Universe Today Feed

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 not the north. A team from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics thinks they might know why - in a recent paper, they described how a fully liquid core in Mars could create a lopsided magnetic field like the one seen in Insight’s data.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Astrobiologists are dying to send another mission to study Enceladus, the icy moon that orbits Saturn and has active plumes emanating from its surface, A team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) proposes an Enceladus Orbitlander that would conduct in-situ measurements of Enceladus' plumes, which could confirm the presence of organics and maybe even life in its interior.

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.

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.

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.

Who knew that magnetic fields could be so useful?

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 the Hubble tension.

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.

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 times that of Webb.

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.

If skies are clear, be sure to watch for the April Lyrid meteors this Easter weekend. Spring in the northern hemisphere brings with it the promise for the Lyrids, the first good meteor shower of the season. Weather is just warming up in April, but we’re not yet in the midst of summer, waiting up late hours for darkness to fall.

How can we successfully collect and return samples from Mercury and Venus to Earth? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discussed how future missions could successfully conduct sample return missions from the two innermost planets in our solar system. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners better understand new methods for conducting sample returns throughout the solar system, and specifically from hard-to-reach destinations.

Our Sun, like all stars, is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. They are by far the most abundant elements, formed in the early moments of the Universe. But our star is also rich in other elements astronomers call "metals." Carbon, nitrogen, iron, gold, and more. These elements were created through astrophysical processes, such as supernovae and neutron star collisions. The dust of long-dead stars that gathered together into molecular clouds and formed new, younger stars such as the Sun. Stars rich in metals. But there are still stars out there that are not metal rich. These extremely metal-poor stars, or EMPs, hold clues to the origin of stars in the cosmos.

When JWST launched, it found the most distant known galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0, with a redshift of 14.32, and seen about 290 million years after the Big Bang. Now, a team of astronomers has gone even deeper, searching for galaxies in the redshift 15-30 range, which would be galaxies from 270 to 100 million years after the beginning of the Universe. They've found a few candidates in the 15-20 range, but these could be closer, low-mass dusty galaxies.

It’s no surprise that the future of humanity and even Earth’s biodiversity hangs in the balance and so the race to preserve life on our planet has never been more urgent. Species and ecosystems are vanishing at alarming rate so teams of scientists are turning to cutting-edge solutions to safeguard the natural world for future generations. A new paper explores cryopreservation as one solution, a technology that allows living cells to be frozen and stored for centuries, preserving genetic material and even entire organisms. This approach comes with its own challenges but as we explore this innovative frontier, it becomes clear that reimagining how and where we protect life is essential to securing the planet’s biological legacy.