Researchers are developing precision optical sensors for telescopes and observatories. The team has now improved the spectra resolution of their superconducting sensor, a major step in their ultimate goal: analyzing the composition of exoplanets.

After the Big Bang came the earliest galaxies. Due to the expansion of the universe, these galaxies are receding away from us. This causes their emissions to be redshifted (shifted towards longer wavelengths). By studying these redshifts, it is possible to characterize the 'motion' within the galaxies as well as their distance. In a new study, astronomers have now revealed a likely rotational motion of one such distant galaxy.

Biofuel scientists used an oddball molecule made by bacteria to develop a new class of sustainable biofuels powerful enough to launch rockets. The candidate molecules have greater projected energy density than any petroleum product, including the leading aviation and rocket fuels, JetA and RP-1.

An unusual ultra-faint dwarf galaxy has been discovered on the outer fringes of the Andromeda Galaxy thanks to the sharp eyes of an amateur astronomer. Follow-up by professional astronomers revealed that the dwarf galaxy -- Pegasus V -- contains very few heavier elements and is likely to be a fossil of the first galaxies.

Bone loss happens in humans -- as we age, get injured, or any scenario where we can't move the body, we lose bone. Understanding what happens to astronauts and how they recover is incredibly rare. It lets us look at the processes happening in the body in such a short time frame. We would have to follow someone for decades on Earth to see the same amount of bone loss.

A collaboration between a former cosmologist and a computational neuroscientist generates a new way to identify essential connections between brain cells.

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world's first full-scale planetary defense test against potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Researchers now show that instead of leaving behind a relatively small crater, the impact of the DART spacecraft on its target could leave the asteroid near unrecognizable.

Astrophysicists have developed the first 3D simulation of the entire evolution of a jet -- from its birth by a rotating black hole to its emission far from the collapsing star. Simulation shows that as the star collapses, its material falls on the disk that swirls around the black hole. This falling material tilts the disk, and, in turn, tilts the jet, which wobbles as it struggles to return to its original trajectory. The wobbling jet explains the longstanding mystery of why gamma ray bursts blink and shows that these bursts are even rarer than previously thought.

To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can 'live' outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized 'mirror neutron' -- a dark-matter twin to the neutron -- could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.

Liquid water is an important prerequisite for life to develop on a planet. As researchers report in a new study, liquid water could also exist for billions of years on planets that are very different from Earth. This calls our currently Earth-centred idea of potentially habitable planets into question.

Using light-capturing proteins in living microbes, scientists helped reconstruct what life was like for some of Earth's earliest organisms. These efforts could help us one day recognize signs of life on other planets.

A formidable space tourism industry may have a greater climate effect than the aviation industry and undo repair to the protective ozone layer if left unregulated, according to a new study.

An innovative scientific instrument, the Compact Color Biofinder may change the game in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Specifications from an asteroid that made headline news in 2019 because it appeared to come out of nowhere and was traveling fast has just been published.

Researchers have shown in a single model the full story of how gas travels in the center of the Milky Way -- from being blown off by stars to falling into the black hole.

A team has used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe Jupiter's moon, Europa, at ultraviolet wavelengths, filling in a 'gap' in the various wavelengths used to observe this icy water world. The team's near-global UV maps show concentrations of sulfur dioxide on Europa's trailing side.

Scientists combined data from NASA's New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto's moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon's dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this moon's red spot as described in two recent articles.

A new study describes how unique populations of craters on two of Saturn's moons could help indicate the satellites' age and the conditions of their formation. Using data from NASA's Cassini mission, researchers have surveyed elliptical craters on Saturn's moons Tethys and Dione for this study.

Microbes taken from surface sediment near Lost Hammer Spring, Canada, about 900 km south of the North Pole, could provide a blueprint for the kind of life forms that may once have existed, or may still exist, on Mars.

The European Gaia space mission has produced an unprecedented amount of new, improved, and detailed data for almost two billion objects in the Milky Way galaxy and the surrounding cosmos. The Gaia Data Release 3 on Monday revolutionizes our knowledge of the Solar System and the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies.

Astronomers identify a new class of stellar system. They're not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation.

Extreme supergiant stars known as hypergiants are very rare, with only a few known to exist in the Milky Way. By tracing molecular emissions in the outflows around the red hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris, astronomers obtained the first detailed map of the star's envelope, which sheds light on the mechanisms involved in the final stages of extreme supergiant star.

A new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form.

The violent death throes of a nearby star so thoroughly disrupted its planetary system that the dead star left behind -- known as a white dwarf -- is sucking in debris from both the system's inner and outer reaches, astronomers report.

Astronomers using data from the VLA Sky Survey have discovered one of the youngest known neutron stars -- possibly as young as only 14 years. The dense remnant of a supernova explosion was revealed when bright radio emission powered by the pulsar's powerful magnetic field emerged from behind a thick shell of debris from the explosion.