NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey speeds roughly 1,000 times faster than Hubble and a torrent of 1.4 terabytes of data per day, Roman could uncover cosmic surprises astronomers have never seen before.

Physicists have mathematically captured a bizarre “spacetime crystal” that can either dissolve or collapse into a microscopic black hole after only a tiny change in energy. Their breakthrough came from an unusual trick involving infinitely many dimensions, potentially giving researchers a new tool for studying primordial and microscopic black holes.

Rocky planets may have been able to start forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang, thanks to enormous early supernovae that scattered planet-building elements across space. Simulations found enough solid material and water around a young star to suggest that Earth-like worlds could have appeared far earlier than previously believed.

Mars has a hidden temperature divide, with its southern interior potentially hundreds of degrees hotter than the north and partially molten. The discovery could help explain several long-standing Martian mysteries, including unusual magnetism, seismic behavior, and clues to the planet’s ancient water history.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover hidden planets, map billions of cosmic objects, and help scientists unravel the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

A major new analysis challenges recent claims that the universe's expansion is slowing, finding that the evidence for cosmic acceleration remains strong. The findings preserve the leading role of dark energy, while leaving scientists with the enduring mystery of what this strange cosmic force actually is.

Quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of gravity explain almost everything we see in nature, yet physicists still do not know how to unite them. A new theoretical framework suggests that some experiments that appear to show gravity behaving quantum mechanically may have a much more ordinary explanation. Researchers found that scenarios involving a supposed “superposition of gravity” can sometimes be described equally well as quantum particles moving through classical spacetime.

Astronomers have captured their clearest image yet of Betelgeuse’s long-suspected companion, potentially ending a search that lasted about 100 years. The surprisingly massive hidden star could help explain Betelgeuse’s changing brightness and may influence its future supernova.

Today’s mysterious gravitational-wave background may preserve clues about how the Universe’s first supermassive black holes formed. Descendants of hypothetical Dark Stars could be responsible for a major portion of the signal, offering a surprising new way to investigate cosmic dawn and dark matter.

NASA has successfully tested a system that allows satellites to navigate without GPS by using other spacecraft and debris as landmarks in orbit. In just three days, FALCON also improved the known orbits of more than 200 space objects completely autonomously.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is now enclosed inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and nearly ready for launch. Its mission could uncover thousands of exoplanets while helping scientists investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating expansion of the universe.

A magnetar with an astonishingly powerful magnetic field may have revealed a quantum effect predicted by Werner Heisenberg nearly 90 years ago. Its light shows signs that supposedly empty space is altering how the light travels, potentially providing the first evidence of vacuum birefringence.

A single asteroid impact may explain two of Deimos’s most puzzling features: its huge southern depression and unusually smooth, dusty surface. Simulations suggest a roughly 320-meter asteroid struck the Martian moon at an angle, throwing debris around the entire world without breaking it apart. New observations from ESA’s Hera spacecraft support the scenario and indicate that Deimos is surprisingly porous and fragile.

NASA scientists found that microbes brought by astronauts could survive in cold, shadowed niches around the Moon’s South Pole, potentially complicating future searches for pristine lunar chemistry. Some refuges may be no larger than a footprint, while one hardy fungus could even withstand limited exposure to sunlight.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has been cleared for final launch preparations ahead of a targeted August 30 liftoff aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. The powerful new observatory will probe cosmic expansion, the history of the universe, and distant exoplanets.

The Artemis II crew will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor after becoming the first humans in more than 50 years to travel beyond the Moon. Their 10-day Orion mission also carried them farther into space than anyone in history.

A massive test of gravity across the cosmos found that it behaves almost exactly as Newton and Einstein predicted, even across galaxy clusters hundreds of millions of light-years apart. The result weakens some modified-gravity explanations and strengthens the case that dark matter is behind the universe’s mysterious missing mass.

A faint ribbon of stars around a distant galaxy has become the first globular cluster stellar stream ever identified beyond the Milky Way. Because the stars trace the galaxy’s gravity, researchers used the stream to estimate how much invisible dark matter surrounds it and how that matter is distributed. The breakthrough offers astronomers a promising new way to investigate one of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Researchers at CERN have created microscopic versions of the early Universe by colliding surprisingly small atomic nuclei at nearly the speed of light. The collisions produced quark-gluon plasma, the ultra-hot matter believed to have filled the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. Even more intriguingly, the particles left behind reveal the shape of the nuclei that created them, offering a new way to probe both nuclear physics and the Universe’s earliest moments.

Astronomers using JWST have discovered that massive early galaxies contain far more small, faint stars than expected. That hidden population could make some of these galaxies three to four times more massive than previous estimates. The finding makes it even harder to explain how enormous, mature galaxies formed so soon after the Big Bang. It could also suggest that planets around low-mass stars were more common in the early universe than scientists realized.

Astronomers have found stars that repeatedly skim past supermassive black holes, surviving each encounter while producing a new burst of light. In some systems, those flares mysteriously fade with every return. Researchers now think the key may be stars that were already spinning extremely fast before being captured. That rapid rotation could explain both the fading flares and how the stars ended up in such extraordinarily tight black hole orbits.

For decades, scientists have puzzled over why certain atomic nuclei unexpectedly produce large numbers of low-energy gamma rays. A new experiment traced the effect to magnetic changes inside the nucleus, where protons and neutrons effectively flip their tiny internal magnets. The discovery could sharpen models of everything from nuclear reactions on Earth to the creation of heavy elements in stars and neutron star mergers.

Spain’s total solar eclipse delivered an unexpected sight: a corona glowing gold instead of its usual pearly white. Because the Sun was setting, its light passed through more atmosphere, while smoke from nearby wildfires filtered out even more blue light. The result was a dramatic golden eclipse, punctuated by a bright pink solar prominence.

A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 stage crashed into the Moon on Aug. 5, leaving behind a newly formed crater about 60 feet wide. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured detailed images showing bright and dark streaks of debris blasted across the surrounding surface. The impact even exposed fresh material buried beneath the Moon’s weathered exterior.

Extreme experiments have revealed how diamond behaves at crushing pressures beyond those inside Neptune and Uranus, resolving a decades-old conflict between theory and observation. The results could help scientists boost fusion energy output while revealing more about the exotic diamond rain hidden inside ice giant planets.