Universe Today Feed

We've discovered large numbers of small rocky exoplanets, but they're at such great distances that habitability is extremely difficult to determine. New research suggests than since Mars is on the edge of being habitable, studying it in detail can shed light on rocky exoplanets. If we can understand things like tectonic activity and atmospheric escape on Mars, we can understand how they may play out on rocky exoplanets.

New research led by Penn State scientists suggests that some of the highest-energy cosmic rays may consist of atomic nuclei heavier than iron and could help narrow down the cosmic sources capable of accelerating these particles.

As part of a commercial partnership, NASA is developing a sophisticated chip that will give spacecraft the processing capabilities to think for themselves.

A team of South Korean scientists has uncovered new evidence that could help explain how Earth’s atmosphere became rich in oxygen, one of the most transformative events in the planet’s history. Researchers from the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) report the finding of stromatolites, layered structures formed by microbial communities, within the Hapcheon impact crater on the Korean Peninsula. While the Hapcheon crater is only about 40,000 years old, it shows how stromatolites got a boost from the heat in impact crater hydrothermal systems.

Could the "Great Silence" be the result of extraterrestrial civilizations dying out before they can make contact, or will they evolve to the point where communication with them is no longer possible?

It’s 2035 and NASA’s Dragonfly quadcopter has been “hopping” around the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan for just over a year taking images, scanning pebbles, drilling holes, and analyzing surface material for potential signs of life. You’re at NASA JPL and just moved to Blue Team (12am-8am) from Red Team (4pm-12am), so you’re hyped up on coffee, Red Bull, and will power. It’s 3:30am, you’ve been analyzing data since you clocked in, and you keep discarding what you’ve been told looks like positive signs of life but is more commonly known as false positives. In the meantime, some microbes on Titan that got scanned by Dragonfly keep posing in front of its main camera with signs saying, “We’re here!”

You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’ve been tasked with establishing the first self-sustaining food crop on a Martian settlement. You’re nervous because you’re using a new type of fungi called beneficial fungi, which you’re told will help enhance Martian regolith, enabling it to be used for growing crops. You were privately told that doing this will not only get a high school named after you, but you will successfully feed future settlers without the need to bring food from Earth. But you really only care about having your name on a high school.

SpaceX's next-generation Starship V3 rocket got off to a glorious start for its first test flight, and although not all of its engines fired fully according to plan, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the mission "scored a goal for humanity."

No dust, no way to cool a collapsing gas cloud. No way to cool it, no stars. No dust, no first rung on the ladder from grain to pebble to planet. The substance I spent two articles complaining about turns out to be the substance that makes me possible.

NASA’S Juno spacecraft images Jupiter’s tiny moon of Thebe in a recent close approach.

Planetary nebula are created when a dying star sheds it outer layers. The gas is lit up by the star and all the gorgeous, changing detail is exposed. NGC 1514, the Crystal Ball Nebula, is about 1500 light years away and contains a binary pair in its center. The orbits and winds from the stars create the Crystal Ball's beautiful form.

Life on Earth relies on energy from astrophysical sources. But what if the astrophysical source isn't a star, but a supermassive black hole and its active galactic nuclei? Life needs shelter from their powerful energy, and the only shelter is distance. New research shows that SMBH and their AGN could strip away exoplanet atmospheres and destroy their ozone at vast distances.

Two hydrogen atoms can't form an H2 molecule on their own in empty space. They need a surface. The universe has only one surface available, and it's something I have just spent two articles complaining about.

The Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instruments aboard ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft and NASA’s Europa Clipper made unique observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in late 2025. SwRI leads the UVS instruments on both spacecraft, simultaneously imaging both hemispheres of the comet and detecting the comet’s ultraviolet emissions.

Chinese-born cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang has become the latest deep-pocketed space enthusiast to set his sights on a trip around Mars. But first, he wants to take a ride around the moon on SpaceX's Starship. And SpaceX is willing to work with him.

Superluminous supernovae are the royalty in the supernova world. They're up to 100 times brighter than a standard supernova, and astrophysicists want to know why. New research shows that magnetars are responsible.

Dust scatters light, absorbs light, re-emits light, and ruins everything. It's why our maps of the Milky Way were wrong before 1930, and it's why one of the biggest cosmological announcements of the 2010s quietly evaporated.

It’s getting crowded up there. Over the past few years, the advent of SpaceX’s Starlink and other players in the mega-satellite constellation game are adding an exponential load of satellites and orbital debris to the low Earth orbit environment. But all that goes up, must eventually come down. Now, a new study looks at solar activity over time as a predictor for how reentries trend.

Neutrinos, the second most common fundamental particles in the universe, are notoriously difficult to detect. So far we’ve only been able to do so by building giant vats of water far underground with hundreds of photodetectors watching for brief flashes of light. But a new CubeSat mission hopes to change that dynamic and enable the neutrino detectors of the future a much less constrained and expensive existence - in space.

Some animals can move efficiently beneath granular surfaces. These include the sandfish (Scincus scincus), a lizard native to the Sahara. It can burrow into the sand and then literally "swim" through the desert sand to hunt or escape predators. German researchers are working on a rover wheel design that mimics that swimming motion. In testing, the wheel system outperformed regular wheels.