Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

A new approach towards solving mysteries of the interstellar medium

It is one of the most intriguing questions in astrochemistry: the mystery of the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), a collection of about 400 absorption bands that show up in spectra of light that reaches the earth after having traversed the interstellar medium. Despite intense research efforts over the last few decades, an assignment of the DIBs has remained elusive, although indications exist that they may arise from the presence of large hydrocarbon molecules in interstellar space. Recent experiments lend novel credibility to this hypothesis.

August 21, 2015 Read more

Riding the pulsar wind

The particle wind generated by spinning neutron stars is driven by exotic electromagnetic waves that push the particles to relativistic speeds.

August 21, 2015 Read more

The turbulent heart of the Milky Way

Using the X-ray satellite XMM-Newton, astronomers observe the events around the black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

August 20, 2015 Read more

Mystery of exploding stars yields to astrophysicists

Four researchers explain why nailing down the causes of stellar explosions known as Type Ia supernovae may help unravel the dynamics of stars, galaxies and even the Universe on its grandest scales.

August 19, 2015 Read more

Meteorite impacts can create DNA building blocks

A new study shown that meteorite impacts on ancient oceans may have created nucleobases and amino acids. Researchers discovered this after conducting impact experiments simulating a meteorite hitting an ancient ocean.

August 19, 2015 Read more

Solar System formation don't mean a thing without that spin

New work provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system.

August 19, 2015 Read more

Hubble finds supernovae in 'wrong place at wrong time'

Scientists have been fascinated by a series of unusual exploding stars - outcasts beyond the typical cozy confines of their galaxies. A new analysis of 13 supernovae is helping astronomers explain how some young stars exploded sooner than expected, hurling them to a lonely place far from their host galaxies.

August 13, 2015 Read more

Astronomers discover 'young Jupiter' exoplanet

Student's work with recycled planetary dust brings context to the international scientific team's finding.

August 13, 2015 Read more

Astronomers discover new planet orbiting two stars

A team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting a pair of stars, the 10th 'circumbinary' planet discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission and a milestone for the 6-year-old spacecraft.

August 10, 2015 Read more

Charting the slow death of the Universe

Astronomers studying over 200,000 galaxies have measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever. This represents the most comprehensive assessment of the energy output of the nearby Universe. They confirm that the energy produced in a section of the Universe today is only about half what it was two billion years ago and is occurring from the ultraviolet to the far infrared.

August 10, 2015 Read more

Hubble finds evidence of galaxy star birth regulated by black-hole fountain

Astronomers have uncovered a unique process for how the universe's largest elliptical galaxies continue making stars long after their peak years of star birth. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's exquisite high resolution and ultraviolet-light sensitivity allowed the astronomers to see brilliant knots of hot, blue stars forming along the jets of active black holes found in the centers of giant elliptical galaxies.

August 6, 2015 Read more

Gravitational constant appears universally constant, pulsar study suggests

Gravity, one of the four fundamental forces of nature, appears reassuringly constant across the Universe, according to a decades-long study of a distant pulsar. This research helps to answer a long-standing question in cosmology: Is the force of gravity the same everywhere and at all times? The answer, so far, appears to be yes.

August 6, 2015 Read more

Saturn's rings in a supercomputer

Researchers have explained the structure of Saturn's rings and modeled them using a supercomputer - this result can be applied to a variety of systems.

August 6, 2015 Read more

Searching for life in the Alpha Centauri system

A new technique enables scientists to search for traces of life on exoplanets in reflected light.

August 6, 2015 Read more

From a million miles away, satellite camera shows moon crossing face of Earth (w/video)

A camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. The series of test images shows the fully illuminated 'dark side' of the moon that is never visible from Earth.

August 6, 2015 Read more

Astronomers unveil a distant protogalaxy connected to the cosmic web

A team of astronomers has discovered a giant swirling disk of gas 10 billion light-years away - a galaxy-in-the-making that is actively being fed cool primordial gas tracing back to the Big Bang. The finding provides the strongest observational support yet for what is known as the cold-flow model of galaxy formation.

August 5, 2015 Read more

Milky Way-like galaxies may have existed in the early universe

A new, large-scale computer simulation has shown for the first time that large disk galaxies, much like our own Milky Way, may have existed in the early days of the universe.

August 5, 2015 Read more

The ghost of a dying star

This extraordinary bubble, glowing like the ghost of a star in the haunting darkness of space, may appear supernatural and mysterious, but it is a familiar astronomical object: a planetary nebula, the remnants of a dying star. This is the best view of the little-known object ESO 378-1 yet obtained and was captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.

August 5, 2015 Read more