Astronomers have used mysterious fast radio bursts to solve a decades-old mystery of "missing matter," long predicted to exist in the universe, but never before detected. The researchers have determined that all of the unaccounted normal matter exists in...
Space is getting crowded. Aging satellites and space debris crowd low-Earth orbit, and launching new satellites adds to the collision risk. The most effective way to solve the space junk problem, according to a new study, is not to...
The formation of the Sun, the Solar System and the subsequent emergence of life on Earth may be a consequence of a collision between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and a smaller galaxy called Sagittarius, discovered in the 1990s...
Astronomers have captured an image of a super-rare type of galaxy—described as a "cosmic ring of fire"—as it existed 11 billion years ago.
The galaxy, which has roughly the mass of the Milky Way, is circular with a hole in...
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found quasi-periodic flickers in millimeter-waves from the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius (Sgr) A*. The team interpreted these blinks to be due to the rotation of radio spots circling the...
On a cool summer morning in 1908, a fireball appeared over northern Siberia. Eyewitnesses described a column of blue light that moved across the sky, followed by a tremendous explosion that leveled trees across more than 2,000 square kilometers....
To better understand and mitigate the health risks faced by astronauts from exposure to space radiation, we ideally need to be able to test the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) here on Earth under laboratory conditions. An article...
In our 13.8 billion-year-old universe, most galaxies like our Milky Way form gradually, reaching their large mass relatively late. But a new discovery made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of a massive rotating disk galaxy, seen when...
Observations made with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) have revealed the telltale signs of a star system being born. Around the young star AB Aurigae lies a dense disc of dust and gas in which...
Humans have been wondering whether we alone in the universe since antiquity.
We know from the geological record that life started relatively quickly, as soon our planet's environment was stable enough to support it. We also know that the first...
Researchers across the globe have long tackled the question: Is there life on other planets, and if so, how do we find it? Faced with thousands of planets to explore beyond our solar system, scientists need a way to...
