Lunar scientists think they’ve found the hottest places on the Moon, as well as some 200 Goldilocks zones that are always near the average temperature in San Francisco. The moon has wild temperature fluctuations, with parts of the moon heating up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) during the day and dropping to minus … Read more
In 2012, a shriveled white star in a nearby galaxy reached the end of its life and exploded in a violent, thermonuclear supernova. Such explosions — known as type 1a supernovas — are a common end for billions of stars in our universe, typically resulting in the utter obliteration of the old star at the … Read more
It’s springtime on Mars and the mysterious polygons are in bloom, a new image from the orbiting High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HIRISE) camera shows. Recorded on March 30, 2022, the image reveals a patchwork of white zig-zags cracking across the Martian soil at high latitudes, with occasional sprays of black and blue mist fanning out … Read more
A pulsar is a special kind of neutron star, which is the ultra-dense leftover core of a massive star. Pulsars emit beams of radiation that sweep out in circles as the pulsar spins. When those beams flash over Earth, we see them as regular, repeating pulses of radio emission. “Pulsars are spectacular objects themselves — … Read more
Our species faces a pivotal moment in human history. Either we develop the technology to safely harness the energy needed to escape our planet, or we kill ourselves in some great cataclysm, a stark new study claims. But, the new paper argues, if we can achieve the former and avoid the latter, then we might … Read more
NASA has photographed the crash site of the mysterious rocket that smashed into the far side of the moon in March, and the unidentified spacecraft left behind a weird double crater that has scientists puzzled. Images of the crash site were taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on May 25 and released on June … Read more
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and the smallest planet in our solar system. With a diameter of about 3,032 miles (4,880 kilometers), the planet is less than half the size of Earth, which is about 7,926 miles (12,756 km) in diameter. But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in … Read more
When mountaineers climb Mount Everest, they routinely carry oxygen cylinders, devices that allow them to breathe freely at high altitudes. This is necessary because the closer you get to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, the less oxygen there is available compared with the plentiful amounts found at sea level. This is just one example of … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a perplexing trend in Neptune’s atmosphere: Ever since the planet’s southern hemisphere summer began almost two decades ago, atmospheric temperatures in this region have plummeted, and scientists aren’t sure why. Neptune is the most distant planet in the solar system, around 30 times farther from the sun than Earth is. Just like … Read more
So far no one has found evidence of intelligent aliens elsewhere in the cosmos. But if they do exist, they might be hanging out on Dyson spheres circling the husks of sunlike stars called white dwarfs scattered throughout the Milky Way, a new paper argues. And that’s there we should be focusing our search for … Read more
