NEWS

SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY
Here is an RSS feed from Science Daily’s Space and Time section to keep you up to date on current events in the space community.
  • Don't miss: Meteor showers, fireballs, and a supermoon light up November's night sky

    November's night sky is packed with celestial wonders, from bright meteor fireballs and a close pairing of Mars and Jupiter to a spectacular supermoon. Meanwhile, NASA's Voyager 1 is making history by becoming the first spacecraft to reach a distance of one light-day from Earth.
  • NASA’s Swift telescope falls to Earth after nearly 22 years in space

    After nearly 22 years of exploring the universe’s most violent explosions, NASA’s Swift Observatory has re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over Indonesia. Originally designed to last just two years, the pioneering space telescope transformed our understanding of black holes, exploding stars, and mysterious cosmic outbursts.
  • NASA is racing against time to save the Hubble Space Telescope

    NASA is exploring a daring plan to save the legendary Hubble Space Telescope from its eventual fiery plunge into Earth's atmosphere. After more than 35 years of groundbreaking discoveries, Hubble is slowly losing altitude, and without intervention, it could fall back to Earth as early as 2033 or 2034. To keep the iconic observatory operating, NASA is asking private space companies to propose innovative ways to boost Hubble into a higher orbit, upgrade its capabilities, or safely dispose of it when its mission finally ends.
  • NASA smashed into an asteroid. Now Hera is closing in to see what happened

    Europe’s Hera spacecraft has captured its first clear view of two asteroids involved in NASA’s historic 2022 experiment to redirect a potentially dangerous space rock. Now approaching the pair, Hera will investigate the mysterious aftermath of the collision and uncover why the asteroid shifted far more than scientists predicted.
  • NASA’s Voyager 1 is about to reach a historic one-light-day milestone

    NASA’s Voyager 1 is approaching an extraordinary milestone nearly 50 years after its launch, even as engineers battle dwindling power and mysterious technical problems. A clever energy-saving maneuver has extended the spacecraft’s scientific mission, while an unexplained 48-hour communications blackout recently gave NASA a scare. On November 18, Voyager 1 will reach a distance of one light-day from Earth, making even the simplest round-trip communication take 48 hours.
  • A hidden star is plowing through Betelgeuse’s atmosphere, new evidence suggests

    Something mysterious is disturbing Betelgeuse, and astronomers believe they have identified the culprit: a hidden companion star called Siwarha. New radio observations reveal that the smaller star may be plowing through Betelgeuse’s enormous atmosphere, creating disturbances that subtly stretch and distort the red supergiant’s shape.
  • Dead stars could break one of physics' most famous limits

    A surprising new discovery suggests that some dead stars can grow far more massive than scientists once thought possible. Computer simulations show that powerful magnetic fields could allow white dwarfs to reach 2.4 times the mass of the Sun, dramatically exceeding a famous limit that has stood for decades. The findings could help explain unusually bright supernova explosions that have long puzzled astronomers.
  • All 5 genetic “letters” of DNA and RNA discovered in a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid

    Scientists have discovered all five essential nucleobases used in DNA and RNA in pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu, revealing that key ingredients for life existed in space billions of years ago. The remarkable finding adds to growing evidence from other asteroids and meteorites that these molecules were widespread throughout the early Solar System.
  • NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover breaks historic record after traveling 28 miles

    NASA’s Perseverance rover has set a historic record by traveling 28.10 miles across Mars, farther than any vehicle has ever driven on another world. Armed with groundbreaking autonomous navigation technology and increasingly advanced driving capabilities, the rover is pushing the boundaries of robotic exploration.
  • IceCube detects ghost particles with 10 billion times the energy of solar neutrinos

    Mysterious particles called neutrinos constantly stream through our bodies, and scientists are now detecting incredibly powerful versions arriving from distant cosmic sources using a massive observatory buried in Antarctic ice. These elusive “ghost particles” could hold extraordinary clues about the Big Bang, extreme cosmic events, and some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
  • Scientists just found a loophole that could let black holes split in two

    Scientists have discovered a possible loophole in the laws that normally prevent black holes from splitting apart, suggesting that extremely fast-spinning black holes might divide into two. The surprising finding raises the possibility of an entirely new black hole phenomenon that future telescopes could potentially detect.
  • NASA's Hubble and Webb discover ancient worlds that remember their past

    NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes have uncovered surprising clues about the solar system’s origins by studying 27 tiny, distant objects beyond Neptune. Scientists discovered that these ancient building blocks of planets have remained remarkably unchanged for billions of years, while their unexpected sizes and numbers challenge existing theories of planet formation.
  • Scientists say a forgotten particle may explain why the universe exists

    A mysterious particle overlooked for decades may hold the key to why matter survived the Big Bang, allowing stars, planets, and life to exist. Scientists believe this forgotten neutrino reshaped the early universe and may have left detectable gravitational wave signals that could help unlock the cosmos’s deepest mysteries.
  • Scientists smash oxygen nuclei to recreate matter from the Big Bang

    Scientists have recreated a primordial state of matter from the dawn of the universe by colliding oxygen nuclei at nearly the speed of light. The surprising results show that this exotic substance can form in smaller, lower-energy collisions than previously demonstrated, challenging the known boundaries of early-universe physics.
  • Astronauts just gave the International Space Station a powerful upgrade

    Two astronauts completed a 7-hour, 11-minute spacewalk to install a new solar array on the International Space Station, bringing NASA one step closer to a major power upgrade. Once the final array is installed on November 5, the station will have up to 30% more available power, supporting critical operations and its eventual controlled deorbit.
  • Hubble reveals a stunning twist in how the universe emerged from darkness

    A surprising discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope is challenging a leading explanation for how the early universe emerged from a dense fog of hydrogen roughly 13 billion years ago. Scientists once believed powerful winds from exploding stars helped radiation escape galaxies and clear that cosmic fog, but new observations reveal that these winds actually block radiation instead.
  • Physicists created a tiny universe and watched time emerge without a clock

    Scientists have created a miniature universe in the laboratory that could help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: What is time, and where does it come from? Using 24,000 ultracold atoms, a University of Birmingham researcher built an isolated quantum system that repeatedly expands and contracts, mimicking the Big Bang and a possible Big Crunch. Remarkably, the experiment showed that time could emerge from changes happening inside the system, without relying on an external clock.
  • Einstein's equations may explain the universe without dark energy

    Mathematicians have uncovered what they argue is a fundamental flaw in the standard model of the universe, potentially challenging the need for dark energy. Their calculations suggest that the mathematical framework used to describe cosmic expansion is inherently unstable and that the universe could accelerate naturally under Einstein's original theory of gravity. The findings also raise surprising questions about whether our location in the universe is as ordinary as scientists have long assumed.
  • NASA discovers Jupiter’s invisible shield is more complex than Earth’s

    NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered that Jupiter uses a surprisingly complex system of powerful plasma waves and multiple shock regions to defend against the solar wind. The findings reveal major differences between Jupiter and Earth and could help scientists understand the enormous shock waves produced by exploding stars.
  • A mysterious star system just 16 light-years away may be hiding habitable planets

    Astronomers have solved a 170-year-old planetary mystery in a nearby two-star system, discovering that a mysterious wobble was caused by stellar activity rather than a giant planet. Although Jupiter-sized worlds have been ruled out in key regions, smaller, potentially habitable planets could still be waiting to be discovered just 16 light-years from Earth.
  • Meteors don't just burn up. What really happens is far more violent

    Scientists have uncovered seven surprising stages that space rocks go through as they hurtle toward Earth, revealing that melting and violent fragmentation, rather than simple evaporation, determine their fate. The discovery could help explain why meteorites scatter across the ground and how dangerous asteroids explode in Earth's atmosphere.
  • NASA’s Artemis I mission reveals surprising radiation levels near the Moon

    NASA’s Artemis I mission has revealed that cosmic radiation near the Moon is higher than in Earth orbit, but not by as much as scientists might expect. Tiny experimental detectors also uncovered surprising details about how radiation passes through the human body, offering valuable insights for future lunar exploration.
  • James Webb discovers a scorching lava planet with a “giant sunscreen”

    A scorching lava planet 280 light-years away has surprised astronomers by apparently maintaining a thick atmosphere despite conditions that should have stripped it away billions of years ago. James Webb Space Telescope observations suggest that TOI-561 b reflects about 75% of incoming starlight, possibly because of mineral clouds that act like a giant sunscreen. The planet may also be continually replenishing its atmosphere through gases released from a global ocean of molten rock.
  • Smithsonian scientists just recreated the first 2 billion years of the Universe

    Scientists have created one of the largest and most detailed simulations of the early universe ever made, offering an extraordinary new glimpse into the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. Called Lumina, the groundbreaking simulation recreates the universe’s first 2 billion years, showing how dark matter, gas, and radiation interacted to give rise to the earliest stars, galaxies, and black holes.
  • A 2,700-year-old solar eclipse just revealed something surprising about Earth

    A solar eclipse recorded more than 2,700 years ago is revealing surprising secrets about Earth's rotation and the Sun's ancient behavior. By correcting an eight-kilometer error in the location of an ancient Chinese capital, scientists were able to reconstruct a total solar eclipse that occurred in 709 BCE and obtain more accurate measurements of how fast Earth was spinning at the time.