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For almost a decade, astronomers have tried to explain why so many pairs of planets outside our solar system have an odd configuration -- their orbits seem to have been pushed apart by a powerful unknown mechanism. Researchers say they've found a possible answer, and it implies that the planets' poles are majorly tilted.
Mar 4th, 2019
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A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a study that used a new understanding of rock fracture and a new computer modeling method to simulate asteroid collisions.
Mar 4th, 2019
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Scientists make breakthrough in modeling how stars erupt thanks to studies of microscopic stardust grains.
Feb 28th, 2019
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Astronomers have detected a stealthy black hole from its effects on an interstellar gas cloud. This intermediate mass black hole is one of over 100 million quiet black holes expected to be lurking in our Galaxy.
Feb 28th, 2019
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Dark matter may scatter against each other only when they hit the right energy. This idea helps explain why galaxies from the smallest to the biggest have the shapes they do.
Feb 27th, 2019
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When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind careens onto the Moon's surface at 450 kilometers per second, they enrich the Moon's surface in ingredients that could make water.
Feb 20th, 2019
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A new survey reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve.
Feb 19th, 2019
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A new study describes the first direct measurement of how energy is transferred from the chaotic electromagnetic fields in space to the particles that make up the solar wind, leading to the heating of interplanetary space.
Feb 14th, 2019
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Two international research groups report on their calculations of what the signature of a phase transition in a gravitational wave, where neutrons dissolve into their constituents, would look like.
Feb 13th, 2019
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A team of astronomers and chemists has detected the chemical fingerprints of sodium chloride (NaCl) and other similar salty compounds emanating from the dusty disk surrounding Orion Source I, a massive, young star in a dusty cloud behind the Orion Nebula.
Feb 7th, 2019
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New research shows that the Sun's magnetic waves behave differently than currently believed.
Feb 7th, 2019
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The presence of energy level transitions in the hypothetical boson cloud would induce a characteristic 'fingerprint' in the gravitational wave signals produced by merging black holes.
Feb 7th, 2019
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Researchers have measured the strength of magnetic fields near two supermassive black holes at the centers of an important type of active galaxies. Surprisingly, the strengths of the magnetic fields do not appear sufficient to power the coronae.
Feb 1st, 2019
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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have discovered a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away.
Jan 31st, 2019
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New simulations reveal how interactions between magnetic fields and particles sap a black hole's energy.
Jan 30th, 2019
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Investigating cement solidification in a microgravity environment.
Jan 28th, 2019
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In a discovery that could provide new insights into the origin of mass in the universe following the Big Bang, scientists have used experiments with kaons and helium-3 to experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, the existence of an exotic nucleus containing two protons and a bound kaon.
Jan 28th, 2019
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Data recorded by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of a neutron star as it passed through a dense patch of stellar wind emanating from its massive companion star provide valuable insight about the structure and composition of stellar winds.
Jan 24th, 2019
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