Sand on Earth is continuously being created by the slow erosion of rocks. But on Mars, violent asteroid impacts may play an important role in making new sand. As much…
Category: Space
Over time, Betelgeuse changed color. Now it’s also lost its rhythm
The star Betelgeuse has always been a diva. Astronomers from antiquity through the present day have watched the red supergiant pulsing at the shoulder of the constellation Orion, and the…
How balloons could one day detect quakes on Venus
The balloon was floating over the Pacific Ocean when the first sound waves hit. For 11 seconds, a tiny device dangling beneath the large, transparent balloon recorded sudden, jerky fluctuations…
Scientists mapped dark matter around galaxies in the early universe
Scientists have mapped out the dark matter around some of the earliest, most distant galaxies yet. The 1.5 million galaxies appear as they were 12 billion years ago, or less…
Mini-Neptunes may become super-Earths as the exoplanets lose their atmospheres
Mini-Neptunes and super-Earths may have a lot more in common than just being superlatives. Four gaseous exoplanets, each a bit smaller than Neptune, seem to be evolving into super-Earths, rocky…
How Mars rovers have evolved in 25 years of exploring the Red Planet
Few things are harder than hurling a robot into space — and sticking the landing. On the morning of July 4, 1997, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in…
The Windchime experiment could use gravity to hunt for dark matter ‘wind’
The secret to directly detecting dark matter might be blowin’ in the wind. The mysterious substance continues to elude scientists even though it outweighs visible matter in the universe by…
A new James Webb telescope image reveals a galactic collision’s aftermath
It’s not easy being ringed. A newly released image from the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, shows the Cartwheel Galaxy still reeling from a run-in with a smaller galaxy…
Two black holes merged despite being born far apart in space
Signals buried deep in data from gravitational wave observatories imply a collision of two black holes that were clearly born in different places. Almost all the spacetime ripples that experiments…
Astronauts might be able to use asteroid soil to grow crops
Astronauts might one day dine on salad grown in asteroid soil. Romaine lettuce, chili pepper and pink radish plants all grew in mixtures of peat moss and faux asteroid soil,…
