Universe Today

Ever since the first protoplanetary disk was discovered in 1984 around the star Beta Pictoris, these objects have presented astronomers with laboratories to study the births and evolution of worlds around distant stars. A team at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Bordeaux, made a breakthrough in understanding these planetary birthplaces when they directly observed the rotation of a protoplanetary disk around the young star AB Aurigae.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside have produced the most detailed map of the cosmic web ever made, tracing the network of galaxies all the way back to when the universe was one billion years old.

According to theory, all active black holes should produce winds or jets. Astronomers have long searched for wind around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. New images reveal a vacant, cone-shaped region pointing to the black hole. According to new research, only a supermassive black hole could've created this region.

Stephen Hawking predicted that stars can capture primordial black holes (PBH). The PBH find their way to the stellar core, creating a Hawking star. There are two possible outcomes, both deadly for the star. Either it explodes rapidly, or it's slowly consumed by the parasitic PBH.

Astronomers have developed a technique that allows them to detect cloud cycles on distant exoplanets. Using data from the James Webb Sapce Telescope (JWST), the astronomers found that mornings and evenings on the gas giant WASP-94A b have extremely different weather patterns: mornings are riddled with sand clouds, while the skies are clear in the early evenings. By isolating the clouds, researchers can more accurately measure a planet’s atmosphere and provide a clearer picture of the planet’s composition. WASP-94A b, for example, has much less oxygen and carbon than astronomers perviously calculated, making its atmosphere much more like Jupiter than they had originally thought.

New research shows how unmagnetized worlds like Mars can still deflect some of the Sun's solar wind. Unlike magnetospheres that form around planet's like Earth, this effect takes place in Mars' ionosphere. It's called the Zwan-Wolf effect, and it's not clear how deep into the atmosphere it operates.

Scientists using the Euclid space telescope found a red-dwarf brightness “gap” in the population of a globular cluster—an ancient, crowded collection of stars. A similar gap was detected by the Gaia observatory in nearby stellar populations, but it has never before been seen in a globular cluster.

It’s a familiar annual question, that we’re already hearing as we enter into June. “What are those two bright objects in the west?” They’re none other than the two brightest planets in the sky, Jupiter and Venus. Keep an eye on the dusk sky over the next week, and you’ll see the two worlds getting ever closer to each other in the west. Though this happens every year or so, an evening conjunction assures that lots of the general public will see one of the best planetary pairings of 2026.

In our final installment in the series, we'll examine all the close calls, possible candidates, and instances in which extraterrestrial signals could not be ruled out

A multi-year survey of millions of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud shows that the dwarf galaxy is expanding rather than rotating. This is due to the influence of its larger neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The early Universe is full of massive galaxies that stopped forming stars very early. They're called massive quenchers (MQ) and they're challenging to explain. New research shows that another type of galaxy, dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) can explain why. It's all about mergers, starbursts, and AGN feedback.

Astronomers studying wind speeds on distant exoplanets have discovered weather systems driven by magnetic fields, rather than the largely hydrodynamic weather patterns observed on Earth. This discovery is among the best evidence yet for the existence of magnetic fields on exoplanets.

The strength of gravity is different on every body in the solar system. Whether it's the crushing weight of Jupiter or the miniscule pull of a small asteroid, this fundamental force of physics still has a major impact on the material those bodies are made up of. A new paper from researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) showcases just how different it can be by letting planetary simulants freefall inside a giant drop tower and measuring how “fluffy” the space dirt got.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is assessing damage to its launch pad after a rocket exploded during a test firing, creating a giant orange fireball seen and felt for miles around.

Galactic collisions are events of breathtaking proportions. The Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) at their centers plunge into a chaotic orbital dance that eventually coalesce into a single remnant. On their way to that point, they could eventually get “kicked” out of the center of their galaxy - and finding these “recoiling” black holes has been a challenge of cosmology for decades. A new paper, available on arXiv by an international team, used a novel idea to track down these fast-moving behemoths.

The prototype ngVLA antenna tested its systems by observing and tracking the Crab Nebula, also known as Taurus A (3C144), the remnant of an exploded star.

It might not seem like it, but the Moon is constantly being both sandblasted and baked. Its lack of a thick atmosphere allows micrometeorites to impact the surface at speed, and the solar wind isn’t held back either, baking the regolith with a constant flow of high-energy particles. These processes drive what is called “space weathering”, and it can drastically alter the physical and chemical properties of the lunar dirt over the course of billions of years. And we’re finally getting a better sense of what that means in practice thanks to two new papers from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, which used advanced electron tomography and spectroscopic techniques to analyze samples returned from the Chang’e-5 mission to the near side of the Moon.

Though it's a toxic chemical, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is also important for the development of life. It's a precursor to things like amino acids and nucleic acids and plays a central role in theories of the origin of life on Earth. Recently, difficult questions have been asked about how it could have formed on the early Earth. But the authors of new research in PNAS seemed to have figured it out.

The search for any sign of life on Mars continues. In the latest update, a new data release from Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) - essentially the rover’s portable X-ray diffraction lab - and published in a paper in Science, analyzes 20 different rock samples from various elevations of Mount Sharp, the mountain in the center of Gale Crater that Curiosity has been slowly climbing. In the paper, the researchers describe how the size of the crystals in those samples could help scientists determine where to look for evidence that life might have evolved on the Red Planet.

3I/ATLAS has caused quite a stir over the last year, inviting astronomers to update what they know about other solar systems as well as our own. However, this third interstellar visitor may have an unexpected impact on our understanding of dark matter. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at the University of Hamburg, attempts to calculate the impact that the presence of large amounts of interstellar objects (ISOs) would have on our calculation of dark matter in our galaxy.