Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Spotty neutron stars
Astronomers have for the first time discerned hot spots on the surfaces of neutron stars.
- Astronomy
Fleeting Flash: Pinpointing a short gamma-ray burst
An invisible, highly energetic flash detected by a spacecraft early this week may have given astronomers their first glimpse of two neutron stars colliding to forge a black hole.
- Astronomy
Planetary Picture? Criteria for planethood cloud object’s identity
Astronomers are debating whether an image of a planetary-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf qualifies as the first image of an extrasolar planet.
- Astronomy
Shell of a finding
A new X-ray portrait of a supernova remnant suggests that this shell of hot gas may be hard to discern if the interstellar medium around the exploded star has extremely low density.
- Planetary Science
Far-out science
New measurements show that the planetoid Sedna spins more rapidly than earlier observations had suggested.
- Planetary Science
The Huygens Chronicles
After several months of painstaking work analyzing data from the Huygens probe, planetary scientists are able to see the surface of Saturn's moon Titan in greater detail than ever before.
- Astronomy
Distant Dust: Asteroid belt or boiling comet?
A swarm of warm dust surrounding a star 41 light-years from Earth may be a sign of the closest extrasolar analog to the solar system's asteroid belt.
- Planetary Science
Comet mission loses some focus
A camera aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft, set to fire a projectile into the icy heart of Comet Tempel-1 on July 4, is slightly out of focus.
- Planetary Science
A Martian haven for life?
Images taken by two Mars spacecraft suggest that a volcano on the Red Planet erupted long ago at the confluence of two riverbeds, indicating that the region had two of the prequisites for life: heat and water.
- Astronomy
Dark Influence
A study of galaxy clusters tests whether dark matter particles can collide with each other, while other observations show that dark matter doesn't behave as expected near the centers of galaxies.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Primitive: Old star sheds light on early stellar formation
Astronomers have found one of the most chemically primitive stars known, dating to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
- Planetary Science
A moon with atmosphere
Magnetic measurements by the Cassini spacecraft have revealed that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a tenuous atmosphere containing water vapor.
