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Ancient Swedish Goths Had Surprisingly Accurate Calendars Ancient Swedish pagans had surprisingly accurate calendars and the ability to measure phases of the Moon to an incredible precision. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

New Revelations About the Origin of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/Atlas – only the third known object from beyond our Solar System ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

New Research Says that Early Galaxies Could be Sending us Neutrinos Those “Little Red Dots” discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, galaxies that existed during the very early Universe, could be sending neutrino particles that are reaching us today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers Unmask a Supernova Impostor Astronomers observe faint light signals from stellar objects, study it intently, and try to understand what’s behind these signals. In one case, the signals they detected masqueraded as an imminent supernova explosion. But more observations revealed a different reality. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Widespread Turbulence is Upsetting Star Formation in Stephan’s Quintet Stephan’s Quintet contains the most well-studied compact galaxy group. Japanese researchers have mapped star forming gas in the Quintet, along with its turbulence. The results show that the Quintet is an evolved group of interacting galaxies where gas struggles to settle down and form stars. Even where gas is concentrated, turbulence from interactions throttles star formation. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

If Alien Civilizations Use Hyper-Efficient Computers, They Will Have A Distinct Energy Signal We Can Detect Astronomers have long searched for Dyson spheres as a sign of advanced alien civilizations. But if an alien civilization is dependent on advanced computing, we may be better served by looking for a Slysh halo. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Tiny Salt Crevices Could Act As Miniature “Greenhouses” For Martian Microbes We’ve been searching for life on Mars for a long time now, but so far we’ve come up empty. The fundamental problem is a Catch-22 of two of the key ingredients for life. Life as we know it needs liquid water and reasonable temperatures, both of which are available on Mars, but hardly ever at the same time. But a new paper from lead author Anna Bognar and her team at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University and the Konkoly Observatory describes a way for life to have access to both requirements at the same timeRead More →

BepiColombo Successfully Begins Its Final Descent To Mercury The latest mission to the innermost planet in the solar system hit a milestone last week. After an eight year journey, BepiColombo finally separated from its propulsion stage to set itself up for an orbital insertion to Mercury. Taking place on September 3rd, the separation, which is part of a much longer series of logistical steps over the next few months, seemed to go without a hitch. But getting to that point was certainly a process, and still more challenges lie ahead. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Next-Gen Gravitational Wave Detectors Could Spot the First Black Holes A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars ignited – literally the “let there be light” moment for the universe. Now known to astronomers as Population III, or Pop III, stars, these giants were very different from the stars we know today. They were formed out of pristine hydrogen and helium, with almost no “metal” (i.e. other elements) holding them back. They were also huge, growing to tens to hundreds of times larger than the Sun. And they died young, in many cases collapsing into the universe’s earliest black holes. SomeRead More →

Japan’s Hayabusa2 Achieves First-Ever Laser Ranging Experiment with an Asteroid On Sunday July 5th, 2026, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieved the first-ever successful laser ranging experiment while making a flyby of an asteroid. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Icy Exocomets Around a Distant Star Help Explain Earth’s Water Did icy comets deliver water to the young Earth? That idea won’t go away. Now, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets orbiting a young star named PDS 70. The observations suggest that these comets are delivering water to that system’s inner regions. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

How to Land a Rocket Launch ‘Space Jellyfish’ What used to be a rare sight gracing the twilight sky is now becoming strangely commonplace. If you live on either U.S. coast, you have to good chance at seeing what’s become a common sky scene in our modern technocene era: a space launch jellyfish. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Scientists Are Still Trying To Understand How the Moon Formed The Earth and the Moon have nearly identical isotopic compositions, and the Giant Impact Hypothesis strives to explain this. New research into the ancient impact shows how the temperature of both worlds, and how it affects the strength of the materials involved in the collision, shaped the outcome, including the isotopic compositions. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Some Black Holes Grow Much Faster Than Their Galaxies New observations find that a few supermassive black holes are unexpectedly large given the size of their galaxies. This suggests the connection between black holes and galaxies isn’t as strong as we thought. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A New Mission Could Rendezvous With Halley’s Comet In 2061 Halley’s comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the Sun (admittedly when this author, who is now middle-aged, was one year old in 1986), humanity responded with a fleet of spacecraft known informally as the “Halley Armada”. Yet, because of the comet’s trajectory, those spacecraft were only able to visit their target for a fleeting few hours, leaving planetary scientists wanting more. Now, a new paper by researchers at Khalifa University and their co-authors, and available in pre-print on arXiv, describes aRead More →

Do Black Holes Grow Along With the Universe? A New Study Says Yes We know the universe is constantly expanding. We also know that gravitationally bound objects, such as solar systems and black holes, seem to be immune to that expansion. But a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by theoretical physicists Valerio Faraoni and Massimiliano Rinaldi challenges that assumption. They suggest that black holes can’t just ignore the expanding universe around them. Instead they have to expand along with it. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The World’s First Spacefaring Commercial Cardiologist Has Lessons for Would-Be Astronauts Say what you want about the changes to the space industry that’s happened over the past 10-20 years, but one thing is for certain – there are a lot more people that have access to space now than there ever has been before. Some of them have some absolutely crazy stories about how they got there, and plenty of those have written their own books about their experiences, before, during, and after their flight. Add to that list A Heart for Space by Dr. Eiman Jahangir – a cardiologist that officially became an astronautRead More →

China Postpones the Chang’e-7 Mission We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – space is hard. Another example, albeit lacking in the destructive displays of some past examples, is China’s recent delay of its Chang’e-7 lunar mission. The agency announced the mission would miss its late-August launch window with a very brief press release from the China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Engineering Office. While that means a slight delay in China’s plan for the Moon, it’s only a matter of time before the cornerstone of the robotic lunar exploration program is back on the launch pad. Universe Today GoRead More →