Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Astronomers found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn - and you can help name them

Astronomers found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79.

October 7, 2019 Read more

Astronomers observe year-long plateaus in decline of type Ia supernova light curves

This is a surprising finding as astronomers had expected that the light curve would not only continue decreasing but even experience a sharp drop, rather than flattening into a plateau.

October 7, 2019 Read more

Not long ago, the center of the Milky Way exploded

Researchers find evidence of a cataclysmic flare that punched so far out of the galaxy its impact was felt 200,000 light years away.

October 6, 2019 Read more

Three gravitational-wave detectors sign agreement to begin joint observation

Collaboration will enable pinpointing origin of gravitational-wave events.

October 4, 2019 Read more

This is how a 'fuzzy' universe may have looked

Scientists simulate early galaxy formation in a universe of dark matter that is ultralight, or 'fuzzy', rather than cold or warm.

October 3, 2019 Read more

Quantum vacuum: Less than zero energy

An international research team has investigated the extent to which negative energy is possible.

October 2, 2019 Read more

Neutrino produced in a cosmic collider far away

The neutrino event IceCube 170922A, detected with IceCube at the South Pole, appears to originate from the distant active galaxy TXS 0506+056, at a distance of 3.8 billion light years.

October 2, 2019 Read more

Record breaking observations find most remote protocluster of galaxies

An international team of astronomers has discovered a protocluster of galaxies 13.0 billion light years away. This protocluster is the most distant protocluster ever found. The discovery suggests that a large structure such as a protocluster already existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years old or 6 percent of its present age.

October 1, 2019 Read more

Giant exoplanet around tiny star challenges understanding of how planets form

Astronomers have discovered the first large gas giant orbiting a small star. The planet was found orbiting the nearby red dwarf star GJ 3512. This discovery challenges scientists' very understanding of how planets form: low-mass stars should have less available material to form planets.

September 27, 2019 Read more

Life's building blocks may have formed in interstellar clouds

An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life - nucleobases - could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.

September 27, 2019 Read more

Eyeballing a black hole's mass

There are no scales for weighing black holes. Yet astrophysicists have devised a new way for indirectly measuring the mass of a black hole, while also confirming its existence. They tested the new method on the Messier 87 active galaxy.

September 24, 2019 Read more

Life and death of the stars: Researchers investigate extreme galaxy environments

An international team of 30 scientists is using one of the world's largest telescopes to investigate and map extreme galaxy environments in brilliant detail.

September 18, 2019 Read more

New hunt for dark matter: Physicists theorize a novel way to explore the nature of dark matter with lasers

A theory about what dark matter might be suggests that it could be a particle called an axion and that these could be detectable with laser-based experiments that already exist.

September 18, 2019 Read more

Standing room only crowd engages in student's warp drive theory speech

An overview of the state of the art of warp drive theory and the feasibility of a future working system.

September 16, 2019 Read more

Scientists developing single photon detector to help search for habitable exoplanets

The extremely sensitive detector would allow scientists to see the faintest observable objects in space, such as Earth-like planets around other stars.

September 13, 2019 Read more

Black hole at the center of our galaxy appears to be getting hungrier

The enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy is having an unusually large meal, and researchers don't know why.

September 11, 2019 Read more

Astronomers find water vapor on habitable-zone exoplanet for first time

With data from the Hubble Space Telescope, water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth with habitable temperatures.

September 11, 2019 Read more

Giant balloon-like structures discovered at center of Milky Way

An international team of astronomers has discovered one of the largest structures ever observed in the Milky Way. A newly spotted pair of radio-emitting bubbles reach hundreds of light-years tall, dwarfing all other structures in the central region of the galaxy.

September 11, 2019 Read more