Universe Today

Based on a new analysis of the Chang'e-6 lunar samples, scientists are again questioning the timing and intensity of the Late Heavy Bombardment period.

The search for extrasolar rocky planets circling other stars is more than mere science. It offers researchers a chance to gain crucial insight into how our own planet functions.

In recent years, the idea that galaxy mergers are responsible for quenching galaxies has grown in importance. This paradigm says that galaxies merge, their black holes form a powerful quasar, and that quasar stifles star formation. But new results from the IllustrisTNG simulations shows that this paradigm may not be accurate.

Little Red Dots are among the most intriguing discoveries made to date by the infrared-sensitive James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They are distant, small objects that appear red in the JWST observations and they've only been known since 2024. More than 300 of them have been found as part of JWST's infrared surveys of the early Universe.

Where will you be on August 12th? Many an eclipse chaser and the ‘eclipse curious’ will make the journey to stand in the Moon’s shadow on that fast-approaching Wednesday date. This unique eclipse sees the pencil-thin shadow of our Moon curl around the Earth’s pole, before arcing across Greenland, Iceland and the Iberian peninsula towards a dramatic sunset over the western Mediterranean.

Long before a human ever sets foot on the Red Planet, we already know how hard the environment is. Once one finally does, the only things protecting them from that harsh environment will be the infrastructure we’ve built up there, and the spacesuit that keeps that in a protective bubble. Unfortunately, modern space suits aren’t built with Martian gravity, which is 3/8ths of Earth’s, in mind. To prove that point, a team of NASA and industry engineers made a presentation at the 55th International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES) that showed that the newest generation of spacesuits are simply too heavy to use on Mars.

Jupiter’s moon, Io, is the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system, boasting hundreds of active volcanoes spewing molten lava into space. This occurs from a process called tidal heating where Jupiter’s massive gravity constantly stretches and compresses the much smaller moon during the latter’s non-circular orbit. However, a lesser-known fact is that Io’s volcanic gases fuel Jupiter’s aurorae by traveling along Jupiter’s magnetic field lines, resulting in Jupiter’s bright aurorae observed by spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes. But what if this same phenomenon could be used to detect Io-like exomoons, also called exo-Ios, orbiting Jupiter-like exoplanets?

The samples returned by the Chang'e-6 mission from the far side of the Moon reveal that the two hemispheres have had rather different experiences when it comes to space weather.

Little Red Dots are one of the mysteries uncovered by the JWST. Astronomers have been trying to figure out what they are, and have come up with multiple possibilities. New research says they could be ancient Globular Clusters with supermassive stars in their centers.

We’ve been covering the journey of the Habitable Worlds Observatory for some time now. Over the past few years, it's gone from a proposal to a relatively fleshed-out plan for how and what the next Great Observatory should do—in this case, look at and characterize potentially habitable exoplanets. Back in August 2024, NASA set up the HWO Technology Maturation Project Office (TMPO) to coordinate the technological and scientific development needed to make the mission a success. They recently released a comprehensive plan for the first steps of that process in pre-print form on arXiv, and it’s very clear on what needs to happen before the Mission Concept Review (MCR) at the end of the decade.

A black hole merger is one of the Universe's most energetic and massive events. During such a collision, two black holes orbit closer and closer until they collide and become a much more massive black hole. The event also gives off radiation and, as it happens, gravitational waves. They help tell the story of the two objects involved in the collision.

Scientists at ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration have demonstrated how clouds in a sub-Neptune's atmosphere shape the interior structure of the planet.

Through the Photonics-Enabled Exoplanet Spectroscopic System (PEEPSS) program, researchers are developing a technology that will assist NASA's planned Habitable World's Observatory (HWO).

One of the challenges of searching for “technosignatures” (i.e. signs that intelligent life somewhere in the universe has created technology) is understanding what to look for. Technology is a very broad area, and different types would show up as different features. One of the most commonly cited is a Dyson sphere, which attempts to encapsulate a star and capture it’s outgoing light to produce energy. But while we’ve looked for the mid-infrared waste heat these structures would produce for decades, we haven’t found a definitive instance of one. According to a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Turkish high school student Sahin Torlakcik, that might be because we are looking for the wrong type of energy all together.

Sub-Neptune exoplanets, exoplanets that are slightly smaller than Neptune, have been designated as the most common type of planet in the Milky Way Galaxy based on their vast discovery numbers, totaling almost 3,300 out of the more than 6,300 confirmed exoplanets to date. Despite these numbers, the characteristics of sub-Neptunes remain relatively unknown. This is primarily due to our own solar system not having its own sub-Neptune to use as an analog, along with their atmospheres being thick and hazy. As a result, this makes telescopic observations, even from powerful instruments like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, extremely difficult.

Black holes represent some of the most extreme environments in the universe. They’re the sources of the strongest consistent gravitational fields, which allows us to test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to an extent that’s impossible with small objects. But we’re also reaching our limit of what we can learn about one remotely. So various authors have put forward ideas for how we might eventually send a probe directly to a black hole to observe it up close. One of the most vocal of those authors is Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in Shanghai - and he recently released a paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, about what it would take for us to send a gram-size probe to a nearby black hole.

SpaceX's Starship super-rocket deployed operational next-generation Starlink satellites for the first time during its 13th flight test, which addressed snags that arose in the previous test.

Researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with international collaborators, carried out the first spatially resolved dual-frequency spectral study of the M87 black hole using observations obtained in 2018 with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA).

In democracies, opinion polls are one of the most common ways to measure public and therefore political support for an issue. Because space exploration is still closely tied to the government policy and funding, public opinion can play an important role in shaping America’s space priorities. In May 2026, Global Strategy Group (GSG) surveyed 1,000 U.S. voters and found broad support for space exploration. The report, [The Next Frontier: Public Attitudes Towards Space and the Space Economy](https://globalstrategygroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GSGs-The-Next-Fronter-Public-Attitudes-Toward-Space-and-the-Space-Economy.pdf), reveals an electorate that is enthusiastic about a future beyond Earth, but views it through a practical, Earth-focused lens.

Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has so far meant primarily focusing on one particular type of signal - and that signal has normally been based on what our own current cutting edge technology is. But what if that’s the wrong way to look for signs of an alien intelligence? What if a resource-conscious civilization decided it was too complicated to send femto-second lasers in high energy bursts out across the universe. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from researchers Dániel Apai, Chia-Lung Lin, and Kevin Wagner, suggest that might actually be what happens, and that we should start looking for long-duration pulsing interstellar beacons.