The mere fact that we live in a universe boggles my mind every once in a while. But thankfully, our cosmic home is a place that follows rules; the laws of physics seem to agree everywhere, and galaxies are uniformly distributed throughout. Except for in this 300-million-light-year-long region, which seems to be…
The Universe’s earliest epochs appear to be written into the small dwarf galaxies orbiting our own galactic home, the Milky Way.
Scientists directly observed the signal of iron and titanium atoms in the atmosphere of an exoplanet 600 light-years from Earth, a new paper reports.
The bigger a telescope’s mirrors, the better resolution it has. Excavation has just begun on a new telescope that will be truly enormous, called the Giant Magellan Telescope.
Every once in a while, our planet captures a “mini-moon,” a tiny asteroid that hangs out in our orbit for a bit before venturing back into the depths of space. New research suggests these small, temporary natural satellites carry tremendous scientific and commercial opportunities—but the trick will be in finding them.
There’s an exoplanet whose surface is so hot, it rips apart water molecules. It’s almost a star, but not quite; it’s an ultra-hot, Jupiter-like world located around 880 light-years from Earth.
First, the bad news: Sunday is the anniversary of the disastrous white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that culminated in a neo-Nazi car attack that killed local woman Heather Heyer and wounded scores of others, as well as resulted in the deaths of two police officers. The organizer of…
The Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday, setting itself on course to become both the fastest human craft ever launched (in the neighborhood of 430,000 miles per hour) and the first to probe the outer corona of the sun.
Globular clusters are among the most fascinating celestial phenomena in the galaxy, packing a hideous amount of stars into a relatively tiny region of space. Given the sheer number and variety of stars within these clusters, it seems reasonable to think they’d also be packed with life. But as new research suggests,…
One of the year’s most active meteor showers, the Perseids, will peak overnight Saturday into Sunday and Sunday into Monday, with 60 to 70 meteors per hour. But lots of Gizmodo readers live in cities. So, inspired by a friend’s tweet, I wondered—will city dwellers see the meteor shower?
Various news outlets have been discussing a strange object in space, which may or may not be a planet. New measurements show that what was thought to be a brown dwarf—essentially a “failed star” that is too small to generate nuclear fusion, but too big to be a planet—might be a planet after all. But that’s far from…
You may have seen recent headlines about a strange radio signal picked up by a Canadian telescope. Some go as far as to say it was caused by all-caps ALIENS.
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft surprised scientists when it revealed that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede generated its own magnetic field. But new research shows Ganymede also creates incredibly powerful waves that rocket particles to enormous energies.
NASA doesn’t just randomly decide what telescopes and satellites to shoot into space and what planet to study next. Instead, a committee of outside scientists drafts a set of goals and recommendations in what’s called a decadal survey. And though it notes some financial setbacks, a midterm review of the last decadal…
Earlier today, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft came tantalizingly close to Ryugu, offering an unprecedented view of the asteroid’s boulder-strewn surface.
When some stars get old, they eject gas and dust, forming a cloud of electrically charged material in space called a planetary nebula. These nebulae all tend to have the same layered structure, but a team of scientists recently spotted a kind of planetary nebula that looks to be inside out.
The 21st century’s longest lunar eclipse has passed, eclipse doomsday fever has subsided, and all that’s left are the memories and pictures, which you can find everywhere online. But one image really stood out to us—not because of the way the Moon looked, but because of how it made the Earth look.
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is magnificent. For a hundred years, it has consistently predicted all sorts of wacky phenomena scientists have later observed throughout space. One international team is now announcing that a 26-year-long observation campaign has once again confirmed the theory.
Mars is in opposition tonight, meaning it’s about as close and as bright as it’s going to get. To celebrate, Hubble has released new images of the dusty red planet, as well as of Saturn, which was in opposition last month.
