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Tech - Universe Today - 15 hours ago

If Life Exists in Venus' Atmosphere, It Could Have Come From Space

A new study presented at the 2026 LPSC suggests that if life does exist in Venus' clouds, there's a chance it came from Earth.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 hours ago

If Life Exists in Venus' Atmosphere, It Could Have Come From Earth

A new study presented at the 2026 LPSC suggests that if life does exist in Venus' clouds, there's a chance it came from Earth.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

An Aerobot With ISRU Capabilities Could Explore Venus' Atmosphere for Years

In a new proposal, a team of scientists explores how aerial robotic platforms (areobots) with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) capability could operate for years in Venus' atmosphere.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

The Habitable Worlds Observatory Will Need Astrometry To Find Life

We’re getting closer and closer to finding a real Earth-like exoplanet. But finding one is only half the battle. To truly know if we’re looking at an Earth analog somewhere else in the galaxy, we have to directly image it too. That’s a job for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a planned space-based telescope whose primary job is to do precisely that. But even capturing a picture and a planet and getting spectral readings of its atmospheric chemistry still isn’t enough, according to a new p...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

The Artemis Generation Begins! Artemis II Launches for the Moon

At 06:25 p.m. EDT (03:25 p.m. PDT) on April 1st, the Artemis II mission lifted off from the historic Launch Pad-39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission will send astronauts on a ten-day journey around the Moon and will be the first crewed mission to venture beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the Apollo Era.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Why Are Supermassive Black Holes Growing So Slowly?

About 10 billion years ago, the growth rate of supermassive black holes began to slow dramatically. To this day, the SMBH growth rate still appears to be low. There are three potential explanations for this, and researchers think they've figured out which explanation fits best.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Astronomers Find a Third Galaxy Missing Its Dark Matter, Validating a Violent Cosmic Collision Theory

Astronomers have long argued that dark matter is the invisible scaffolding that holds galaxies together. Without its immense gravitational pull, the rotational spins of galaxies would force them to simply fly apart. But now, scientists have found a string of galaxies that seem to be missing their dark matter entirely. The latest in this string, known as NGC 1052-DF9, is described in a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Michael Keim, Pieter van Dokkum and their team from Yale. It lend...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

The Largest Survey of Exoplanet Spins Confirms a Long-held Theory

For some time, astronomers have theorized that there is a connection between planetary mass and rotation. Using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai'i, a team of astronomers confirmed this relationship by studying dozens of gas giants and brown dwarfs in distant star systems.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Scouring TESS Data With AI Reveals A Hundred New Exoplanets

New AI tool validates over 100 new planets, finds thousands of candidates, and gives our best estimate for how likely it is to find certain planets around Sun-like stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Exploding Primordial Black Holes Might Have Reshaped the Early Universe - And Created All Matter As We Know It

The early universe is absolutely so far outside our understanding of how the world works it's hard to describe in words. Back then, the cosmos wasn’t filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, with a few microscopic black holes thrown in, occasionally detonating like depth charges. That’s the early universe theorized by a new paper, available in pre-print from arXiv, from researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and MIT anyway.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Mercury Scout Mission Concept with Solar Sail Propulsion

The planet Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and also the most difficult for spacecraft to visit and explore. This is because as spacecraft get closer to Mercury, the Sun’s enormous gravity pulls in the spacecraft, greatly increasing its speed and making it hard to slow down without large amounts of fuel. But what if a spacecraft could both travel to and explore Mercury without fuel? This could drastically reduce mission costs while delivering impactful science.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

KYTHERA Mission Concept Targets 200-Day Mission to Venus Surface

The planet Venus is often called “Earth’s twin” due to the similar sizes, but the reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Unlike Earth, which is hospitable to an estimated billions of lifeforms, Venus is not hospitable to life as we know it, at least on its surface. This is because the surface of Venus not only experiences an average temperature of 464 degrees Celsius (867 degrees Fahrenheit), but it also has crushing pressures approximately 92 times of Earth, or equivalent to approximately ...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Optical Fiber Arrays May Unlock Mysteries Of The Moon’s Deep Interior

Ordinary telecoms grade optical fiber could help planetary scientists better characterize the moon’s deep interior as well as its lava tubes, say two new journal papers.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

A New Theory Connects Early Cosmic Inflation and Quantum Gravity

The Universe expanded rapidly soon after the Big Bang, and we aren't sure why. But a theory of quadratic quantum gravity might be the answer.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Tales of Two Comets: A1 MAPS and R3 Pan-STARRS Both Make a Showing in April

All eyes are on the inner solar system in April 2026, as two comets reach perihelion. One, Comet R3 Pan-STARRS we’ve known about since last year. Another, sungrazer A1 MAPS was just found as the first comet of 2026 and presents us with a big question: will it survive its blistering perihelion passage on Saturday, April 4th, or simply vaporize like the majority of sungrazers before it?

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Are We About to Premanently Scar the Night Sky With One Million AI Satellite and 50,000 Space Mirrors?

If you thought the current crop of satellite megaconstellations was bad, you’re going to be horribly disappointed by new proposals from both SpaceX and a company called Reflect Orbital. Their combined plans would fundamentally alter the night sky as we know it, and the global astronomical community is sounding the alarm - most notably letters from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) strongly opposing the pl...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Are We About to Permanently Scar the Night Sky With One Million AI Satellite and 50,000 Space Mirrors?

If you thought the current crop of satellite megaconstellations was bad, you’re going to be horribly disappointed by new proposals from both SpaceX and a company called Reflect Orbital. Their combined plans would fundamentally alter the night sky as we know it, and the global astronomical community is sounding the alarm - most notably letters from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) strongly opposing the pl...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Black Hole Runs Out of Gas, Rapidly Dims its Galaxy

It's not often that astronomers can observe huge changes in a galaxy's brightness over the course of a few years. Most galaxies change in brightness (and other characteristics) over millions or billions of years. So, when images of the 10-billion-light-year distant galaxy J0218-0036 showed that it dimmed down by a twentieth of its previous brightness in just 20 years, observers were surprised. What could cause it to do that? That's not "normal" for AGN.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Uranus Mission Concept CASMIUS to Probe Ice Giant Secrets

The ice giant Uranus is one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system, with its sideways rotation, intricate ring system, and unique family of moons. However, it is also one of the least explored objects in the solar system, owing to its extreme distance from the Sun. With NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft remaining as the only spacecraft to visit Uranus, scientists continue to design and envision mission concepts for returning to explore Uranus and its icy secrets.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

NASA Narrows Artemis Landing Sites to 9 Key Regions

Less than two days from now, NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to lift off for its historic 10-day journey around the Moon, marking the first time humans have ventured beyond Low Earth Orbit for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, and possibly even set new distance records for traveling beyond Earth. However, Artemis II is only scheduled as a flyby mission and will not be landing humans on the lunar surface, with this endeavor being scheduled for later missions.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Oldest Carbon-rich Stars Open a Window to Early Cosmic Chemistry

Astronomers studying the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Pictor II have found an extremely chemically peculiar star that contains traces of elements created by the first stars in the Universe. It's called PicII-503, a "second-generation star" that is one of the most chemically primitive stars ever found.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

To Celebrate the Coming of Spring, NASA Releases Images of "Blossoming" Stellar Nurseries

This collection of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes contains regions where stars are forming. Often nicknamed “stellar nurseries,” they are cosmic gardens from which stars – not plants – emerge from the interstellar soil of gas and dust.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

To Celebrate the Coming of Spring, NASA Releases Images of "Blossaming" Stellar Nurseries

This collection of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes contains regions where stars are forming. Often nicknamed “stellar nurseries,” they are cosmic gardens from which stars – not plants – emerge from the interstellar soil of gas and dust.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

We Could Be Hit By Five Building-sized Asteroids By The End Of The Century - So What Are We Going To Do About It?

It’s amazing how much one movie can act as a cultural touchpoint for an entire topic - even a topic as serious as defense of a planet. Popular media consistently use the 1998 movie Armageddon as a reference when talking about how we would destroy a civilization-ending asteroid. That’s despite the movie’s glaring scientific flaws, not the last of which is the likely size of the rogue comet that threatens the Earth. Planetary defense researchers at MIT were recently interviewed by the university’s...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

How Plants Could Betray Themselves Across the Galaxy

Every green leaf on Earth does something remarkable, it absorbs visible light for photosynthesis but reflects near-infrared light back into space, creating a distinctive spectral signature that could in principle be spotted from across the Galaxy. It's called the vegetation red edge, and it may be our best hope of detecting life on distant worlds. Now a new study has tackled one of the biggest obstacles to using it, the messy, patchy reality of real planets with real clouds.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Mars Was Once a World of Rain

Mars today is a frozen, barren world where liquid water can briefly appear on its surface but evaporates almost instantly in the thin atmosphere, unable to persist in any meaningful quantity. But a handful of pale, bleached rocks spotted by NASA's Perseverance rover are telling a very different story about the planet's past, one of tropical downpours, sodden landscapes, and conditions that might once have been hospitable to life.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Solar Activity Could Threaten the Artemis Crew

In his blockbuster 1982 novel "Space", the writer James A. Michener wove a gripping tale of astronauts trapped on the Moon during a major solar storm. Warnings from Earth didn't come soon enough to save them from death by radiation sickness. To avoid such a tragedy happening with the Artemis crews (as with the Apollo crews of the past), NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will monitor the Sun. If it acts up, the teams will be able to send warnings and instructions...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

New Henrietta Spectrograph to Probe Alien Atmospheres

Finding life beyond our solar system goes beyond measuring an exoplanet’s size, as rocky, Earth-sized worlds might not have the conditions for life as we know it. While exoplanets can be directly imaged by blocking their star’s glare, these images are fuzzy and lack resolution to provide enough details about the habitability. Therefore, astronomers are limited to studying an exoplanet’s atmosphere, and this has proven to be quite beneficial in teaching scientists about an exoplanet’s formation a...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Pulsars Rewrite the Rules

For decades, astronomers thought they knew that pulsars broadcast their signatight beams of radio waves fired from near the surface, close to the magnetic poles. A new study of nearly 200 of the fastest spinning pulsars in the universe has just turned that idea on its head. It turns out these extraordinary objects are broadcasting from two completely separate locations at once, and one of them lies right at the outer edge of their magnetic grip on space itself.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

How the Solar Wind Really Works

The Sun doesn't just pump out light and heat, it blasts a continuous stream of charged particles across the Solar System, and that solar wind is far more complex than it looks. Hidden within it are waves that act as invisible middlemen, constantly shuffling energy between particles as the wind expands outward. Now, thanks to the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft, we have our clearest picture yet of how those waves behave close to the Sun itself.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Blocking out the Stellar Lighthouses

Finding another Earth is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time and the biggest obstacle isn't the distance, it's the glare. An Earth like planet orbiting a Sun like star is ten billion times fainter than its host. A team of NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are developing a remarkable piece of optical wizardry that could solve the problem of seeing planets hidden by the stellar glare and they're already within striking distance of the performance needed to make it w...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

A Galactic Wind Caught in the Act

Twelve million light years away, a galaxy is throwing a tantrum on a cosmic scale. M82, the Cigar Galaxy is forming stars at ten times the rate of our own Milky Way, and all that frenzied activity has been blasting superheated gas outward in a colossal wind stretching 40,000 light years. Scientists have long known the wind exists, but now, for the first time, they've measured exactly how fast it's moving and the answer raises as many questions as it answers.

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Bennu’s Rugged Rocks Explained by Deep Internal Cracks

Asteroids don’t get the love they deserve. They don’t get “cool points” because they’re not a planet or a potential life-harboring moon. They’re “just a bunch of rocks”. But asteroids are so much more, as they are time capsules of the early solar system that have survived billions of years untouched by weathering or plate tectonics. One of the most intriguing asteroids that has been explored is asteroid Bennu, and specifically how its physical characteristics greater differed from Earth-based ob...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

Exomoons Could Be Habitable for Billions of Years, Provided they have Hydrogen Atmospheres

Liquid water is considered essential for life. Surprisingly, however, stable conditions that are conducive to life could exist far from any sun. A research team from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has shown that moons around free-floating planets can keep their water oceans liquid for up to 4.3 billion years by virtue of dense hydrogen atmospheres and tidal heating—that is to say, for almost as long as Earth has existed and s...

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

Mars-Like Worlds Near M-Dwarfs May Lose Air in Millions of Years

The criteria for finding an Earth-like planet unofficially comes down to two things: water and the habitable zone. But a phenomenon known as atmospheric escape often “escapes” the minds of many astronomy fans, and it turns out that atmospheric escape is one of the key characteristics for finding an Earth-like world. Although extensive research has been conducted on how the planet Mars might have lost its atmosphere, and potentially the ability to sustain life, how would the atmosphere enveloping...

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

A Signal From Before the Stars

On 12 November 2025, LIGO picked up a gravitational wave signal that stopped astronomers in their tracks. The object that produced it was too small to be any known type of black hole, smaller in fact, than our own Sun. If confirmed, it would be something that has never been directly detected before, a primordial black hole forged in the violent chaos of the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Now two astrophysicists believe they can explain exactly what LIGO found and why it could cra...

Tech - Universe Today - 8 days ago

Hunting Moon Water With Neutrons

Water is the difference between a temporary visit and a permanent home. If humanity is serious about building a lasting presence on the Moon, finding usable ice near the lunar south pole isn't just a scientific curiosity, it's a practical necessity. Now NASA is sending a clever instrument that hunts for water without digging a single hole, using the behaviour of subatomic particles to sniff out hidden ice deposits up to three feet underground.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

Hera Aces A Massive Engine Burn On Its Way To Didymos

In September 2022, humanity crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid - on purpose. The objective of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was to see if we could intentionally modify the orbit of Dimorphos, the small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. According to all accounts, the mission worked spectacularly, but it was a one-way trip, so our ability to see what happened to the binary asteroid system has so far been limited to ground-based telescopes. That wasn’t good enough fo...

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

Uncovering the Effects of Microgravity on Liver Metabolism

A team led by Professor Mian Long from the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, investigated the effects of space microgravity on cultured liver cells aboard the China Space Station.

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

Jupiter's Lightning Could Be Almost Unbelievably Powerful

Juno observations show that Jupiter's lightning, already known to be powerful, is far more energetic than thought. Lightning triggered by a stealth superstorm in 2021-22 could be up to one million times more powerful than terrestrial lightning.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Looking For Nearby ‘Project Hail Mary’ Worlds

It’s out. The top sci-fi draw of the year Project Hail Mary is now showing in a theater near you. The movie tells the tale of middle school teacher Ryland Grace, who is sent on a one way, last ditch mission to save humanity. The story is a refreshing take on first contact and just how different life out there could be… but are there real ‘Adrians’ or ‘Erids’ out there? A new paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies 45 rocky worlds with a potential for l...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Ripples in Spacetime and the Universe's Most Controversial Number

Douglas Adams famously told us the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Astronomers have been wrestling with their own version of that answer for years, except their number is the Hubble constant, a measure of how fast the universe is expanding, and nobody can agree what it is. Now a new study using ripples in spacetime as a measuring tools has produced a fresh value that might just help resolve one of the biggest arguments in modern cosmology.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Star That Kept Its Secret for 50 Years

Look up on a clear night and you can spot the distinctive 'W' shape of Cassiopeia with the naked eye. The middle star of that W, which has the catchy name of Gamma Cas, has been puzzling astronomers since 1866, and for the last fifty years it's been blazing with peculiar high energy X-rays that simply shouldn't be there. Now, thanks to a next generation space telescope with extraordinary precision, the mystery has finally been solved. The culprit is a hungry invisible companion, quietly feeding ...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

How Did Venus Become a Hellscape? 234,000 Simulations Reveal Four Possible Paths

Venus is increasingly becoming a touch point for our studies of the exoplanets, as missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)and the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) begin to characterize rocky exoplanets around other stars. Understanding the difference between the evolutions of Venus and Earth, which ended up with such different results, is a key to understanding whether we might be looking at an Earth-analogue or a hellish landscape like Venus. A new paper by Rodolfo Garcia...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Direct Confirmation Of Two Baby Planets Forming Around A Young Sun-like Star

Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2. Having previously detected one planet, the team have now employed European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes to confirm the presence of another. These observations, and the unique structure of the disc around the star, indicate that the WISPIT 2 system could resemble our young Solar System.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Future of Space Stations - Part II: Commercial Space

With the ISS set to retire in 2030, several plans are in place to replace it. These include existing space stations, proposals by rising national space agencies, and commercial space stations. In terms of the commercial space sector, the plans are diverse and numerous.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

NASA's Webb and Hubble Telescopes Look at Saturn in a Different Light

NASA is serving up a double scoop of delicious Saturn imagery in two flavors near-infrared from the James Webb Space Telescope, and visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The Moon That Tipped a Planet

Neptune has always been something of a puzzle. The distant ice giant sits tilted at an awkward angle, although not as extreme as Uranus, that astronomers have long struggled to explain. Now new research suggests the answer may have been lurking in its own backyard all along and the culprit is Triton, Neptune's strange, rebellious moon.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Russia’s Return to the Launchpad

Russia has returned to orbit from the very launch pad that failed it just months ago. Following an embarrassing structural collapse at Baikonur Cosmodrome last November, repairs have been completed and a fresh cargo mission has blasted skyward. But with a space programme that was once the envy of the world now struggling to recapture its former glory, questions remain about whether Russia can truly rebuild its place among the stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

The JWST Finds More Overmassive Black Holes. This Time In Dwarf Galaxies

The JWST has shown us that supermassive black holes were much larger in the early Universe than we thought. New research has extended this understanding to more intermediate redshifts, and to dwarf galaxies. Could the often-invoked Super-Eddington accretion be responsible?

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Dedicated Amateur Beats All-Sky Surveys to Asteroid Discovery

The modern era of all-sky surveys including Pan-STARRS, ATLAS and now the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have given amateur astronomers some stiff competition. But many amateurs have simply upped their game, and took their quest online. The ability to access remote observatories has really helped in this regard. One recent discovery highlights this growing trend. Amateur astronomer Filipp Romanov was able to nab the fast-moving asteroid 2026 CQ3 flitting through the constellation Leo last month on...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

NASA's Dragonfly Rotorcraft Begins Integration and Testing Ahead of Mission To Titan

We’re getting close to launch day for Dragonfly! Engineers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have officially kicked off the integration and testing stage for the car-sized, nuclear-powered helicopter bound for Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. According to a press release for APL, after years of designing, tweaking, and testing individual components in laboratories and on computer simulations, various organizations have started testing actual hardware ahead o...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Mars Plant Growth from Cyanobacteria-Based Fertilizer

You’re the Lead Botanist on the third human mission to Mars whose primary job involves growing food for the crew throughout the long mission. While you’re very familiar with the infamous “poop potatoes” from the 2025 film The Martian, the greatest minds in science had since devised a more efficient, and less messy, method for growing food on Mars: cyanobacteria.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

NASA Lays Out Ambitious Plans for Moon Base and Nuclear Mars Mission

NASA has outlined an ambitious strategy to start working on a moon base and send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028 leading some observers to wonder whether the timeline was realistic or wise.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Extragalactic Archaeology: A New Method To Understand Galaxy Growth and Evolution

Galactic archaeology uses chemical fingerprints in the Milky Way to trace its formation and evolution. Now a team of researchers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian have employed it for the first time in a distant galaxy. This is the first example of extragalactic archaeology, and it relies on help from the powerful Illustris TNG simulations.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

We Are Slowing Down the Planet

The days are getting longer. Not by much though since we're talking about fractions of a millisecond, but the rate at which our planet is slowing down is, according to a new study, completely without precedent in the last 3.6 million years. The culprit isn't the Moon, the Sun or anything in Earth's interior. It's us, homo sapiens.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Watching 25 Years of Expansion in the Crab Nebula With the Hubble

A quarter-century after its first observations of the full Crab Nebula, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken a fresh look at the supernova remnant. The result is an unparalleled, detailed look at the aftermath of a supernova and how it has evolved over Hubble’s long lifetime. A paper detailing the new Hubble observation was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

The Time Capsule in the Salt Flat

High in the Chilean Andes, at an altitude where the air is thin and the Sun is intense, a salt flat is hiding something remarkable. Locked inside ancient crystals of gypsum are the preserved remains of microscopic life, fossils of organisms that lived thousands of years ago, sitting alongside communities of microbes that are alive right now. Scientists studying this extraordinary place think it could be the closest thing on Earth to where life might once have existed on Mars.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

When Atoms Hear the Universe Ripple

Detecting gravitational waves has always demanded enormous machines; kilometre scale instruments capable of sensing distortions smaller than a proton. But a new theoretical study suggests the universe may have been leaving its calling card in the light emitted by individual atoms. If the idea holds up, the future of gravitational wave detection might not be sprawling observatories carved into the landscape, but something you could hold in the palm of your hand.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Spacecraft Heat Shields Could Violently "Burst" When Plunging Into Alien Atmospheres

Heat shield design is one of the most critical aspects of missions that plan to either land on a planet’s (or moon’s) surface or return to our own. Spacecraft that have to survive the fiery, hypersonic plunge through an atmosphere require these systems. For decades, heat shields have been designed to slowly burn away in a process called ablation, which is intended to dissipate the incredible thermal energy or reentry. But, there’s another, less understood phenomenon that affects them too - spall...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Giant Craters May Reveal if Psyche is a Lost Planetary Core

When we think of asteroids, we almost immediately think of giant rocks bouncing around like the iconic chase scene in Empire Strikes Back, and we often hear how they are remnants from the birth of the solar system. While the asteroids that comprise the Main Asteroid Belt of our solar system are not only spread far apart from each other, they are also not all made of rock. One asteroid approximately the size of the State of Massachusetts called 16 Psyche is made of metal, which planetary scientis...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Parabolic Flight Experiments Delve into Planetary Formation

What happens in a protoplanetary disk to create planetesimals around a star? We know the general story -- the material begins to clump together and eventually grows from dust grains to rocky bodies capable of sticking together to make planets. But, how does that dust begin the aggregation journey? That's what a research team from the Switzerland wanted to know. So, they did experiments aboard parabolic micro-gravity flights to find an answer.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Rubin Alert Leads to First Follow-Up Observations and Detection of Four Supernovae

NSF NOIRLab has completed end-to-end runs of its ecosystem for following up on alerts from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The runs demonstrated how multiple NOIRLab-developed software tools, plus a network of telescopes around the globe, will enable quick follow-up observations of the countless transient objects that Rubin will uncover during its ten-year survey.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

This Ancient Star In A Low-Mass Galaxy Is A Precious Find

To understand the Universe we see around us today, we have to understand its past. Some hard-to-find ancient stars, called Population II stars, preserve evidence from the ancient Universe. Astronomers finally found one.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Black Hole Mergers Test the Limits of General Relativity

We can now use the gravitational waves of black holes to test general relativity and look for evidence of alternative theories of gravity.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

How Will Martian Gravity Affect Skeletal Muscle?

Marie Mortreux, an assistant professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Health Sciences, is part of an international team of researchers studying how the Mars’s gravity would affect astronauts’ skeletal muscle.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Saturn-mass world discovered orbiting two low-mass stars

You just established a settlement on an Earth-like planetary body far from our solar system. You did your evening chores after eating dinner, and you want to go out for the evening view, which consists of two setting stars, reminiscent of the infamous scene in Star Wars. However, there’s one major difference: a large planetary body is in the sky. As you were aware before arriving, you’re on an exomoon orbiting a Saturn-sized exoplanet, both of which orbits two stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

This Pair Of Brown Dwarfs Can't Get Enough Of Each Other

Astronomers have found the first case of a brown dwarf binary pair experiencing mass transfer. The pair are very close to one another, with an orbital period of only 57 minutes. The pair will eventually merge into one, brighter star, or the accretor will become massive enough to trigger fusion. At only 1,000 light-years away, the system is a strong candidate for more detailed, follow-up observations.

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

This Super-Puff Planet is Hiding its True Nature Behind Thick Haze

Super-puff planets have extremely low densities, and exoplanet scientists aren't sure why. They seem to defy our understanding of how planets form. Researchers used the JWST to observe the atmosphere of Kepler-51d, one of the puffiest of the super-puffs. Unfortunately, even the powerful space telescope found a featureless spectrum. What does it mean?

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

The Sun’s Long-Lived Active Regions Are Massive Flare Factories—But We Don’t Know Why

Space weather is a fascinating subject, but one we still have a lot to learn about. One of the main components of it is the active regions (ARs) of the Sun. These huge concentrations of magnetic fields show up throughout the Sun’s photosphere and are the primary source of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). They can be simple pairings of magnetic flux or huge, magnetically complex tangles that spend weeks creating massive solar storms before dissipating. But tracking the longest live...

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Canada Allocates $200 Million Towards the Creation of Nation's First Spaceport

Minister of National Defence David McGuinty announced on Monday, March 16th, that the Canadian government is committing $200 million to develop Canada's first commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia, which will be run by Maritime Launch Services.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

The Crab Pulsar's Puzzling Emissions Finally Explained.

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. The Crab Pulsar, an often studied supernova remnant, is known for its unusual radio emission patterns. New researchs says it's because of a "tug-of-war" between magnetism and gravity. Gravity acts as a focusing lens and plasma in the magnetosphere acts as a defocusing lens.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Sometimes You Get Lucky, Just Like the Hubble Did When It Caught This Comet Disintegrating

A team of astronomers were fortunate when their original comet target couldn't be observed with the Hubble. They quickly pivoted to a different target, and caught Comet K1 in the process of breaking apart. This gave them an excellent opportunity to learn more about the doomed object.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

The Moon's Going To Get Crowded - We Should Protect Our Heritage On It While We Still Can

In 1959, the Luna 2 probe from the Soviet Union became the very first human-made object to reach our closest celestial neighbor. In the decades since, we have been leaving footprints - both literally and figuratively - all over the Moon. Today, there are over 100 metric tons of human-made material resting on the Moon’s surface - everything from advanced cameras and sensors to literal human waste. But that’s nothing compared to what’s to come. NASA predicts the next decade will see over 100 new l...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Eclipse Study Tracks Turbulence Through the Solar Corona

It was an amazing sight witnessed by many during the April 2024 total solar eclipse. For a few precious moments, it seemed like a celestial dimmer switch was thrown, as the Moon eclipsed the Sun. It was one of the very few times you could actually see prominences and the pearly white corona of the Sun in person, without the aid of special equipment. Now, a recent study out of the University of Hawai’i has linked high resolution images taken during totality with observations from missions orbitin...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

JUICE is Planning To Do Science On Jupiter's "Minor" Moons Too

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) probe is on its (very long) way to Jupiter, and will finally arrive at the King of Planets in 2031. Its primary mission is to focus on the “big three” icy moons - Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. But while JUICE is busy mapping Ganymede’s magnetic field, it will also be keeping a sharp eye on the other 94 moons in the Jupiter system. A recent paper published in Space Science Reviews by Tilmann Denk of DLR, Germany’s space rese...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Something is Changing the Small Magellanic Cloud

A strange lack of stellar orbits around the core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mystified astronomers for decades. Not only that, but the SMC has a strange, irregular shape, and sports a tidal. Now, a team of observers led by graduate student Himansch Rathore at the University of Arizona, has tracked down the reason why the stars don't orbit. It's because the SMC crashed directly through its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the distant past. That huge collision disrupted stel...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

A New Type of Exoplanet Has a Magma Ocean That's Lasted 5 Billion Years

A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The magma ocean has lasted 5 billion years so far, while Earth's magma ocean likely lasted only tens of millions of years.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

NASA Exoplanet-Hunting CubeSat Delivers "First Light" Images

With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Astronomers Search for "Exotrojans" Hiding in Extreme Pulsar Systems

Greek mythology has given a name to a great many objects in our solar system. But perhaps one of the least well understood are the Trojans, named after the people of Troy featured in The Iliad. When astronomers refer to them, they are normally talking about a group of over 10,000 confirmed asteroids orbiting at the Lagrange points both in front of and behind Jupiter on its orbit around the Sun. But, more generally, astronomers can now use the term to refer to any co-orbital setup - indeed almost...

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Why Conventional SETI Needs A Major Refocus

After decades of searching for alien signals in narrow radio and microwave bandwidths, a new paper suggests that we take a wholly different approach. The idea is to broaden the search to a much wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

CERN Adds a New Particle to Large Hadron Collider's Subatomic Zoo

Scientists at Europe's CERN research center say the Large Hadron Collider's LHCb experiment has discovered a "doubly charmed" particle that's like a proton, but four times as weighty.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 4: Hiding in Plain Darkness

The WHAT? Yeah, the vortons. It’s not an anime monster-hunting show. It’s not some AI startup company. It’s a…it’s a thing. I think.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

New Study Complicates the Search for Alien Oxygen

Oxygen has been the most important gas in our search for life among the cosmos thus far. On Earth, we have it in abundance because it is produced by biological synthesis. But that might not be the case on other planets, so even if we do find a very clear high oxygen signal in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it might not be a clear indication that life exists there. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from Margaret Turcotte Seavey and a team of researchers from institutions like the NAS...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

The Coming Age of Space Stations

With the ISS set to retire in 2030, several plans are in place to replace it. These include existing space stations, proposals by rising national space agencies, and commercial space stations. With multiple outposts in orbit, the potential for research, development, and even conflict is considerable!

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Are Rogue Exomoons the Newest Frontier in the Search for Habitability?

There may be as many rogue planets or free-floating planets in the Milky Way as there are stars. If there are billions of these worlds, some of them have likely held onto their moons. New research reveals a pathway to habitability for these rogue exomoons.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Microscopic "Ski-Jumps" Could Shrink Spacecraft LiDAR to the Size of a Microchip

Every ounce counts when launching a rocket, which is why considerations for the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) of every component matters so much. For decades, one of the heaviest and most power-hungry components on a spacecraft has been its optical and communications hardware - specifically the bulky mechanical mirror used for LiDAR and free-space laser communications. But a new paper, published in Nature by researchers at MIT, MITRE, and Sandia National Laboratories, might have just fundamenta...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 3: The Great Vanishing Act

And yeah, we have a problem.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

A 60-Year Old Mystery About the Moon's Magnetosphere Is Finally Solved

One particularly well known fact about the Moon is that it doesn’t have much of a magnetosphere to speak of. There’s no blanket to protect it from the solar wind ravaging its surface, blowing away its atmosphere and charging the notoriously dangerous dust particles that make up its regolith. However, scientists have also known for around 60 years that some parts of the moon do experience sudden spikes in a magnetic field - some of which are up to 10 times stronger than the background magnetizati...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Reading Europa's Fingerprints

Beneath Europa's cracked and frozen shell lies a vast ocean of liquid water and what's seeping up through that ice may be one of the most compelling clues we have ever found about the moon's potential for life. A new analysis of James Webb Space Telescope observations has revealed that carbon dioxide on Europa's surface is far more widespread than previously thought, spreading across multiple regions of geological terrain in a distinctive lens like pattern. The findings are rewriting what we tho...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Life, But Not As We Know It

For sixty years, the search for life beyond Earth has been built on the single assumption that alien life will look enough like us to recognise. A radical new idea called Assembly Theory is challenging that assumption. A team from the Arizona State University has proposed applying it to the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, not to look for specific gases, but to measure how much complexity a planetary atmosphere contains, and whether blind chemistry alone could plausibly have produced it. If it...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

The Sun's Great Escape

Our Sun didn't always call this quiet corner of the Milky Way home. New research using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite has uncovered evidence that the Sun fled the chaotic heart of our Galaxy four to six billion years ago and it didn't go alone. A vast migration of stars almost identical to our own swept outward together, a great exodus that may have made life on Earth possible. The story of how astronomers pieced this together is as remarkable as the discovery itself.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 2: The Persistence of Memory

But here’s the thing about these defects. They can’t just go away. They’re stuck.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

The Seven Hour Explosion Nobody Could Explain

On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers the explanation that a star torn apart by an intermediat...

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

NASA's DART Mission Also Changed Didymos' Orbit Around Sun

The spacecraft changed the binary system’s orbit, confirming that a kinetic impactor can be an effective planetary defense technique for deflecting a near-Earth object.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

Is the Universe Defective? Part 1: The Good Old Days

Every time you flip a light switch, or check the time, or feel the sodium ions wiggling in your brain don’t think about that one too much—you’re assuming something fundamental. You’re assuming the universe is a finished product. A completed work. You think the Big Bang happened, the forces of nature settled into their seats, and we’ve been cruising on a smooth, predictable ride ever since.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

The Universe's Most Powerful Particle Accelerators Were Here All Along

Every planet with a magnetic field has a radiation belt, a region of space where charged particles get trapped and flung around at extraordinary speeds. Earth has two of them, and they've been puzzling scientists for decades. Now, a physicist at the University of Helsinki has built a model that defines a universal upper limit to just how energetic those belts can ever get. The answer applies not just to Earth, but to every planet in the Solar System, every gas giant, and even the strange objects...

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

A Glorious Spiral of Star Formation

Stars peek through the dusty, winding arms of NGC 5134, a spiral galaxy located 65 million light-years away, in this Feb. 20, 2026, image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. The telescope’s Near Infrared Camera records shorter-wavelength near-infrared light, mostly from the stars and star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spir...

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

Why Are Interstellar Comets So Weird? Part 4: We Finally Turned On the Porch Lights

So that's all nice. But why now? That's the question everyone asks. We went decades centuries, millennia really without seeing a single rock that didn't have a "Made in the Solar System" sticker on it. Then, in the span of less than ten years, we get the Big Three: 'Oumuamua, Borisov, and now 3I/ATLAS.

Tech - Universe Today - 23 days ago

Scientists Find Evidence of Worlds Colliding ... 11,000 Light-Years Away

Astronomers say unusual readings from a star system 11,000 light-years away suggest that two of the planets circling the star crashed into each other, creating a huge, light-obscuring cloud of rocks and dust.