Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Dead stars may masquerade as ingenues
A heavenly deception in which dead stars lie about their ages could throw into disarray theories describing some of the densest objects in the cosmos.
- Astronomy
The smashup that rejuvenates
For some elderly stars, the fountain of youth may be only a collision away.
- Astronomy
Astronomers get radio protection
Astronomers studying the universe at millimeter-wave energies-the high-frequency portion of the radio spectrum-were given an official guarantee last month that commercial satellites and other communication devices won't interfere with the scientists' observations.
- Astronomy
Stars’ wobbles reveal six more planets
Swiss astronomers have found indirect evidence of six additional planets that lie outside the solar system, bringing the tally to more than 40.
- Astronomy
Gamma-ray craft plunges into Pacific
As planned, NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which had detected some of the highest-energy radiation in the universe for 9 years, crashed into the Pacific Ocean on June 4.
-
- Planetary Science
Martian leaks: Hints of present-day water
In some of the coldest regions on Mars, water appears to have recently gushed from just beneath the surface, running down crater walls and steep valleys.
- Astronomy
Model Tracks Storms from the Sun
Teams of astronomers have developed a reliable method for predicting the time it takes for solar storms to arrive at Earth and have gathered observations confirming a model of how the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, manages to store up enough magnetic energy to induce these upheavals.
- Astronomy
Sugarcoated news arrives from space
Scientists spotted a simple sugar in interstellar space for the first time.
- Astronomy
Black holes and galaxies may grow up together
Astronomers have new and, for the first time, quantitative evidence that bigger black holes reside at the centers of bigger galaxies.
- Astronomy
Survey confirms composition of the cosmos
A team of astronomers announced this week that after measuring the redshifts of 100,000 galaxies, they have new evidence for what makes up most of the mass of the universe.
- Planetary Science
X rays reveal Eros’ primitive nature
Aided by a blast of X rays from the sun, a spacecraft orbiting the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros has gathered preliminary evidence that the rock is a primitive relic, apparently unchanged since the birth of the solar system.
