Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Space
Radiation ring around Earth mysteriously appears, then dissipates
Space probes detect temporary transition from two radiation belts to three, possibly in response to solar activity.
- Space
New home for runaway black hole
Galactic merger and ejection may have sent a cosmic wanderer through deep space.
- Space
Smallest planet found orbiting distant star
NASA’s Kepler space telescope snags an exoplanet tinier than Mercury.
- Astronomy
Russia meteor virtually impossible to see coming
Current and planned efforts to track near-Earth objects focus on bigger quarry.
- Planetary Science
Meteor explodes over Russia
The object is unrelated to February 15 asteroid flyby, experts say.
- Space
Supernovas are cosmic ray factories
Supernova remnants provide evidence that these intense stellar explosions send cosmic rays hurtling through the galaxy.
- Space
Uncertainty at a grand scale
A test of Heisenberg’s principle, on a scale visible to the naked eye, may aid the search for gravitational waves.
- Space
Supernova’s death throes revealed
In archival images, astronomers see giant star’s activity in weeks before supernova.
- Space
An atom sheds light on neutron stars
By measuring a neutron-rich atom on Earth, astronomers virtually dig into the crust of dead stars.
- Space
Scale weighs black holes better than before
Microwave telescopes on the ground determine the masses of supermassive objects millions of light-years away.
- Space
Proton’s radius revised downward
A new study confirms an earlier result that found that the proton is smaller than thought, opening up the possibility of undiscovered particles and forces.
- Space
Life has prospects on moons of giant extrasolar planets
Astronomers show how bodies orbiting distant Jupiters could be habitable.
