Astronomy

Nebulium: The Forbidden Element That Never Existed

Ever hear of nebulium? It was the element that was discovered in 1864, and nearly busted the periodic table of elements. It didn’t fit in anywhere! And that made sense — when you consider that the element that everybody believed was responsible for forming giant nebulae never actually existed. Here’s the strange story of how…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Astronomers discover binary stars in ‘impossibly’ tight orbits

A team of scientists using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii have found four different pairs of binary systems whose stars are so close to each other that it takes them less than four hours to orbit one another. Previous estimates indicated that stars shouldn’t be allowed to do this — they should…

io9 George Dvorsky

Apparently, the Death Star Was Destroyed 1,500 Years Ago

This is U Camelopardalis, a carbon star 1,500 light years away from Earth, in the constellation of the same name, near the North Celestial Pole. U Cam—as it is known—is at the end of its life, erupting layers of material from time to time: Every few thousand years, U Cam coughs out a nearly spherical…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

Don’t worry, people! We have a plan for moving the Earth.

In half a billion years, the sun will swell up like a blowfish and cause the Earth to become a parched moonscape, devoid of all but microbial life. But don’t worry about it. Scientists have a plan for moving the Earth to a more habitable zone. And all it’ll take is ten million years. Moving…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Behold the Boötes void, the spookiest place in the cosmos

When looking up at the sky at night, it’s easy to get the impression that the stars go on forever in fairly uniform fashion. We know, of course, that this isn’t the case. Stars coalesce into galaxies, and galaxies join together to form clusters. And as for the vast, empty regions of intergalactic space, they…

io9 George Dvorsky

NASA calls this newly released photo of Mars “the next best thing to being there”

Once in a great while, NASA’s Opportunity rover will catch a glimpse of itself in a photograph of the Martian surface, but the photo featured up top — just released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — offers an even rarer view of the Martian landscape, one that the Agency calls “the next best thing to…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Why did all the planet-forming dust around this star disappear in only three years?

Back in 1983, astronomers discovered a star 450 light-years away that was surrounded by a cloud of dust — a textbook example of a solar system in the making. Now, nearly thirty years later, the cloud has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. This discovery could mean that everything we thought we knew about the birth of…

io9 George Dvorsky

XKCD takes a serious jab at NASA

Harsh words from Randall Munroe’s XKCD regarding the achievements of America’s space program. To be fair, he was good to follow up his diss by noting that “[NASA’s Mars rovers] Spirit and Opportunity are pretty awesome. And Kepler. And New Horizons, Cassini, Curiosity, TiME, and Project M.” “But c’mon,” he concludes, “if the Earth were…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

A Distant Planet Whose Atmosphere Was Blasted Away by Solar Flares

You might think our own sun is turbulent — but it turns out we’ve got it easy. Astronomers have found a gas giant, 60 light years away from Earth, that’s been hit with a violent flare from its star, blasting it with an intense wave of X-ray radiation. Because the exoplanet is so close to…

io9 George Dvorsky

Thousands of Massive Plasma Tornadoes Discovered in Sun’s Atmosphere

Astrophysicists at the University of Oslo have observed a series of magnetic supertornadoes, swirling around the Sun’s atmosphere. The plasma tornadoes — which number in the thousands and extend for thousands of miles across — may explain why the Sun’s atmosphere is way hotter than its surface. By using both space-based and ground telescopes, a…

io9 George Dvorsky

NASA finds hidden ocean on Saturn’s moon Titan

Using incredibly precise measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, researchers have concluded that Saturn’s biggest moon is likely hiding a global, sub-surface water ocean, 100 km beneath its surface. One of the most enigmatic bodies in our solar system just got even more intriguing. Cassini has flown by Titan more than 80 times since entering Saturn’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Scientists See Star Blasting a Planet for the First Time Ever

Imagine you’re outside, walking happily on a beautiful sunny day. Suddenly, the light gets intense. You look up, and see a bright flash filling everything. Seconds later, a powerful wind starts pushing the clouds out of view at hypersonic speed. Buildings, trees, and people fly away, disintegrating into a billion pieces. Everything around you disappears…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

NASA has solved the mystery of Saturn’s jet streams

Saturn’s atmosphere is constantly swimming with turbulent jet streams — but where do they get their energy to form in the first place? This has been one of the biggest mysteries about Saturn for decades. Now, using data acquired from the Agency’s Cassini spacecraft, NASA scientists think they have the answer: the energy for the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

NASA finds a galactic arc in deep space that has no business being there

NASA scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies about 10 billion light-years away. Given that the clusters formed over 13.7 billion years ago at a time when the Universe was very young, there shouldn’t really be anything “behind” it. But there is.…

io9 George Dvorsky

If this video doesn’t make your heart swell, there’s a decent chance you don’t have a heart

Here comes your daily dose of optimism. Filmmaker Michael Marantz has just released The Future is Ours, a rousing two-minute tribute to the people and companies pushing humanity forward. Full screen, HD, headphones if you’ve got ’em. Fair warning: this will, at a minimum, give you chills — but don’t be surprised if you feel…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

With all these exoplanets, where the hell is the alien life?

If there’s one thing the Kepler mission has taught us, it’s that planets are everywhere. Lately, it seems like if we’re not discovering new exoplanets, we’re finding evidence that there are hundreds of billions of them out there (many of them probably even Earthlike), and we just haven’t found them yet. https://gizmodo.com/kepler-scientists-find-freaky-solar-system-thats-unlike-5920596 https://gizmodo.com/a-game-changer-in-the-search-for-alien-life-all-stars-5918518 On one…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Canadian newspaper accidentally rewrites the entire history of astronomy

On June 21, the Ottawa Citizen issued the following correction, which — if left unamended — would’ve violently upended the last 500 years of heliocentric thinking. In related news, Nicolaus Copernicus’ tomb has spontaneously combusted in Frombork, Poland. Tiny mushroom clouds were similarly reported over Johannes Kepler’s and Galileo Galilei’s graves in Regensburg, Germany and…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Kepler scientists find freaky solar system that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before

NASA scientists working on the Kepler Mission have discovered an unprecedented solar system, in which two planets with vastly different densities and compositions are locked in a surprisingly close orbit around their star. The finding shows that there is much greater diversity in the composition of solar systems than we’d previously thought. Prior to our…

io9 George Dvorsky

Poetic Physics: Measuring Stars By Their Internal Music

Asteroseismology is letting us measure distant planetary systems with sunlike stars. How? By measuring the way a star “breathes” in response to its on internal music. Find out how physics takes another run at getting its master’s degree in poetry. A mysterious star system was recently discovered. Usually, solar systems consist of rocky planets hugging…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Behold the rings of Jupiter

Not Saturn. Jupiter. Yes, Jupiter has rings. Did we just blow your mind? It’s surprising how few people know about the ring system of our solar system’s largest planet. Then again, spotting the Jovian ring system from Earth is next to impossible; in fact, it wasn’t until 1979, when Voyager I returned some of its…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Nebulium: The Forbidden Element That Never Existed

Astronomers discover binary stars in ‘impossibly’ tight orbits

Apparently, the Death Star Was Destroyed 1,500 Years Ago

Don’t worry, people! We have a plan for moving the Earth.

Behold the Boötes void, the spookiest place in the cosmos

NASA calls this newly released photo of Mars “the next best thing to being there”

Why did all the planet-forming dust around this star disappear in only three years?

XKCD takes a serious jab at NASA

A Distant Planet Whose Atmosphere Was Blasted Away by Solar Flares

Thousands of Massive Plasma Tornadoes Discovered in Sun’s Atmosphere

NASA finds hidden ocean on Saturn’s moon Titan

Scientists See Star Blasting a Planet for the First Time Ever

NASA has solved the mystery of Saturn’s jet streams

NASA finds a galactic arc in deep space that has no business being there

If this video doesn’t make your heart swell, there’s a decent chance you don’t have a heart

With all these exoplanets, where the hell is the alien life?

Canadian newspaper accidentally rewrites the entire history of astronomy

Kepler scientists find freaky solar system that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before

Poetic Physics: Measuring Stars By Their Internal Music

Behold the rings of Jupiter

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