Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Votes cast for and against the WIMP factor
Physicists this week duked it out over a bunch of WIMPs, elementary particles that—if they exist—could solve a decades-old mystery in cosmology and help unify the four fundamental forces of nature.
- Astronomy
Close Encounter
In mid-August, asteroid 2002 NY40 came within 524,000 kilometers of Earth. Students from Yale University using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory captured a sequence of images of the 700-meter asteroid. Strung together into a movie, these images demonstrate the asteroid’s impressive speed, as seen from Earth over a period of two hours. The […]
- Planetary Science
Lost in Space: Comet mission appears to have broken apart
A spacecraft that had just begun its journey to two comets has fallen silent and may have broken apart.
- Astronomy
A chance to point Hubble
Get out your heavenly wish list: Astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope are soliciting suggestions for where to point the orbiting observatory this summer.
- Astronomy
A possible signal from Polar Lander
Astronomers may have heard a faint signal from the vanished Mars Polar Lander spacecraft last month but, as of mid-February, have not detected another.
- Planetary Science
Tryst in space: Craft, asteroid rendezvous
On Valentine's Day, the NEAR spacecraft cozied up to the asteroid 433 Eros, becoming the first craft to orbit a tiny body.
- Astronomy
X-Ray Chaos: Violence shows itself in a nearby galaxy
New X-ray observations provide additional evidence that Centaurus A, the nearest radio-wave-emitting galaxy to Earth that has a supermassive black hole, is a maelstrom of violence.
- Astronomy
Revved-Up Universe
Astronomers are busy testing the seemingly bizarre notion that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
- Astronomy
Solar magnetism: Memories are made of this
Despite all its upheavals, the sun's magnetic field has a built-in memory, allowing it to return to its original position and configuration.
- Astronomy
Milky Way gets a new layer
Astronomers propose that 150 billion corpses of sunlike stars may blanket the visible disk of the galaxy.
- Astronomy
Visible Matter: Once lost but now found
New observations confirm that most of the visible matter in the universe lies hidden in vast, hard-to-detect gas clouds between galaxies.
- Astronomy
Icy Split: Comet fragments into 19 pieces
A comet has split into 19 fragments strung out along a million-kilometer-long chain.
