Astronomy

Glorious New NASA Video Imagines a Landing on Pluto

Using 100 images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft over the course of six weeks, NASA has produced a colorized video showing what it would be like to approach and land on Pluto. Prepare yourself for a marvelous trip. To create the video, NASA scientists had to deduce Pluto’s actual colors from the many black-and-white…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

A Monster Solar Storm Could Cost the US $40 Billion Daily

Our planet is due to be hit with a powerful solar storm, an event that happens about once every hundred years. New research shows that losses from the ensuing blackouts could total $41.5 billion per day in the US alone, including nearly $7 billion lost in trade. A study published in Space Weather shows that…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

A Fight Over a Sacred Mountaintop Will Shape the Future of Astronomy

For years, it seemed as if the future of the Thirty Meter Telescope was writ in the stars. The enormous, next-generation observatory would explore the birth of galaxies and seek signs of life on alien worlds from atop the dormant volcano of Mauna Kea, one of the best places on Earth to study the sky.…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

An Enormous Atmospheric Anomaly Has Been Spotted On Venus

Using the Akatsuki spacecraft, Japanese scientists have detected a large, bow-shaped anomaly in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Strangely, the 6,200-mile-long structure is refusing to budge despite the 225 mile-per-hour winds that surround it. Researchers from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science believe the phenomenon is the largest stationary “gravity…

Tech News George Dvorsky

Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ Moon Looks Spooky as Hell in New Cassini Photo

This is easily one of the best pictures ever captured of Mimas, revealing intricate surface features and shadows cast across its iconic impact crater. The Cassini spacecraft captured this image on October 22, 2016 at a distance of 115,000 miles (185,000 km). Each pixel represents 3,300 feet, or one full kilometer. Mimas is just barely…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

This May Be the Best Explanation Yet For That Mysterious ‘Alien Megastructure’

New research suggests that Tabby’s star—the celestial object voted most likely to host an alien megastructure—is acting weirdly because it recently annihilated an entire planet, and the shattered remains of that planet are now producing strange flickering effects. It’s probably the best theory we’ve heard so far. It’s not aliens. At least that’s the conclusion…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Black Holes and Galactic Cluster Combine Into a Giant Cosmic Particle Accelerator

Two billion light years away, two clusters of galaxies are colliding in an intergalactic pileup. As black holes interact with the gas inside the collision, the mass has turned into an enormous particle launcher, spewing some of the universe’s highest-energy stuff. The picture above shows a couple of different processes happening at the same time…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

NASA Animation Offers a Freakishly Accurate Look at This Year’s Coast-to-Coast Eclipse

On August 21st, a shadow produced by a total solar eclipse will travel from the USA’s Pacific coast right through to the Atlantic coast—something that hasn’t happened in nearly 100 years. A new NASA animation shows where you’ll need to be to catch this once-in-a-lifetime event. NASA visualization artist Ernie Wright created this animation using…

Tech News George Dvorsky

The Most Detailed View of Black Holes in the Universe Will Blow Your Mind

Stare into the abyss, my friends. The image above features the highest concentration of black holes humans have ever seen. So dense are the merciless chasms of darkness at the center of this map, you could pack 5,000 of them into a patch of sky the size of the full moon. So… why do they…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

NASA Is Actually Going to Visit That Insane Metallic World

There’s nothing quite like Psyche anywhere else in our solar system—a small asteroid belt object made entirely of iron-nickel metal. Which is why NASA has decided to send a probe to check out the bizarre beast up close. “Human kind has visited rocky worlds and icy worlds, but we’ve never seen a metal world,” Lindy…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Astronomers Pinpointed the Location of Multiple Weird Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy

Fast radio bursts, powerful pulses of radio energy of unknown cosmic origin, are a source of endless fascination to astronomers and alien conspiracy theory fodder to everybody else. But while most FRBs discovered to date are one-off events—a single chirp in the interstellar void, if you will—these phenomena got more interesting last year when astronomers…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Astronomers Discover an Entirely New Kind of Galaxy

Astronomers at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have identified a new class of ring galaxy. Named PGC 1000714, it features an elliptical core with not one, but two outer rings. It’s the only known galaxy of its kind in the known universe. Most galaxies are either disc-shaped…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Sorry, This Nearby Comet Will Not Strike the Earth and End Our Collective Nightmare

A glowing green ball of ice and rock is zipping past the Earth and on December 31st, it can be spotted near the crescent moon—in a dark sky, with the aid of some good binoculars. But for those hoping this comet will veer off course and take aim straight at our sorry planet? Sorry, 2016…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Geoengineering Could Be a Disaster for Astronomy

Geoengineering is one of those things that sounds like maybe a good idea on paper but could also go horribly, apocalyptically wrong. But if the prospect of plunging Earth’s weather systems into chaos isn’t enough to convince scientists we need to tread very cautiously with the ultimate global warming tech-fix, perhaps this will: geoengineering could…

Climate Change Maddie Stone

Voyager Probes Are Still Making Amazing Discoveries

In August 2012, Voyager 1 went where no human-made object has gone before: it crossed the “heliopause,” the outermost edge of the Sun’s heliosphere, and entered interstellar space. Before Voyager 1 left the bubble of territory dominated by the Sun, it collected our very first data on the cold, dark borderlands marking the interstellar boundary.…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Incoming Star Could Spawn Swarms of Comets When It Passes Our Sun

For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years. An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it’s expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms. Gliese 710 is currently 64 light-years from Earth, but for all…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Our Next Trip to Saturn Will Be to Search for Alien Life

As the Cassini spacecraft executes its final daredevil maneuvers, scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are already thinking about the next mission to Saturn. But this time around, nobody’s talking about studying the gas giant itself. They’re talking about hunting for life in Saturn’s rings. Two Saturnian moons—Titan, a world of frigid methane seas,…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

The Dwarf Planet Ceres Has a Dark Secret

You thought those bright spots on dwarf planet Ceres were cool? That was only the half of it. Ceres is also covered in dark spots, craters that—because of their position—never see the light of day. Now, astronomers have discovered that at least one and perhaps many of these shadowy regions are filled with water ice.…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

NASA’s Juno Mission Has Inspired Some Jaw-Dropping Artwork

NASA’s Juno mission may have fallen behind schedule, but that hasn’t stopped artists and amateur astronomers from having a blast with the data. The Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft’s citizen science camera just sent back its second batch of close-up images—and over the past few days, folks have been processing them to create some out-of-this-world artwork. On Sunday,…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

It Rains Rubies and Sapphires on This Distant Jupiter-Like Planet

A Jupiter-like planet located 1,000 light-years from Earth is exhibiting some rather strange meteorological behavior. The clouds on this planet appear to be made from corundum—the same mineral that produces rubies and sapphires. Using the Kepler space telescope, astronomers from Warwick University have detected individual weather patterns on HAT-P-7b, a hot Jupiter that’s about 16…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Glorious New NASA Video Imagines a Landing on Pluto

A Monster Solar Storm Could Cost the US $40 Billion Daily

A Fight Over a Sacred Mountaintop Will Shape the Future of Astronomy

An Enormous Atmospheric Anomaly Has Been Spotted On Venus

Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ Moon Looks Spooky as Hell in New Cassini Photo

This May Be the Best Explanation Yet For That Mysterious ‘Alien Megastructure’

Black Holes and Galactic Cluster Combine Into a Giant Cosmic Particle Accelerator

NASA Animation Offers a Freakishly Accurate Look at This Year’s Coast-to-Coast Eclipse

The Most Detailed View of Black Holes in the Universe Will Blow Your Mind

NASA Is Actually Going to Visit That Insane Metallic World

Astronomers Pinpointed the Location of Multiple Weird Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy

Astronomers Discover an Entirely New Kind of Galaxy

Sorry, This Nearby Comet Will Not Strike the Earth and End Our Collective Nightmare

Geoengineering Could Be a Disaster for Astronomy

Voyager Probes Are Still Making Amazing Discoveries

Incoming Star Could Spawn Swarms of Comets When It Passes Our Sun

Our Next Trip to Saturn Will Be to Search for Alien Life

The Dwarf Planet Ceres Has a Dark Secret

NASA’s Juno Mission Has Inspired Some Jaw-Dropping Artwork

It Rains Rubies and Sapphires on This Distant Jupiter-Like Planet

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Kash Patel’s Email Account Hacked, Iran-Linked Group Takes Credit

Repair Workers Accidentally Stumble Upon Lost Remains of Legendary ‘Fourth Musketeer’

Dreame Aero Pro Wet Dry Vacuum Mop Drops 20% Shortly After Launch in the Spring Cleaning Sale

Darth Maul’s Legs, Ranked

April Set to Unleash Some Wild Weather Across Parts of the US, Meteorologists Warn

Scientists Create ‘Living Pharmacy’ Implant That Doses 3 Drugs at Once

Dyson Supersonic Nural Hair Dryer Cuts Into Its Premium Price Tag in the Spring Sale, Bid Frequent Salon Visits Goodbye

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