Astronomy

The Cosmic War Between Ancient Starburst Galaxies And Supermassive Black Holes

These red dots represent some of the earliest galaxies known to astronomy. Located ten billion light-years away, they’re only a few billion years older than the Big Bang. Their presence explains why we’re now surrounded by massive elliptical galaxies. The European Southern Observatory’s APEX telescope has completed this survey of the universe’s most distant galaxies,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

NASA’s latest image of Earth is impossibly beautiful

NASA has just released this mind-blowing photograph Earth, which was captured earlier this month by the Agency’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP. And it turns out there’s a very good reason NASA can call this “the most amazing high-definition picture of Earth ever taken” — this photo, gorgeous as it is, is actually…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

A massive solar eruption may lead to the strongest radiation storm in seven years

Last week, a swelling solar storm on the surface of the Sun sent a stream of charged particles hurtling toward Earth, making for beautiful northern lights in the planet’s extreme latitudes. But late last night, at 10:59 p.m. EST, the now massive tempest unleashed an eruption that scientists expect will be responsible for Earth’s largest…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Russian scientist claims to have discovered life on Venus

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer at Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims to have detected signs of life in 30-year-old photographs of Venus. Of course, that’s completely ludicrous… isn’t it? Science fiction writers of the Golden Age often imagine that a habitable world existed hidden below the deep cloud cover of the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Stare into the soul of Saturn’s mysterious hexagonal cloud system

Feast your eyes on one of the most puzzling planetary mysteries our solar system has to offer. In this photograph of Saturn’s north pole, captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2009, clouds can be seen encircling the planet at about 77 degrees north latitude. Even at such a high parallel, the massive six-sided jet stream…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Mercury-sized exoplanet is being vaporized into a cloud of gas

Something very strange is happening around the star KIC 12557548. Its light dims every 15 hours, as though a planet is orbiting around it…except the dimming varies wildly each time around. A planet is being vaporized before our eyes. According to researchers led by Saul Rappaport of MIT, the star’s orbital companion is a rocky…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The Helix Nebula reveals the breathtaking birth of a white dwarf

This absolutely gorgeous image from the European Southern Observatory reveals a planetary nebula, the short-lived phenomenon between the death of a star and birth of a white dwarf that has nothing to do with planets. We recently discussed the peculiar nomenclature of planetary nebulae, so let’s just focus on the general awesomeness of this image,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Watch a staggeringly beautiful time-lapse video of Yosemite National Park

If you’ve ever visited California’s Yosemite National Park, then you have an appreciation for how absurdly majestic its scenery is. You also know how difficult it can be to encapsulate that majesty when describing it to others; somehow, adjectives like “breathtaking” don’t even begin to describe it. For years, I’ve referred to Ansel Adams’ iconic…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The most interesting mathematical mistake in the solar system

Johann Elert Bode is the author of Bode’s Law, one of the most contentious laws in astronomy. It’s a ridiculous idea which juggles numbers, seemingly for no reason, and it ends up revealing the spacing of the planets in the solar system. Or does it? No matter what you happen to think of Bode’s Law,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The 300-Year-Old Mystery of Why Venus Causes the “Black Drop Effect”

We can see Venus pass in front of the sun once every one hundred and twenty years. Ever since it’s been observed, a strange thing has been happening. Instead of appearing as a dark circle moving across the sun, Venus formed a tear drop shape that slowly oozed onto the solar disc. It took three…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

ScienceOnline2012 is the coolest (un)conference you’ve probably never heard of

Are you big on science and science communication? If you are, do yourself favor and check out ScienceOnline2012 (or scio12 to those in the know), the sixth annual international meeting on science and the internet. Scio12 kicked off yesterday and will run through tomorrow — and odds are high that many of your favorite bloggers,…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The first footage of a comet smashing into the sun

For the first time ever, scientists have witnessed and recorded a comet disintegrating in the Sun’s atmosphere. The icy body — dubbed “comet C/2011 N3 (SOHO)” — was originally observed back in July. Today, the team that observed the comet flaming out of existence has published an in-depth analysis of what really happened. So what…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

NASA’s Amazing New Photo of the Eagle Nebula Reveals Surprising Facts

This new image of the Eagle Nebula—without a doubt one of the most amazing objects in space—is stunningly trippy. It combines the two opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum in one shot: Far-infrared and X-ray. Absolutely gorgeous. According to NASA, those wavelengths can’t get through Earth’s atmospheres. The image—created with data from Herschel’s far-infrared and…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

Eye-popping image takes us inside the Milky Way’s hottest, largest star factory

This gorgeous image is the work of the Spitzer Space Telescope, which snapped this infrared photo of the Cygnus-X star forming region in 2009. Every bright blue dot represents a star hotter and more massive than anything we can imagine. Of course, some of the credit for the general awesomeness of this image goes to…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

What causes rogue planets to run away from their stars?

We now estimate that every star in the galaxy has at least one planet, but that is leaving aside the potentially billions more planets that were ejected from their solar system and are now hurtling through the universe all alone. We know that these rogue planets exist – indeed, they could outnumber all the other…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Chunks of Mars have crashed down in Africa

You’re looking at a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery. A team of experts announced today that these fragments of space rock, discovered last month near Foumzgit, Morocco, are in fact meteorites from Mars. Martian meteorites are incredibly rare; taken together, all the Mars rocks on Earth add up to less than 240 pounds. But rarer still are…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Scientists prepare to capture the first-ever picture of a black hole

Tomorrow, astronomers and physicists from around the word will convene in Tucson, Arizona to discuss the Event Horizon Telescope Project — a global network of 50 radio telescopes that together could soon enable us to photograph the black hole at the center of our galaxy. “What is great about the [black hole] in the center…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The world’s greatest explanations, as chosen by Brian Eno, Richard Dawkins, and others

Every year, Edge.org poses a question to a hand-picked group of the world’s “most complex and sophisticated minds.” Then they publish the responses. This year’s question — What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? — has been answered by close to 200 contributors, ranging from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to musician and producer…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Stare into the eerie heart of the Little Ghost Nebula…if you dare!

What is this strange astronomical formation? A more fanciful interpretation is that it’s a vast cosmic eye, but then its official designation – planetary nebula – isn’t much more helpful, considering it’s neither a planet nor even really a nebula. In reality, the Little Ghost Nebula, or NGC 6369 if you want to keep things…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Meet 55 Cancri e — the “oozing” exoplanet

When you combine a compound like water with intense heat, said water evaporates. No mystery there. But when you throw extreme pressure into the mix, something funny happens. The compound can actually achieve what is called a “supercritical” fluid state, taking on properties of liquid and gas alike. Now, astronomers at MIT have revealed that…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The Cosmic War Between Ancient Starburst Galaxies And Supermassive Black Holes

NASA’s latest image of Earth is impossibly beautiful

A massive solar eruption may lead to the strongest radiation storm in seven years

Russian scientist claims to have discovered life on Venus

Stare into the soul of Saturn’s mysterious hexagonal cloud system

Mercury-sized exoplanet is being vaporized into a cloud of gas

The Helix Nebula reveals the breathtaking birth of a white dwarf

Watch a staggeringly beautiful time-lapse video of Yosemite National Park

The most interesting mathematical mistake in the solar system

The 300-Year-Old Mystery of Why Venus Causes the “Black Drop Effect”

ScienceOnline2012 is the coolest (un)conference you’ve probably never heard of

The first footage of a comet smashing into the sun

NASA’s Amazing New Photo of the Eagle Nebula Reveals Surprising Facts

Eye-popping image takes us inside the Milky Way’s hottest, largest star factory

What causes rogue planets to run away from their stars?

Chunks of Mars have crashed down in Africa

Scientists prepare to capture the first-ever picture of a black hole

The world’s greatest explanations, as chosen by Brian Eno, Richard Dawkins, and others

Stare into the eerie heart of the Little Ghost Nebula…if you dare!

Meet 55 Cancri e — the “oozing” exoplanet

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