A special type of radioactive meteorite could have seeded life on Earth, a new study found. Carbonaceous chondrites, a type of radioactive meteorite chock full of water and organic compounds, produce energetic gamma rays that can drive the chemical reactions to synthesize amino acids — the building blocks of life — researchers discovered. Meteorites are … Read more
New research has debunked a controversial 2020 study that claimed to have found the chemical phosphine in Venus’ hellish atmosphere. The chemical’s reported existence had hinted that there was alien life on the planet. In 2020, a team of researchers announced that they had found phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere using data collected by the Japanese … Read more
One of the world’s largest telescopes has just joined the hunt for signs of alien life elsewhere in the cosmos. Since 2016, the Breakthrough Listen project has been quietly using radio telescopes to listen for unusual radio signals, or technosignatures, from potential advanced extraterrestrial civilizations within the Milky Way. The project, launched in part by … Read more
Astronomers estimate that roughly 85% of all the matter in the universe is dark matter, meaning only 15% of all matter is normal matter. Accounting for dark energy, the name astronomers give to the accelerated expansion of the universe, dark matter makes up roughly 27% of all the mass energy in the cosmos, according to … Read more
The winter solstice heralds the astronomical start of winter and marks the day with the fewest hours of daylight for the year. But what’s the science behind the shortest day and longest night? The winter solstice — and for that matter, the four seasons — occur because Earth is tilted at an angle of about … Read more
An ancient meteorite that crash-landed on a U.K. driveway may have solved the mystery of where Earth’s water came from. The 4.6 billion-year-old space rock, which landed in front of a family home in the English town of Winchcombe in February 2021, contains water that closely resembles the chemical composition of water found on Earth … Read more
A team of scientists has proposed building an “interstellar interceptor,” a spacecraft capable of getting up-close and personal with the next asteroid or comet to enter the solar system. So far, astronomers have spotted two such objects whizzing through our star system: The cigar-shaped interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua, which was first spotted in October 2017 and … Read more
The universe may seem shapeless because it is so vast, but it does have a form that astronomers can observe. So, what is it shaped like? Physicists think the universe is flat. Several lines of evidence point to this flat universe: light left over from the Big Bang, the rate of expansion of the universe … Read more
Astronomers have detected an enormous extragalactic structure hiding in an uncharted region of space far beyond the Milky Way’s center. This phantom region, known as the zone of avoidance, is a blank spot on our map of the universe, comprising somewhere between 10% and 20% of the night sky. The reason we can’t see it … Read more
Scattered across the vacuum of space are stars, galaxies, stellar remnants and other objects that are billions upon billions of years old. The age of the universe is now thought to be about 13.8 billion years — almost unfathomable. But how do we know that? We can determine the age of the universe (to an … Read more
