Astronomers have discovered another mysterious and massive circle of radio light in space. The strange and vast circle of light is an example of an ORC (Odd Radio Circle), the origins of which are currently unknown. ORCS, first discovered in 2019, are so vast they can be 10 times the width of the Milky Way,…

Astronomers have trained the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on a galaxy named “Firefly Sparkle.” But the young galaxy may not invite you to its birthday party as it is already accompanied by galaxies newly named “Firefly-Best Friend” and “Firefly-New Best Friend!” Firefly Sparkle does give astronomers a gift: the first glimpse of a typical…

What processes are responsible for dust storms on Mars? This is what a study presented today at the American Geophysical Union 2024 Fall Meeting hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) investigated the causes behind the massive dust storms on Mars, which periodically grow large enough…

What size asteroids can astronomers detect from Earth that could potentially pose a threat to our planet? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated new methods for detecting asteroids as small as tens of meters…

The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers across. That’s about as wide as Brooklyn, New York. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years. In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth…

New observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have further cemented one of the most bizarre observations in all of physics — that the universe expanded at different speeds across varying stages of its lifetime. The conundrum, referred to as the Hubble tension, has fueled a debate among astronomers that could alter or…

The existence of features on the Sun was known from the records of sunspots observed by ancient astronomers with the naked eye; however, no systematic studies were made of such features until the telescope was invented in the early 17th century. The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and the German mathematician Christoph Scheiner were among the…

Credit: Liyao Xie / Getty Images The possibility that there might be a large, unknown planet lurking in the outer Solar System far beyond Pluto has long been a staple of science fiction. But for the past decade, astronomers have been finding it increasingly likely that something big – often called Planet X – might…

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Did Venus have oceans in its ancient past and could they have supported life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge investigated the climate history of Venus and…