The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — which is being developed on schedule and within budget — is on the chopping block, according to a recent draft budget issued by the Office of Management and Budget.NASA The prospect that NASA’s space science budget could face major cuts is prompting worried feedback. Those wake-up alarms are…

For the first time, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a lone black hole — one with no star orbiting it. It’s “the only one so far,” says Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. In 2022, Sahu and his colleagues discovered the dark object coursing through the constellation Sagittarius.…

A hycean world — one with a global water ocean and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere — orbits a red dwarf star in this artist’s concept. Credit: A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge) Scientists have reported new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that strengthen the case that the exoplanet K2-18 b has molecules…

A giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim. Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet called K2-18 b appear to reveal the chemical fingerprints of two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to…

This artist’s impression depicts what a water world with a hydrogen atmosphere, such as planet K2-18b, might look like. A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan/University of Cambridge A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan/University of Cambridge An ocean world that’s teeming with microbes — and who knows what other kinds of life — is currently the best explanation for some…

Artist’s impression of the planet K2-18b and its host star ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser Astronomers claim to have seen the strongest evidence so far for life on another planet. But other astronomers have urged caution until the findings can be verified by other groups and alternative, non-biological explanations can be ruled out. “These are the first…

Artist’s impression of the planet K2-18b and its host star ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser Astronomers claim to have seen the strongest evidence so far for life on another planet. But other astronomers have urged caution until the findings can be verified by other groups and alternative, non-biological explanations can be ruled out. “These are the first…

Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable. The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s…

When astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer deep into the early universe, they made a serendipitous discovery: a galaxy that appears to be the Milky Way’s ancient twin sibling waving its spiral arms back at us. In new images that capture light emitted just 1 billion years after the Big Bang,…

A high school student in California has made a remarkable contribution to astronomy by developing an artificial intelligence model that identified 1.5 million previously undetected space objects. Through his summer research at Caltech, Matteo Paz not only deepened the scientific potential of a retired NASA mission, but also authored a peer-reviewed paper based entirely on…