Astronomers searching for our solar system’s elusive Planet Nine — a theoretical world that may lurk deep in a cloud of icy rocks far beyond the orbit of Neptune — have come up short once again. In a recent paper published Dec. 23, 2021 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers pored over six years of telescope … Read more
Large galaxies may steal dark matter from smaller galaxies they nearly collide with, new research suggests. Scientists from the University of California, Irvine and Pomona College used computer models to simulate the evolution of a corner of the universe about 60 million light-years across. The new computer models, which weren’t designed to do so, created … Read more
One of the biggest cosmological mysteries is why the universe is made up of way more matter than antimatter, essentially why we exist. Now, a team of theoretical physicists says they know how to find the answer. All they need to do is detect the gravitational waves produced by bizarre quantum objects called Q balls. … Read more
The sun is a yellow dwarf star in the center of the solar system, and it is the largest, brightest and most massive object in the system. The sun formed around 4.5 billion years ago. At that time, the area of the Milky Way galaxy that would become the solar system consisted of a dense … Read more
Officials at NASA are no doubt both excited and nervous as the agency gets ready for the debut of its most powerful rocket ever, dubbed the “Mega Moon rocket.” The vehicle is officially known as the Space Launch System (SLS) and is part of NASA’s Artemis program. It is being prepped for a rollout towards … Read more
A gold-hilted dagger found in the tomb of King Tut surprised archaeologists when they discovered that it was made of a material forged in outer space. Now, two new studies are painting conflicting pictures of the origins of the mysterious weapon, which may have been wielded by arguably the most famous ancient Egyptian pharaoh. One … Read more
Earth’s inner core may be filled with a weird substance that is neither solid nor liquid, according to a new study. For more than half a century, scientists believed that Earth’s deepest recesses consist of a molten outer core surrounding a densely compressed ball of solid iron alloy. But new research, published Feb. 9 in … Read more
The solar system contains eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all of which circle the sun due to its intense gravitational pull. But is this the maximum number of planets that can orbit the sun? Or is there room for more? Compared with other known planetary systems, the solar system … Read more
Stunning images snapped by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe have given the very first visible light glimpse of Venus’ red-hot surface, revealing continents, plains and plateaus on the inhospitable volcanic world. Peering beneath the thick and toxic Venusian clouds with the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument, NASA scientists spotted a bevy of geological … Read more
Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago, much later than scientists once thought. Scientists charted the presence of chloride salt deposits left behind by flowing water using years of data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has … Read more
