Things are officially getting exciting. New science has just come in from the collaboration to photograph Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and it’s ponying up the secrets at our galaxy’s dusty heart. The image below is the best picture yet of Sgr A* (don’t worry, there’s more

If you look back far enough into Earth’s hazy, long-forgotten prehistory, things get weird. Like the battered face of the Moon, our own planet is covered in craters: a scarred legacy of millions of years of brutal, unforgiving asteroid impacts. What’s weird, though, is once you look back about 300 million years, the evidence of

Somewhere in the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, something wonky is happening. A few objects are orbiting differently from everything else, and we don’t know why. A popular hypothesis is that an unseen object called Planet Nine could be messing with these orbits; astronomers are avidly searching for this planet. But

Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name). But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? Now, one of the world’s top physicists has come up with an

A series of new animations by a NASA scientist show just how zippy – and also how torturously slow – the speed of light can be. Light speed is the fastest that any material object can travel through space. That is, of course, barring the existence of theoretical shortcuts in the fabric of space called wormholes (and

As the Cassini probe plunged into Saturn, it measured the gravitational pull of the rocks making up its iconic rings – and those readings tell us the rings might be a lot younger than we previously thought. In fact, they might have formed around the same time dinosaurs were walking the Earth, with scientists estimating

Are you sick of nature? Always doing beautiful things at inconvenient times? Well, a Japanese satellite may be just the thing for you. Rather than forcing you to wait for one of Earth’s 22 or so natural annual meteor showers, it discharges an artificial one, on command. Well, in theory, anyway. But we’re about to find

In just a few days, the Moon will turn a shade of rust and loom larger in the sky than usual in a relatively rare astronomical event.  For the half of the planet fortunate enough to see it, it’s a chance to see two fascinating spectacles combined in what’s known as a ‘super blood moon’

Scientists searching for signs of seasonal storms on Titan have finally found the smoking gun. A slick shimmer spotted on the north pole of the Saturnian moon is the first evidence of rainfall in the hemisphere – the start of summer in the north. It’s the evidence astronomers have been waiting years to see, since

The most distant object humanity has ever visited looks something like a spinning snowman or hourglass that’s lost in space. Researchers who work on NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons mission released a movie on Tuesday showing the rotation of the mountain-size rock, which is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69. (It’s more commonly referred to as “Ultima

An irresistible story swept the world of science and technology journalism Tuesday when China’s space program said that its Moon lander had sprouted a cotton seedling inside a sealed grow container — the first plant ever grown on another world. “China’s Moon mission sees first seeds sprout,” trumpeted the BBC. “Cotton seed sprouts in China’s

Will there be no end to people trying to muck up the night sky? Around this time last year it was a disco ball sent into low-Earth orbit. Now a Russian startup has had the colossally dense idea of sticking beaming billboards up there, to shine advertising back down to Earth. Putting aside the fact

In recent years, the number of extra-solar planets discovered around nearby M-type (red dwarf stars) has grown considerably. In many cases, these confirmed planets have been “Earth-like“, meaning that they are terrestrial (aka rocky) and comparable in size to Earth. These finds have been especially exciting since red dwarf stars are the most common in

The peculiar movement of gas at the galactic centre could be the smoking gun that finally leads astronomers to the most elusive type of black hole – the middleweight. Black holes are pretty hard to find unless they’re actively feeding (or colliding), since they don’t emit any electromagnetic radiation (except perhaps for Hawking radiation, which,

China says it has grown the first plants on the Moon as part of its historic mission to the far side. China landed its Chang’e 4 spacecraft on the Moon’s far side on January 3, becoming the first nation to do so. It has now achieved another first: a seed successfully germinating while on the

Supermassive black holes may be the gravitational glue that binds a galaxy, but they’re also a colossal puzzle. One mystery that has vexed astronomers: how do heck do black holes end up so roly-poly? Take Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. It is about four million times the

The far side of the Moon is a strange, barren, monochrome place, according to the latest images sent home from China’s Yutu 2 rover. An incredible 360-degree panorama reveals just how arid and alien it is on the back of Earth’s satellite. China made history when spacecraft Chang’e 4 landed rover Yutu 2 on the

In a new interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the chair of Harvard University’s Astronomy Department Avi Loeb defended his controversial hypothesis that the interstellar object known as ‘Oumuamua could be an alien probe – and speculated at length about the place of humanity in the cosmos. “As soon as we leave the Solar System,

This past March, a NASA instrument on the International Space Station spotted a black hole, about 10,000 light-years away from Earth, in the process of devouring a star. What happened next was weird, even by the standards of super-dense celestial objects from which not even light can escape: the black hole started to shrink. According

Another day, another article has misrepresented the words of a scientist. This time that article comes from the Russian state-owned website Sputnik News; according to them, a NASA scientist has revealed a “secret sign that would indicate impending apocalypse”. So just to set the record straight, we’re here to tell you that Michelle Thaller, an astronomer and

Elon Musk has published a photo of an experimental rocket meant to help him achieve his mission of conquering Mars. After teasing the spaceship earlier this month, Musk posted a picture of the vehicle – dubbed the “test hopper” – in real life on Friday from SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship test flight rocket

A rocket that never runs out of fuel is ready to revolutionize space exploration. It’s called the World Is Not Enough (WINE), and instead of using fuel to power its movement, the craft mines water from its current location and turns it into steam – and uses it to propel itself to a new destination, like something out

Any species reaching for the stars is bound to have its fingertips singed. Probably more than once. One of NASA’s posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the mishaps in our spacefaring history. “A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by

Scientists have discovered mysterious streaking patterns crossing huge distances in the clouds of Venus.  The discovery is giving us new insight into the brutal conditions and climate on the strange planet second closest to the Sun. Based on advanced computer modelling, the team thinks moving air caused by polar jet streams, similar to those on

As far as supernovae go, AT2018cow – detected last year – was among the brightest ever seen. The flash was so intense, some mistook it for an explosion inside the Milky Way. In the event’s wake, all eyes turned to the expanding wave of debris to better understand the cause of this extreme flash. Now,

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined. Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the Universe. They are the consequence of gravity crushing a dying star without

Long after fusion has faded and her furnaces have cooled, our Sun’s embers will form a giant crystal hanging in the sky – one of countless sprinkled throughout our galaxy. Astronomers have found evidence that massive white dwarf stars solidify into metallic crystals rather early in retirement. Poetic descriptions aside, it could challenge how we

We have been closely following the progress of Chang’e-4, the Chinese Moon lander that touched down on the far side of the Moon last week and released a rover called Yutu 2. As the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon in history, the mission was a coup for the Chinese space program.

For only the second time, astronomers have picked up a mysterious repeating signal coming from an unknown source in space. They’re called fast radio bursts. And in less than the blink of an eye, they ping into the data collected by radio telescopes out of nowhere, with as much energy as a hundred million Suns.

Astronomers say they have discovered a planet that’s twice the size of Earth and within a zone that could allow liquid water to exist on its surface. The finding comes from data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which ran out of fuel in October. The planet, K2-288Bb, is within its star’s habitable zone, which is why liquid

Black holes are mysterious cosmic destroyers, but we just got one step closer to figuring out one of the key characteristics of how they work: how fast they’re spinning. Peering into the event horizon of a black hole, astronomers have detected brief X-ray pulses that indicate a rotation speed of a gob-smacking 50 percent of the

The Big Bang didn’t just result in our familiar universe, according to a mind-bending new theory – it also generated a second “anti-universe” that extended backwards in time, like a mirror image of our own. A new story in Physics World explores the new theory, which was proposed by a trio of Canadian physicists who

If you look just to the right of the northern constellation of Triangulum, you’ll see a faint smudge in the night sky. That’s the Triangulum Galaxy, and it’s 3 million light-years away – one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye. But the Hubble Space Telescope’s eyes are not as limited as

Certain types of bacteria can mutate to reproduce more quickly when exposed to microgravity, and that’s not great news for our space tourist dreams, seeing as we humans are teeming with bacteria. It’s not clear why these bacteria have responded so positively to microgravity, but researchers are now figuring out ways to protect astronauts out in space,

Earlier this week, Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-4 made history by becoming the first spacecraft to ever land on the far side of the Moon – the less-studied, mountainous half that faces away from the Earth. Yesterday, we were blessed with a number of new high-resolution images, courtesy of China’s National Space Administration, showing the more

You step off the plane, having travelled across the world to the opposite hemisphere. The seasons are all backwards, and when you look up at the full Moon, you realise it’s not even the right way up! Not only is this incredibly weird (mostly because, how did we not realise this before?), but this curious

China became the third country to land a probe on the Moon on Jan. 2. But, more importantly, it became the first to do so on the far side of the moon, often called the dark side. The ability to land on the far side of the moon is a technical achievement in its own

Last year, Elon Musk’s personal Tesla might have gotten all the headlines during SpaceX’s historic rocket launch back back in February, but the Falcon Heavy also carried a second, secret payload almost nobody knew about. Stashed inside the midnight-cherry Roadster was a mysterious, small object designed to last for millions (perhaps billions) of years –

Thanks to a mission extension, NASA’s Juno probe continues to orbit Jupiter, being only the second spacecraft in history to do so. Since it arrived around the gas giant on July 5th, 2016, Juno has managed to gather a great deal of information on Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetic and gravity environment, and its interior structure. In that time, the

There’s an enemy in our midst. Quietly circling around our galaxy, it could send our Solar System hurtling out of the Milky Way and into the obscurity of interstellar space. Its name is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and even though it is one of the more researched satellite galaxies buzzing around our own, astrophysicists

It’s another momentous day in the history of space exploration: the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has reportedly just landed its Chang’e-4 rover on the far side of the Moon, marking the first time we’ve been able to explore this hidden side of the lunar surface. Not only that, the rover has already sent back

It’s been over a year since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft plunged to its death after orbiting Saturn for an impressive thirteen years. Yet even from the grave, the exquisite images from this stalwart probe continue to take our breath away. Using photographs from Cassini’s flyby of Jupiter and its moons, NASA employee Kevin M. Gill has

On New Year’s Day, scientists flew NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons probe past a mysterious, mountain-sized object. The space rock is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69, though it’s more commonly referred to as “Ultima Thule” (a nickname that has garnered some controversy – see the editor’s note below). It’s located more than 4 billion miles

Just as the new year began, so too did an incredible new era of space exploration, with NASA confirming a successful flyby of the most distant world human beings have ever encountered. (NASA) As revellers watched fireworks exploding in the night sky, billions of kilometres beyond the spectacle, NASA’s New Horizons probe quietly notched up another amazing

Watch out space, there’s a new commercial cargo carrier entering the race. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has been given the go ahead from NASA to begin full-scale production of its “Dream Chaser” commercial space cargo plane. Scheduled to make its first mission in 2020, the company announced on December 18 that it had cleared the last milestone

To ancient explorers, “ultima Thule,” or the most distant region, was what lay past the northernmost edges of maps, beyond the borders of the known world. So when NASA chose a target for its New Horizons spacecraft that was farther than anything previously explored, Ultima Thule seemed a fitting moniker. The far-flung space rock is

Back in August, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) was surprised to learn that a leak was responsible for a slight loss in air pressure aboard the station. After investigating, they learned that the cause was a small hole in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that had docked with the ISS. While the hole was promptly

We know that Venus, our closest planetary neighbour, has a volcanic terrain and a hellish atmosphere with extreme temperatures. But we don’t know much about seismic activity on the planet, which in turn could give us more clues about its internal composition. Now, NASA has a rather exciting proposal to try and answer those questions: