Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

'Super-Earths' may be dead worlds

A team of scientists have looked at how these worlds form and suggest that many of them may be a lot less clement than was though. They find that planets that form from less massive cores can become benign habitats for life, whereas the larger objects instead end up as 'mini-Neptunes' with thick atmospheres and probably stay sterile.

February 26, 2014 Read more

How did the universe begin: Hot Big Bang or slow thaw?

A physicist at Heidelberg University has developed a theoretical model that complements the nearly 100-year-old conventional model of cosmic expansion. According tohis theory, the Big Bang did not occur 13.8 billion years ago - instead, the birth of the universe stretches into the infinite past.

February 25, 2014 Read more

When dwarves collide

Studying Andromeda II, astronomers observe where little galaxies come from.

February 25, 2014 Read more

Subaru telescope detects rare form of nitrogen in comet ISON

This is the first time that astronomers have reported a clear detection of a relatively rare nitrogen isotope in a single comet and also measured the relative abundance of two different forms of nitrogen of cometary ammonia.

February 25, 2014 Read more

Astronomers spot record-breaking lunar impact

A meteorite with the mass of a small car crashed into the Moon last September, according to Spanish astronomers. The impact, the biggest seen to date, produced a bright flash and would have been easy to spot from the Earth.

February 24, 2014 Read more

Stream of stars in Andromeda satellite galaxy shows cosmic collision

The Andromeda Galaxy is surrounded by a swarm of small satellite galaxies. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have detected a stream of stars in one of the Andromeda Galaxy's outer satellite galaxies, a dwarf galaxy called Andromeda II. The movement of the stars tells us that what we are observing is the remnant of a merger between two dwarf galaxies. Mergers between galaxies of such low mass has not been observed before.

February 23, 2014 Read more

Researcher finds planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus

Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they're bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day.

February 21, 2014 Read more

Researchers say distant quasars could close a loophole in quantum mechanics

MIT researchers propose using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem.

February 20, 2014 Read more

Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae (w/video)

Researchers have studied the behaviour of the Sun's coronal mass ejections, explaining for the first time the details of how these huge eruptions behave as they fall back onto the Sun's surface. In the process, they have discovered that coronal mass ejections have a surprising twin in the depths of space: the tendrils of gas in the Crab Nebula, which lie 6500 light-years away and are millions of times larger.

February 20, 2014 Read more

Space eye with 34 telescopes will investigate one million stars

The exploration of planets around stars other than the Sun, known as extrasolar planets or 'exoplanets', is one of the most exciting topics of 21st century science. One of the key goals of this research is to discover and learn the properties of Earth-like worlds in the Sun's neighbourhood. ESA, the European Space Agency, will do this in preparing a new space mission named PLATO.

February 20, 2014 Read more

Rocks around the clock: asteroids pound tiny star

Asteroids hit the Earth, the Moon and even, it seems, distant stars.

February 19, 2014 Read more

NuSTAR telescope takes first peek into core of supernova

Astronomers have peered for the first time into the heart of an exploding star in the final minutes of its existence. The feat by the high-energy X-ray satellite NuSTAR provides details of the physics of the core explosion inaccessible until now, says team member Steven Boggs of UC Berkeley. NuSTAR mapped radioactive titanium in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, which has expanded outward and become visible from Earth since the central star exploded in 1671.^

February 19, 2014 Read more

Clouds seen circling supermassive black hole (w/video)

Astronomers see huge clouds of gas orbiting supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. Once thought to be a relatively uniform, fog-like ring, the accreting matter instead forms clumps dense enough to intermittently dim the intense radiation blazing forth as these enormous objects condense and consume matter.

February 19, 2014 Read more

'Gravity'-style space debris threat from giant satellite explored in student paper

Physics students at the University of Leicester have pointed out that the huge observational satellite Envisat - which lost contact with Earth in 2012 - could potentially pose a threat similar to the events which plague Sandra Bullock in the Oscar-nominated sci-fi thriller Gravity.

February 19, 2014 Read more

Diamonds in the tail of the scorpion

A new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the bright star cluster Messier 7. Easily spotted with the naked eye close to the tail of the constellation of Scorpius, it is one of the most prominent open clusters of stars in the sky - making it an important astronomical research target.

February 19, 2014 Read more

Rife with hype, exoplanet study needs patience and refinement

collected, and most of these data are of 'marginal utility,' according to a review of exoplanet research by a Princeton University astrophysicist. The dominant methods for studying exoplanet atmospheres are not intended for planets trillions of miles from Earth. Instead, the future of exoplanet study should focus on the more difficult but comprehensive method of spectrometry.

February 18, 2014 Read more

Chandra sees runaway pulsar firing an extraordinary jet

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has seen a fast-moving pulsar escaping from a supernova remnant while spewing out a record-breaking jet - the longest of any object in the Milky Way galaxy - of high-energy particles.

February 18, 2014 Read more

Hubble watches stars' clockwork motion In nearby galaxy

Using the sharp-eyed NASA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time precisely measured the rotation rate of a galaxy based on the clock-like movement of its stars.

February 18, 2014 Read more