New study supports natural causes, not alien activity, explain mystery star's...
Sorry, E.T. lovers, but the results of a new study make it far less likely that KIC 8462852, popularly known as Tabby's star, is the home of industrious aliens who are gradually enclosing it in a vast...
View ArticleCopernicus' revolution and Galileo's vision: Our changing view of the...
It's not a stretch to say the Copernican revolution fundamentally changed the way we think about our place in the universe. In antiquity people believed the Earth was the centre of the solar system and...
View ArticleA dead star's ghostly glow
The eerie glow of a dead star, which exploded long ago as a supernova, reveals itself in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Crab Nebula. But don't be fooled. The ghoulish-looking object...
View ArticleGaia spies two temporarily magnified stars
While scanning the sky to measure the position of over one billion stars in our Galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite has detected two rare instances of stars whose light was temporarily boosted by other...
View ArticleBlack holes are even stranger than you can imagine
Our love of black holes continues to grow as our knowledge of these celestial bodies expands. The latest news is the discovery of a rare "middleweight" black hole, a relative newcomer to the black hole...
View ArticleYou are living inside a massive musical instrument – and here's what it...
The ancients believed that the Earth was surrounded by celestial spheres, which produced divine music when they moved. We lived, so to speak, in a huge musical instrument. This may sound silly but...
View ArticleStudy suggests we reclassify the moon as a planet—reopening a centuries-old...
Every now and then a scientific paper makes a real splash. We had one recently, to judge from recent headlines. "Moon rises to claim its place as a planet" said The Sunday Times on February 19, while...
View ArticleWarped reality—virtual trip to hyperbolic space
Math just met "warp drive" in a virtual reality headset to transport anyone who dons the visor to a reality twisted by hyperbolic geometry. The program was co-created by Sabetta Matsumoto, a physicist...
View ArticleImage: Gaia satellite sky scan
This may look like a brightly decorated Easter egg wrapping, but it actually represents how ESA's Gaia satellite scanned the sky during its first 14 months of science operations, between July 2014 and...
View ArticleDetector delivery marks another Euclid milestone
ESA's Euclid mission has passed another important milestone with the delivery of the first three state-of-the art detectors for the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer instrument.
View ArticleNASA to launch first-ever neutron-star mission
Nearly 50 years after British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell discovered the existence of rapidly spinning neutron stars, NASA will launch the world's first mission devoted to studying these unusual objects.
View ArticleCelestial boondocks: Study supports the idea we live in a void
Cosmologically speaking, the Milky Way and its immediate neighborhood are in the boondocks.
View Article'Mitaka' now delivers more realistic universe in more languages
Now you can witness the final mission of Cassini and enjoy the beauty of Saturn's rings and the moon in your own room. NAOJ has released the latest version (1.4) of the astronomical software Mitaka...
View ArticleWith launch of new night sky survey, UW researchers ready for era of 'big...
The first astronomers had a limited toolkit: their eyes. They could only observe those stars, planets and celestial events bright enough to pick up unassisted. But today's astronomers use increasingly...
View ArticleFlying chariots and exotic birds—how 17th century dreamers planned to reach...
People have been dreaming about space travel for hundreds of years, long before the arrival of the spectacular technologies behind space exploration today – mighty engines roaring fire and thunder,...
View ArticleHow animals follow the stars
The stars have fascinated humankind throughout history, and we have developed ever more sophisticated means of interpreting them and using their positions to guide us (at least in a navigational,...
View ArticleDonor star breathes life into zombie companion
ESA's Integral space observatory has witnessed a rare event: the moment that winds emitted by a swollen red giant star revived its slow-spinning companion, the core of a dead star, bringing it back to...
View ArticleHumans could live in volcanic tunnels on the moon
The SETI Institute has analysed images of our moon and pinpointed a possible home away from Earth.
View ArticleNew estimates of Mercury's thin, dense crust
Mercury is small, fast and close to the sun, making the rocky world challenging to visit. Only one probe has ever orbited the planet and collected enough data to tell scientists about the chemistry and...
View ArticlePrinceton's McComas will lead IMAP, a NASA mission to study the heliosphere
Princeton astrophysicist David McComas will be the principal investigator for a science mission to sample, analyze and map particles streaming to Earth from the sun and from the edges of interstellar...
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