Space
- Astronomy
Black holes and their galaxies: A closer link
Supermassive black holes and the galaxies they inhabit appear to grow up together.
By Ron Cowen - Planetary Science
Rocks on the ice
Pristine fragments of a meteorite that fell January 18 in the frozen Yukon and that remained frozen until they were delivered to a NASA laboratory may reveal much about the earliest days of the solar system.
By Ron Cowen - Planetary Science
A Comet’s Long Tail Tickles Ulysses
Stretching more than half a billion kilometers, the ion tail that Comet Hyakutake flaunted when it passed near the sun in 1996 is the longest ever recorded and suggests that otherwise invisible comets could be detected by searching for their tails.
By Ron Cowen - Planetary Science
Reviewers see red over recent Mars programs
NASA's two most recent missions to Mars failed because they were underfunded, managed by inexperienced people, and insufficiently tested, according to a report released March 28.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Big Bang Confirmed: Seeing twists and turns of primordial light
The latest observations of the cosmic microwave background reveal that photons from adjacent patches of the sky have slightly different polarizations.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Less Massive than Saturn?
Astronomers pass a milestone in the search for new worlds.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Found: Gamma-ray background information
Resolving a 30-year-old mystery, astronomers say they have identified the source of the faint, high-energy glow of radiation known as the gamma-ray background.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
X-ray telescope vanishes
Astro-E, a Japanese X-ray observatory, fell back to Earth and burned up just after launch on Feb. 9.
By Ron Cowen - Planetary Science
Unveiling Mars’ watery secret
A new gravity map of Mars has revealed a network of buried channels that billions of years ago may have been on the surface and helped carry water to fill an ancient ocean.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Craft spies new class of gamma-ray sources
Roughly half the 120 unidentified sources of high-energy gamma-ray emissions in the Milky Way—those at midgalactic latitudes—may comprise a new class of objects and originate from a belt of massive stars that lies only a few hundred light-years from the solar system.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Hole in the Middle: Are midsize black holes the missing link?
Two teams of astronomers reported that they had confirmed the existence of a new class of black hole.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Reflecting on the Kuiper belt
A new study suggests that at least some members of the Kuiper belt, the reservoir of comets and other frozen objects that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, reflect more sunlight and are considerably smaller than previously calculated.
By Ron Cowen