The Milky Way is home to gas, dust, billions of stars, and a supermassive black hole at its center. Living in this galactic home gives us exclusive insight into its components, but it also hinders our ability to get a zoomed out view of its structure. A recent discovery has the potential to redefine our…

Data from NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission has provided valuable space radiation measurements, which validate spacecraft performance and will help guide deep-space human spaceflight.  The uncrewed Artemis 1 mission launched in November 2022, using the gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to send an Orion spacecraft around the moon and back, serving as a crucial…

New Horizons—the famous NASA spacecraft that flew by Pluto in 2015—is now making new discoveries beyond the Kuiper Belt. With help from the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, scientists have discovered what could be a second belt of icy bodies beyond the known Kuiper Belt. This possible discovery only highlights how much more there is to…

September 24, 2024 5 min read The universe’s hidden mass may be made of black holes, which could wobble the planets of the solar system when they pass by By Clara Moskowitz Blackdovfx/Getty Images This story sounds wild—even incredible. Black holes! Dark matter! Jostling planets! Yet the scenario is plausible—and testable soon. Black holes the…

If microscopic black holes born a fraction of a second after the Big Bang exist, as some researchers suspect, then at least one may fly through the solar system per decade, generating tiny gravitational distortions that scientists can detect, a new study finds. These findings suggest that if astronomers can discover and confirm the existence…

WASHINGTON — The House passed a new NASA authorization bill Sept. 23 that would largely keep the agency on course in its human spaceflight and science programs while directing it to prepare several reports. The House passed the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2024, H.R. 8958, on a 366–21 vote. That far exceeded the two-thirds threshold…

For astronomers, finding a new black hole orbiting an aged red dwarf star is an exciting find in itself, but when that black hole seems to be a “missing link” stellar-mass black hole, you can crank the excitement up to 11! That is exactly what seems to be lurking in binary system G3425, estimated to…

A strange type of ultraheavy star grows massive by feeding on the bloated, dying body of its companion, new research confirms. While astronomers have long suspected that these “barium stars” — named for their unusually high levels of the heavy element barium — come from feeding on material from a companion, now they’ve finally caught…

Elements The Quest to Build a Telescope on the Moon If the FarView radio telescope is built, it would double as a demonstration of two unprecedented activities: mining and manufacturing in space. By Matthew Hutson September 24, 2024 Play/Pause Button Pause Illustration by Todd St. John Save this storySave this story Save this storySave this…

Artist’s illustration of the exoplanet WASP-107 b based on transit observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope as well as other space- and ground-based telescopes, led by Matthew Murphy of the University of Arizona and a team of researchers around the world. Credit: Rachel Amaro, University of Arizona An international group of researchers including University…