen gas billions of light years away, demonstrating a powerful new way to map the Universe.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

A Pair of White Dwarfs Locked in a Six-Minute Orbit Might One Day Be Observed By Gravitational Waves

Future gravitational wave observatories will be able to see the gravitational waves of close-orbiting binary stars. A newly studied white dwarf system could be one of the first systems we observe.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Snapping the Sun's Grand Magnetic Border at 0.3 AU

Out in the solar system, there is a giant rippling curtain of charged particles that is actually the largest structure in our solar system. Known as the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS), it marks the spot where the sun flips its magnetic north and south poles, and grows directly out of giant, glowing loops of plasma on its surface called helmet streamers. However, so far, studies of it have only occurred near Earth, using space-based instruments such as SoHo and Wind. But now, a new paper from K...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Could life exist on Venus? Peptides survive harsh acid.

The planet Venus is arguably the most mischievous planetary body in the solar system. This is because like Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, Venus is shrouded in a thick atmosphere that can’t be viewed with optical telescopes and require radar images to see the surface. Unlike Titan, whose atmosphere looks quite dull, Venus’s swirling and awe-inspiring clouds give observers the impression that its surface is covered in wonderous features. However, the truth is far from ideal, as Venus’s surface is a...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

The DESI Legacy Imaging Survey Releases the Largest 2-D Map of the Universe

The newest DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys map covers three-quarters of the sky and catalogs nearly four billion objects. This publicly-available database contains stars, galaxies, supernovae, gravitational lenses, and much more.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

The 20th Data Release (DR 20) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is Here!

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has officially launched its twentieth data release (DR20), featuring updated data from multiple observations projects.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Pulsar Timing Arrays Could Look for Evidence of Dark Matter Stars

Pulsar Timing Arrays have been used to observe the background of gravitational waves in our galaxy. We aren't certain of their origin, but a new study shows a strong source could be early supermassive giants known as dark stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

New Study Expands Search for "Dark Photons," a Leading Dark Matter Candidate

Cross-disciplinary research at Perimeter Institute and University of Maryland shows that dark photons could be lurking in more places than previously thought.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

Penultimate Lunar Occultations Inbound for Jupiter, Venus and More in September