On a Hawaiian mountaintop in the summer of 1992, a pair of scientists spotted a pinprick of light inching through the constellation Pisces. That unassuming object — located over a…
Category: Space
Not one, but two asteroids might have slain the dinosaurs
Chicxulub, the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs, might have had a little sibling. Off the coast of West Africa, hundreds of meters beneath the seafloor, scientists have identified what…
Oort cloud comets may spin themselves to death
Comets from the solar system’s deep freezer often don’t survive their first encounter with the sun. Now one scientist thinks he knows why: Solar warmth makes some of the cosmic…
Asteroid impacts might have created some of Mars’ sand
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…
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…
