News

Mars Has the Remnants of a Lopsided Magnetic Field Scientists have known for a while that Mars currently lacks a magnetic field, and many blame that for its paltry atmosphere – with no protective shield around the planet, the solar wind was able to strip away much of the gaseous atmosphere over the course of billions of years. But, evidence has been mounting that Mars once had a magnetic field. Results from Insight, one of the Red Planet’s landers, lend credence to that idea, but they also point to a strange feature – the magnetic field seemed to cover only the southern hemisphere, but notRead More →

Astronomers Watch a Black Hole Wake Up in Real Time You never know when a central supermassive black hole is going to power up and start gobbling matter. Contrary to the popular view that these monsters are constantly devouring nearby stars and gas clouds, it turns out they spend part of their existence dormant and inactive. New observations from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton spacecraft opened a window on the “turn on event” for one of these monsters in a distant galaxy. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Searching for Life on Mars in the Snow and Ice In a recent paper, a team of researchers indicated that photosynthetic bacteria could exist just beneath the snow and ice around Mars’ mid-latitudes. If true, this could be the most easily accessible place to look for present-day life on Mars. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The Evidence for Ancient Supernovae Is Buried Underground The solar system is currently embedded deep within the Local Bubble, a region of relatively low density stretching for a thousand light-years across. It was carved millions of years ago by a chain of supernova explosions. And the evidence for it is right under our feet. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft Could Send Humans to Titan to Look for Signs of Life According to a recent study by the non-profit Explore Titan, a nuclear-fission propulsion spacecraft could enable the first crewed mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

What Blew Up the Local Bubble? In our neighborhood of the Milky Way, we see a region surrounding the solar system that is far less dense than average. But that space, that cavity, is a very irregular, elongated shape. What little material is left inside of this cavity is insanely hot, as it has a temperature of around a million Kelvin. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A Hole Opened Up in the Sun’s Corona and Vented Helium-3 What can Helium-3 (3He) being discharged from the Sun teach us about 3He creation and the Sun’s activity? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated 3He-rich solar energetic particles (SEPs) emitted by the Sun in late 2023. This study has the potential to help astronomers better understand how solar activity could contribute to the production of 3He, the latter of which remains one of the most desired substances due to its potential for nuclear fusion technology on Earth. Universe TodayRead More →

Is There Life on an Alien Planet? Fresh Findings Revive the Debate Two new studies have sparked fresh debate about a faraway planet with a weird atmosphere. One of the studies claims additional evidence for the presence of life on the planet K2-18 b, based on chemical clues. The other study argues that such clues can be produced on a lifeless world. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A New Version of the Sombrero Galaxy, Taken by Hubble Sometimes an old telescope can still impress. That is certainly the case for Hubble, which is rapidly approaching the 35th anniversary of its launch. To celebrate, the telescope’s operators are collaborating with ESA to release a series of stunning new photographs of some of the most iconic astronomical objects the telescope has observed. As of the time of writing, the latest one to be released is a spectacular new image of a favorite of millions of amateur astronomers – the Sombrero Galaxy. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Magnetic Fields Can Map the Universe – Here’s How Who knew that magnetic fields could be so useful? Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

An Interesting Solution to the Hubble Tension: The Universe is Slowly Spinning Everything in the Universe spins. Galaxies, planets, stars, and black holes all rotate, even if just a bit. It comes from the fact that the clouds of scattered gas and dust of the cosmos are never perfectly symmetrical. But the Universe as a whole does not rotate. Some objects spin one way, some another, but add them all up, and the total rotation is zero. At least that’s what we’ve thought. But a new study suggests that the Universe does rotate, and this rotation solves the big mystery of cosmology known as theRead More →

Using Gamma-Ray Bursts to Probe Large Scale Structures Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful events in the Universe, briefly outshining the combined light of their entire galaxies. A team of astronomers has figured out a clever technique to use the light from gamma-ray bursts to map out the large-scale structure of the Universe at different ages after the Big Bang. They found that the Universe might be less uniform at large scales than previously thought. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

It’s Time to Build a Space Telescope Interferometer. This Could be the First Step The dream of finding life on an alien Earth-like world is hampered by a number of technical challenges. Not the least of which is that Earth is dwarfed by the size and brightness of the Sun. We might be able to discover evidence of life by studying the molecular spectra of a planet’s atmosphere as it passes in front of the star, but those results might be inconclusive. The way to be certain is to observe the planet directly, but that would take a space telescope with a mirror 3–4 timesRead More →

How Astronomers Mapped the Interstellar Medium – And Discovered The Local Bubble How can astronomers pierce through the interstellar fog of the Milky Way – not to study distant objects, but to understand the fog itself? It just takes a little light. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →