1.6 billion stars. 11.4 million galaxies. 158,000 asteroids. One spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which launched in 2013, has long surpassed its goal of charting more than…
Category: Space
Samples of the asteroid Ryugu are scientists’ purest pieces of the solar system
Samples of the asteroid Ryugu are the most pristine pieces of the solar system that scientists have in their possession. A new analysis of Ryugu material confirms the porous rubble-pile…
A newfound, oddly slow pulsar shouldn’t emit radio waves — yet it does
Astronomers have added a new species to the neutron star zoo, showcasing the wide diversity among the compact magnetic remains of dead, once-massive stars. The newfound highly magnetic pulsar has…
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft spotted a ‘hedgehog’ on the sun
A spacecraft has spied a spiky “hedgehog” on the sun and watched a solar flare in ways never done before. The Solar Orbiter, a collaboration between the European Space Agency…
Astrophysicists simulate a fuzzy dark matter galactic halo
Density slices zooming into a fuzzy dark matter halo. The plot on the right shows the reconstructed fuzzy dark matter wave function with self-consistent interference pattern and central solitonic core…
Ice at the moon’s poles might have come from ancient volcanoes
Four billion years ago, lava spilled onto the moon’s crust, etching the man in the moon we see today. But the volcanoes may have also left a much colder legacy:…
These are the first plants grown in moon dirt
That’s one small stem for a plant, one giant leap for plant science. In a tiny, lab-grown garden, the first seeds ever sown in lunar dirt have sprouted. This small…
Pulsars may power cosmic rays with the highest-known energies in the universe
The windy and chaotic remains surrounding recently exploded stars may be launching the fastest particles in the universe. Highly magnetic neutron stars known as pulsars whip up a fast and…
A century ago, Alexander Friedmann envisioned the universe’s expansion
For millennia, the universe did a pretty good job of keeping its secrets from science. Ancient Greeks thought the universe was a sphere of fixed stars surrounding smaller spheres carrying…
High-energy neutrinos may come from black holes ripping apart stars
When a star gets too close to a black hole, sparks fly. And, potentially, so do subatomic particles called neutrinos. A dramatic light show results when a supermassive black hole…
