The Katara Astronomy Exhibition opened yesterday at Katara – the Cultural Village’s Al Thuraya Planetarium, showcasing scientific models created by students from various schools and universities in Qatar.Titled “Innovations and Science – Shaping the Future from Idea to Creativity”, the event forms part of the Katara Space Science Programme and is organised in collaboration with…

A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust. This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the Universe. But…

Astronomers have detected one of the largest carbon-based molecules ever discovered in deep space, identified as pyrene, within the Taurus molecular cloud, located 430 light-years from Earth. The molecule, a type of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), is of significant interest because it offers new clues about the distribution of carbon, a fundamental building block of…

Black holes are some of the most mysterious and awe-inspiring celestial objects in science, and while pairs of black holes or a black hole orbiting another object like a star, known as binary black holes, have been confirmed to exist, what about triple systems? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to…

The discovery of a four-ring carbon molecule in a distant interstellar cloud may help to reveal how our own solar system formed An asteroid has helped researchers discover the largest molecule ever detected by radioastronomy, and the third-largest identified in space. The discovery, published today in Science, provides further clues to an astrochemical mystery: Where…

Can rocky exoplanets orbiting stars smaller than our Sun support life as we know it? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as an international team of researchers examined the atmospheric stability of exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars, which typically range from 7.5 percent to 50 percent of our Sun’s…

Some 1,350 light-years from Earth, astronomers detected strange pairs of unexplained objects orbiting in the Orion Nebula. Since then, about 12 months ago, other scientists have proposed a new potential explanation for these apparitions, while other researchers wonder whether they exist at all. “There’s a bit less confidence they exist,” said Rosalba Perna, a theoretical…

Carl Sagan (born November 9, 1934, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died December 20, 1996, Seattle, Washington) was an American astronomer and science writer. A popular and influential figure in the United States, he was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. (Read Carl Sagan’s Britannica entry…

The SpaceX Crew Dragon craft Endeavour approaches the ISS in 2021 during the Crew-2 mission. Credit: NASA/Michael Hopkins When SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour returns to Earth this week, she will set a clutch of records for the most time spent in space by a crewed spacecraft. Launched for her fifth mission in March, Endeavour…

How does extra salty water, also known as briny water, form and evolve on worlds without atmospheres, such as asteroids and moons? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how briny water could still flow for a period of time on…