Astronomy

  1. Planetary Science

    Equipment failure delays Mars mission

    A leaky instrument will push back launch of the Mars InSight lander by at least two years.

    By
  2. Astronomy

    New recipe found for making supermassive black hole

    The universe’s first supermassive black holes may have formed directly from gas in colliding galaxies, new simulations suggest.

    By
  3. Tech

    SpaceX rocket blasts to space and back, sticks the landing

    A Falcon 9 rocket section lands after launching a set of satellites during a successful test of SpaceX’s reusable rocket parts.

    By
  4. Tech

    SpaceX rocket sticks its landing

    A Falcon 9 rocket section lands after launching a set of satellites during a successful test of SpaceX’s reusable rocket parts.

    By
  5. Astronomy

    Exoplanets need right stuff to be habitable

    The elemental makeup of a star can reveal whether planets in its solar system could support sustained plate tectonics, a requirement for Earth-like life, researchers propose.

    By
  6. Physics

    Pulsar pair ripples spacetime

    A pair of pulsars gives scientists the best evidence so far for gravitational waves, which have yet to be detected directly.

    By
  7. Physics

    General relativity caught in action around black hole

    X-rays enable scientists to spot a black hole twisting the surrounding fabric of spacetime, just as Einstein’s theory predicts.

    By
  8. Cosmology

    Debate grows over whether X-rays are a sign of dark matter

    The dwarf galaxy Draco, which is chock-full of dark matter, doesn’t emit a band of X-rays that researchers hoped were produced by the mysterious invisible stuff.

    By
  9. Planetary Science

    It’s a new planet! It’s an unknown star! It’s — oops!

    A couple of unexpected wandering points of light in the sky could be new planets or even a dim star orbiting the sun, but researchers have plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

    By
  10. Astronomy

    LISA Pathfinder to pave way for gravitational wave detection

    The successful launch of the LISA Pathfinder mission marks the first step toward testing techniques needed to build a space-based gravitational-wave detector.

    By
  11. Astronomy

    Mysterious cosmic signals carry a clue to their origins

    A burst of radio waves from another galaxy ran into a dense magnetized plasma while en route to Earth, hinting at an origin near a population of young stars.

    By
  12. Astronomy

    Super-Earths, meet superpuffs, a lighter weight class of planet

    Superpuffs are underweight, oversized planets that formed in outskirts of star systems before cuddling up close to their sun.

    By