Astrophysics

How the Hell Did This Asteroid Get All the Way Out Past Neptune?

A rock that formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter seems to have somehow traveled to the orbit of Neptune, according to a new observation. When scientists first observed the 291-kilometer-wide asteroid dubbed “2004 EW95,” they immediately knew something strange, based on the way it reflected too little ultraviolet light. When they took…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 9

The US Will Fund Another Super-Sensitive and Expensive Dark Matter Experiment

The US Department of Energy will fund the most sensitive search yet for theorized dark matter particles. It will sit over a mile underground, in a nickel mine near the Canadian city of Sudbury, according to a release. The proposed Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB, or SuperCDMS SNOLAB, would be a detector held…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 8

Grab Your Telescope: Jupiter Will Shine Its Brightest Tonight

This weekend I got to experience the dark skies over a nameless lake somewhere between Grand Forks, North Dakota and Bemidji, Minnesota. It was my first time seeing the faint band of our own Milky Way. But we had our telescope pointed on something we could have seen just as easily from a Brooklyn stoop:…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 8

Why NASA’s Next Mars Lander Will Launch from California Instead of Florida

NASA is set to launch its next Mars lander, InSight, early Saturday morning. But something’s different about this launch. It’s taking place on the West Coast, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Rockets typically launch from NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the Earth’s rotation can give them a velocity boost…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 1

What’s the Best Astronomical Object in Your Zodiac Sign?

It’s true that astrology is not science—there is no evidence to support that personal traits or mystical truths have anything to do with the Sun and the planets’ locations in the sky at the time you were born. But there is an intersection with astronomy, the real science behind the Sun, the stars, and what…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 27

Tomorrow’s Star Map Release Could Revolutionize Our Understanding of Astronomy

Astronomers from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission will release the biggest map of our galaxy ever tomorrow, using data collected by the Gaia space telescope. That includes 1.7 billion stars, as well as new information that could potentially solve some cosmic mysteries. The ESA’s Gaia telescope launched in 2013 and soon after began its galaxy-mapping mission.…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 24

Hubble Releases Mind-Blowing New Images of the Lagoon Nebula to Honor Its 28th Anniversary

NASA has released incredible new images of the Lagoon Nebula taken by the Hubble space telescope, in honor of its 28th anniversary and presumably 4/20. Dude… have you ever like… thought about how small we are… and how big the universe is…? These images show the Lagoon Nebula, just 4,000 light-years away, in intense detail.…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 20

Image: Pieter van Dokkum/Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Heated Debate Surrounds Galaxy Seeming to Lack Dark Matter

Strong skepticism should always accompany strong claims. One such recent claim has generated a ton of talk about a strange, fuzzy galaxy that appears to be missing its dark matter. That a galaxy would have no dark matter is an amazing finding, and it was covered rather uncritically by lots of news outlets (including us!).…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 16

NASA’s New Planet-Hunting Satellite Is Ready to Launch on Monday

NASA’s TESS, or the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, will launch on Monday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, if everything goes to plan. People are excited. The first confirmed planets outside of our own solar system were only discovered around 25 years ago. Since then, missions including Kepler and K2 have…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 13

Astronomers Find Evidence of Thousands of Black Holes at the Center of Our Galaxy

Astronomers have long predicted that as many as 20,000 black holes could be hiding in our galaxy’s center, but so far no one has been able to spot them. Until now. A Columbia University-led team of scientists dug through data taken with the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to find the objects. They managed to find…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 4

Scientists Used Galaxies as Magnifying Lenses to See Individual Stars Billions of Light-Years Away

When you look up into the night sky, you see lots of stars—but all of them are members of our own Milky Way galaxy. With the help of some spacetime-warping science, though, our eyes can now peer much deeper into distant space. Two teams of scientists report seeing single, twinkling stars in galaxies billions of…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 2

Holy Crap, This Galaxy Has No Dark Matter

From what scientists have gathered, galaxies are nearly synonymous with dark matter. They seem to be mostly dark matter with specks of regular matter mixed in. Despite the fact that no dark matter has been directly observed with science experiments, galaxies’ strange motion is the knock-out reason why astronomers think the universe is filled with…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 28

Giant Planet Orbiting a Brown Dwarf Spotted, Re-Opening Debate Over What Makes a Planet

Scientists have discovered a planet a lot like Jupiter orbiting a dim star, if you can even call it a star—it’s nothing like our sun. The finding once again makes us wonder: what is a planet, anyway? A team of researchers from two collaborations, KMTNet and the OGLE, or Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, announced their…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 26

This Charming Video of Moonstruck Pedestrians Is a Good Reminder to Check Out Our Cool Moon

Remember when we told you to look at the Moon? Some folks really looked, and they were blown away. Rightfully so. Director Alex Gorosh and writer Wylie Overstreet captured folks on Los Angeles sidewalks looking at the Moon through a Dobsonian telescope to the tune of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de lune.” “Oh my god” and…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 13

Dark Matter May Not Solve This Galactic Mystery After All

Physicists would love to find hints of dark matter to explain the parts of the universe we just haven’t been able to figure out. Dark matter would neatly explain the strange behaviors of galaxies and oddly bent light in our universe. But a new paper may have snuffed out dark matter as a candidate for…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 12

Could the Weirdness of Quantum Physics Produce a New Kind of Star?

It would be silly to think that scientists and astronomers have spotted all of the different kinds of weird things that exist in space. After all, we’re pretty sure the universe is mostly composed of dark matter and dark energy that we haven’t directly detected. But new research seems to imply that there are entirely different…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 12

New Observations Reveal a Dramatic Web Structure Inside the Orion Nebula

Perhaps the most recognizable constellation in the night sky is Orion the hunter. Look closely at the three bright orbs lined up below his belt—his sword. The middle one isn’t a star, but an entire nebula, and parts of it have been invisible to researchers until recently. Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 7

Fundamental Equation of Quantum Physics Also Describes Rings and Disks in Space

Physicists’ main goal is to be able to predict what will happen in the future based on patterns they’ve already observed, whether in massive systems of stars or tiny groups of atoms. Predicting changes over time usually requires developing new mathematical equations. But a researcher at California Institute of Technology recently discovered that a well-known…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 5

Researchers Devise a New Way to Solve Long-Standing Mystery About the Universe

We know that the universe is expanding, but a strange discrepancy in just how fast that expansion is occurring continues to confound physicists—and make them wonder whether there’s some new, unexplained physics afoot. For every 3.3 million light years, or one megaparsec, the universe expands around another 70 kilometers per second faster. There are two…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 3

Landmark Cosmic Observation Provides Tantalizing Hints of Dark Matter

Today, scientists announced that they’d seen evidence of a long-sought signal from the first stars. This slight change to some ambient radio waves could herald the first step in a new kind of astronomy. But maybe, just maybe, it’s also evidence of dark matter interacting with regular matter in the ancient universe. The discovery consisted…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Feb 28

How the Hell Did This Asteroid Get All the Way Out Past Neptune?

The US Will Fund Another Super-Sensitive and Expensive Dark Matter Experiment

Grab Your Telescope: Jupiter Will Shine Its Brightest Tonight

Why NASA’s Next Mars Lander Will Launch from California Instead of Florida

What’s the Best Astronomical Object in Your Zodiac Sign?

Tomorrow’s Star Map Release Could Revolutionize Our Understanding of Astronomy

Hubble Releases Mind-Blowing New Images of the Lagoon Nebula to Honor Its 28th Anniversary

Heated Debate Surrounds Galaxy Seeming to Lack Dark Matter

NASA’s New Planet-Hunting Satellite Is Ready to Launch on Monday

Astronomers Find Evidence of Thousands of Black Holes at the Center of Our Galaxy

Scientists Used Galaxies as Magnifying Lenses to See Individual Stars Billions of Light-Years Away

Holy Crap, This Galaxy Has No Dark Matter

Giant Planet Orbiting a Brown Dwarf Spotted, Re-Opening Debate Over What Makes a Planet

This Charming Video of Moonstruck Pedestrians Is a Good Reminder to Check Out Our Cool Moon

Dark Matter May Not Solve This Galactic Mystery After All

Could the Weirdness of Quantum Physics Produce a New Kind of Star?

New Observations Reveal a Dramatic Web Structure Inside the Orion Nebula

Fundamental Equation of Quantum Physics Also Describes Rings and Disks in Space

Researchers Devise a New Way to Solve Long-Standing Mystery About the Universe

Landmark Cosmic Observation Provides Tantalizing Hints of Dark Matter

Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End

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