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Galaxies Struggle To Grow In Crowded Environments New research shows how a galaxy’s surroundings influence its development. Its size, shape, and growth rate are all affected. It’s all based on “the finer details of the cosmic landscape.” Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Star That Shouldn’t Exist A red giant orbiting a dormant black hole is spinning impossibly fast and contains chemistry that makes it look ancient when it’s actually relatively young. By listening to faint vibrations rippling through the star, astronomers have decoded a violent secret, that this star likely collided with and absorbed another star billions of years ago, an explosive merger that left it chemically confused and rotating once every 398 days. The discovery reveals how even quiet black hole systems can have turbulent histories written in starlight. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
After a Century of Searching, We May Have Finally Seen Dark Matter Ninety five years after Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky inferred its existence from galaxies moving impossibly fast, researchers may have detected the first direct evidence of dark matter, the invisible scaffolding that holds the universe together. Using gamma ray data from NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope, a Japanese physicist has identified a halo of extremely energetic photons around the Milky Way’s center that matches predictions for annihilating dark matter particles. If confirmed, humanity has finally “seen” the unseeable. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Devastating Stellar Storm Seen on Red Dwarf Star On Earth, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) like the one we experienced earlier this month are aesthetic, even disruptive events, sending aurora southward and interrupting radio signals. But around other stars, they could prove lethal to life. This point was driven home by a recent CME detection from an M-class red dwarf star. This marks the first detection of an energetic Type II radio burst from a nearby star. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Why Being in the “Right Place” Isn’t Enough for Life A planet’s habitability is determined by a confluence of many factors. So far, our explorations of potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system have focused exclusively on their position in the “Goldilocks Zone” of their solar system, where their temperature determines whether or not liquid water can exist on their surface, and, more recently, what their atmospheres are composed of. That’s in part due to the technical limitations of the instruments available to us – even the powerful James Webb Space Telescope is capable only of seeing atmospheres of very large planets nearby. But inRead More →
Astronomers Pinpoint 3I/ATLAS’s Path Based on Data from Mars Since comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object, was discovered on 1 July 2025, astronomers worldwide have worked to predict its trajectory. ESA has now improved the comet’s predicted location by a factor of 10, thanks to the innovative use of observation data from our ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft orbiting Mars. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Hong Kong’s Mission to Watch the Moon Get Bombarded In 2028, Hong Kong will launch its first dedicated lunar orbiter not to study craters or map minerals, but to monitor something far more urgent, the constant barrage of meteoroids slamming into the Moon’s surface at thousands of kilometres per hour. As China prepares to build a permanent lunar research station, understanding this relentless bombardment has become a matter of safety for future astronauts living and working on the Moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Strange Physics Beneath Icy Moons Beneath the frozen shells of Saturn’s tiny moons, hidden oceans might occasionally boil, not from heat, but from dropping pressure as ice melts from below. This strange phenomenon could explain the bizarre geology of worlds like Miranda and Mimas, and reshape our understanding of where to search for life in the outer Solar System. A new study reveals how these distant water worlds operate under physics unlike anything on Earth. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
What Seven Decades of Hunting for Aliens Tells Us Seven billion year old meteorites carrying DNA building blocks. Frozen water on Mars. Amino acids floating in interstellar dust clouds. After seventy years of searching, we’ve found the ingredients for life scattered throughout the universe but have we found life itself? A new review examines every major claim of extraterrestrial life, from ancient space rocks to UFO sightings, revealing what the evidence actually supports and where wishful thinking has filled the gaps. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
A Natural Laboratory Of Spiralling Dust Shells The JWST has done it again. It’s revealed new details hidden from lesser telescopes. The space telescope has detected four spiral dust shells around Apep, a triple star system about 15,000 light-years away. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Life Is Just Matter With Meaning What are the physics of life? That is more than just a philosophical question – it has practical implications for our search for life elsewhere in the galaxy. We know what Earth life looks like, on a number of levels, but finding it on another planet could require us to redefine what we even mean by life itself. A new paper from Stuart Bartlett of Cal Tech and his co-authors provides a new framework for how life could be defined that could reach beyond just what we understand from our one Pale Blue Dot. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Modeling the Fight Between Charged Lunar Dust and Spacecraft Coatings Understanding how exactly lunar dust sticks to surfaces is going to be important once we start having a long-term sustainable presence on the Moon. Dust on the Moon is notoriously sticky and damaging to equipment, as well as being hazardous to astronaut’s health. While there has been plenty of studies into lunar dust and its implications, we still lack a model that can effectively describe the precise physical mechanisms the dust uses to adhere to surfaces. A paper released last year from Yue Feng of the Beijing Institute of Technology and their colleagues showcases aRead More →
The Moss That Survived Nine Months in Space Moss spores spent nine months strapped to the outside of the International Space Station, exposed to vacuum, cosmic radiation, temperature swings from minus 196°C to 55°C, and unfiltered solar ultraviolet light. Over 80 percent survived the ordeal and returned to Earth still capable of growing into new moss plants. This remarkable resilience, demonstrated by one of Earth’s earliest land plants, suggests that life’s fundamental mechanisms may be far more robust in the face of space conditions than previously imagined. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Two Years of Listening to the Universe’s Most Violent Events The world’s gravitational wave detectors just wrapped up their longest and most productive observation campaign, capturing 250 new collisions over two years of continuous listening. These ripples in spacetime, created by black holes and neutron stars spiralling into each other across the universe, have given scientists their first direct evidence for Stephen Hawking’s 1971 theory about black hole surface areas, revealed second generation black holes born from previous mergers, and detected the most massive black hole collision ever observed. The haul represents over two thirds of all gravitational waves ever detected. Universe Today Go toRead More →
Finding 40,000 Asteroids Before They Find Us Astronomers have just catalogued the 40,000th near Earth asteroid, a milestone that marks humanity’s transformation from passive targets to active defenders of our planet. These space rocks, ranging from house sized boulders to some the size of mountains, follow orbits that bring them uncomfortably close to Earth. Each discovery adds another piece to our planetary defence puzzle, though current surveys have found only about 30 percent of the mid sized asteroids that could still cause regional devastation if they struck our world. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Box vs The Bulldozer: The Story of Two Space Gas Stations Using in-situ propellant has been a central pillar of the plan to explore much of the solar system. The logic is simple – the less mass (especially in the form of propellant) we have to take out of Earth’s gravity well, the less expensive, and therefore more plausible, the missions requiring that propellant will be. However, a new paper from Donald Rapp, the a former Division Chief Technologist at NASA’s JPL and a Co-Investigator of the successful MOXIE project on Mars, argues that, despite the allure of creating our own fuel on theRead More →
NASA Finally Releases Images of 3I/ATLAS Taken by Its Missions at Mars Two orbiters and a rover captured images of the interstellar object — from the closest location any of the agency’s spacecraft may get — that could reveal new details. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Blue Origin to Build a “Super Heavy” Rocket to Compete with Starship Blue Origin announced a series of upgrades to New Glenn designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability. The enhancements span propulsion, structures, avionics, reusability, and recovery operations, and will be phased into upcoming New Glenn missions beginning with NG-3. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Is the Universe Infinite? The surface of the Earth is finite. We can measure it. If it was expanding, then its size would grow with time. And once again, good ol’ Earth helps us understand what the universe might be doing beyond our observable horizon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
New Research Suggest Earth and Theia were Neighbors Before They Collided About 4.5 billion years ago, the most momentous event in the history of Earth occurred: a huge celestial body called Theia collided with the young Earth. How the collision unfolded and what exactly happened afterward has not been conclusively clarified. What is certain, however, is that the size, composition, and orbit of Earth changed as a result—and that the impact marked the birth of our constant companion in space, the moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
