When astronauts return from spacewalks, they often describe unexpected scents similar to burnt steak and spent gunpowder. But why does outer space smell like torched things, and where does this odor come from? To be clear, space is a near-perfect vacuum. While in space, astronauts protect themselves in spacecraft, spacesuits and space stations, “since direct … Read more
Scientists in China have created a robot chemist powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can extract oxygen from Martian water without human supervision. Synthesizing useful resources from local materials on Mars will be essential for humans’ survival on the Red Planet. Extracting oxygen from materials — in a process called oxygen evolution reaction (OER) — is particularly … Read more
A new search for dark matter has turned up empty handed — but, in a silver lining, the effort provided important limits that will help future experiments narrow down the hunt for this elusive substance. Most astronomers believe that dark matter accounts for 85 percent of all mass in the universe, and that its existence … Read more
It’s been called the “loneliest place on earth” — a location so remote it would take days to traverse the 1,670 miles (2,700 kilometers) of ocean between this point and the nearest patch of land — which, even then, is just a cluster of tiny islands inhabited only by birds. Sitting in the middle of … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a remarkable star system with six planets unlike any in our solar system. According to new research, all six planets orbit the same star in resonance with each other, following an unwavering rhythm that has lasted billions of years. Because of this peculiar resonance, the outermost planet in the system completes one … Read more
Galaxies like our Milky Way are mysteriously hard to come by in our cosmic backyard. New supercomputer simulations have helped astronomers finally answer why. The Milky Way sits within a galaxy cluster on the Supergalactic Plane — a billion light-year-wide sheet, or “supercluster,” upon which large galaxy clusters are pinned. But other spiral galaxies are … Read more
Devastating volcanic eruptions may have been so enormous they turned the planet into “Snowball Earth” 717 million years ago, a study has found. The volcanic outburst — one of the largest in Earth’s history — likely triggered a series of chemical reactions that sucked carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth’s ancient atmosphere. The massive eruptions, which … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a new class of stellar object that seems to be defying death in inexplicable ways. The object, located about 15,000 light-years from Earth, appears to be a magnetar — the collapsed heart of a once-giant star, now cramming a sun’s worth of mass into a ball no wider than a city, while … Read more
Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago. Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from bright cosmic beacons known as … Read more
A malevolent, screaming skull face. A witch cackling in profile. An all-seeing eye, gazing red and furious from the void of space. Like cosmic Halloween decorations, nebulas are some of the most gorgeous objects in the universe, and some of the spookiest. These vast regions of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight and sculpted by … Read more
