An international team of astronomers has detected mysterious chirping signals in an unexpected region of space, raising major questions about how they’re created. Known as chorus waves, these signals are split-second bursts of electromagnetic radiation emitted from high above Earth’s surface. When converted into an audio format and drawn out, they sound eerily like birds…

Astronomers have spotted a mysterious pair of icy balls in a remote region of the Milky Way, and they’re unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. The peculiar objects appear in the same region of the sky but are 13,000 light-years apart and unrelated to each other. They were first spotted in 2021 lurking in data…

What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster voyaging through the cosmos. Yep, you read that right. The infinite vastness of outer space isn’t exactly conducive to terrestrial vehicles, like the sports car manufactured by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s company. Perhaps that’s why the…

Star turn: Kenzie Nimmo presenting this work at a recent conference. (Courtesy: K Nimmo) The exact origins of cosmic phenomena known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) are not fully understood, but scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have identified a fresh clue: at least one of these puzzling cosmic discharges…

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN  —  Mysterious fast radio bursts, or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, have intrigued astronomers since the first detection of the phenomenon in 2007. The enigmatic signals, known as FRBs, release as much…

Scientists think a small rock discovered near Earth last August was hurled into space by an ancient impact on the lunar surface. For a few months last fall, a school-bus-size space rock named 2024 PT5 gained fame as Earth’s new “mini-moon.” Astronomers rushed to study the object while it was still close enough to Earth…

Astronomers have, for the first time, watched the moment a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy spat out a jet of material at one-third of the speed of light. Plus, the structure is technically made up of two jets, each about half a light-year across. The black hole in question,…

Astronomers have, for the first time, watched the moment a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy spat out a jet of material at one-third of the speed of light. Plus, the structure is technically made up of two jets, each about half a light-year across. The black hole in question,…

That’s no asteroid. That’s … a car? Credit: SpaceX On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by citizen scientist H. A. Güler, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000…