Astronomy and space Archives

Astronomy and space

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Black-hole scattering calculations could shed light on gravitational waves

Artistic impression of acoustic waves in a star

New analysis of M67 cluster helps decode the sound of stars

Acoustic oscillations in M67 stars reveal a surprising plateau in frequency patterns, providing a new tool to probe stellar interiors and refine age estimates

Andromeda galaxy may not collide with the Milky Way after all

Odds of a collision in the next 10 billion years may be only 50/50, according to new simulations

Latest news

Artist's impression of Tianwen-2 target asteroid

China launches Tianwen-2 asteroid sample-return mission

The craft will aim to collect about 100g of material from a “quasi-satellite” of Earth

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Richard Bond and George Efstathiou share the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy

Pair are honoured for their work on the cosmic microwave background

Euclid mission spots 26 million galaxies in first batch of survey data

The dataset includes a catalogue of 380,000 galaxies that have been detected by artificial intelligence or citizen-science efforts

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Research headlines

How magnetar flares give birth to gold and platinum

New coronagraph pushes exoplanet discovery to the quantum limit

Two images of the Martian sky. The sky in the left-hand image, taken during an aurora, has a faintly greenish tinge. The sky in the right-hand image, taken on a night without an aurora, is more grey-brownish. The dark outline of Martian hills is visible in both images. The non-aurora image also contains a bright white light in the top right corner, which is the moon Deimos

This is what an aurora looks like on Mars

Plasma physics sets upper limit on the strength of ‘dark electromagnetism’

Result could force a rethink on basic models of dark matter, say researchers

Smartphone sensors and antihydrogen could soon put relativity to the test

Camera components will improve precision of moiré deflectometer

Loop quantum cosmology may explain smoothness of cosmic microwave background

Repulsive gravity at the quantum scale would have flattened out inhomogeneities in the early universe

Axion quasiparticle appears in a topological antiferromagnet

New finding could aid the search for fundamental axions, say physicists

Exoplanet could be in a perpendicular orbit around two brown dwarfs

Observation expands the diversity of known planetary systems

New research suggests gravity might emerge from quantum information theory

Theoretical study offers novel insights into the nature of spacetime and matter interactions

Explore more in astronomy and space

Artist's impression of a neutron star evaporating. The star is shown as a blue-white glowing ball that bends spacetime around it, and pairs of annihilating particles are shown swirling around it

Universe may end much sooner than predicted, say theorists

New estimate suggests that the most persistent stellar objects may decay away via Hawking radiation within the next 10^78 years

illustration of an astronomical explosion

Beyond the Big Bang: reopening the doors on how it all began

Emma Chapman reviews Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins by Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper

White-to-black heat map of the planet Jupiter superimposed against a photograph of the planet and against a dark, starry background. The planet's north pole is bright white, the equatorial regions tend towards black, and most of the middle latitudes are red except for a wide arc of yellow about 1/3 of the way from north pole to equator. The southernmost latitudes are not included in the heat map. A scale at right indicates that white areas are 700 degrees Celsius, yellow areas are 600, red areas are 500-300, and black areas are 200. A note adds that these temperatures are measured 1000 km above the planet's surface.

Solar wind burst caused a heatwave on Jupiter

New analysis of 2017 data suggest that the Jovian atmosphere is not as self-contained as scientists thought

Spectacular images of the cosmos released to celebrate Hubble’s 35 years in orbit

A series of spectacular images of the cosmos has been released to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 35 years in space

Top-quark pairs at ATLAS could shed light on the early universe

Massive particles reveal properties of the quark–gluon plasma

Photo of the Main Spectrometer at the KATRIN experiment during installation of its inner electrode system. The photo is taken inside the experiment and shows a tunnel-like interior with electronics panels covering every visible surface. At the centre is a metal platform with scaffolding and ladders. Three people in clean-room protective clothing are standing on the platform.

KATRIN sets tighter limit on neutrino mass

New maximum for notoriously shy particle is 0.45 eV – 1 million times less than the electron

Photo of the set-up in the ISAC-II experimental hall at TRIUMF. The room resembles a high-ceilinged warehouse with metal supports and high windows in the background. In the foreground is an experimental apparatus supported by a yellow metal frame.

Helium nanobubble measurements shed light on origins of heavy elements in the universe

Particle-accelerator study focuses on the r-process thought to be responsible for forming elements heavier than iron

Photon collisions in dying stars could create neutrons for heavy elements

Simulations shed light on the r-process of nucleosynthesis

DESI delivers a cosmological bombshell

“Phantom” dark energy existed long ago, observations suggest

Artist's impression of the gravitational wave and electromagnetic radiation signals from a distant binary neutron star merger arriving at Earth. The image shows the Earth floating in space with a telescope hovering above it in the bottom left corner, while in the top right corner a pair of bright spots are emitting ghostly blue waves

AI speeds up detection of neutron star mergers

New approach could aid “multimessenger” astronomy by quickly locating sources of gravitational waves emitted during these cosmic events

Graph showing a neutral current interaction in the NOvA Far Detector

Sterile neutrinos are a no-show (again)

Hypothetical fourth neutrino flavour is absent from new data from Fermilab's NOvA experiment

James Webb Space Telescope spots spectacular auroras on Neptune

Measurements represent the first direct detection of auroras on the planet

Composite image showing photos of PTB's ion traps and the PENTATRAP Penning trap mass spectrometer at MPIK in Heidelberg superimposed over a grid of blue, black and pink squares labelled with the name and mass number of different isotopes. Some of the black squares are raised, and these are the ytterbium isotopes the team studied

Atomic anomaly explained without recourse to hypothetical ‘dark force’

Effect observed in 2020 arises from changes in nuclear structure, not new physics

Artistic impression of the exoplanet Trappist-1 b

The enigma of Trappist-1 b: a thick atmosphere or airless rock?

Thermal emission measurements from the exoplanet Trappist-1 b suggest two plausible yet contradictory scenarios

‘Milestone’ as Square Kilometre Array Observatory releases its first low-frequency image of the cosmos

The new SKA-Low image was created using 1024 two-metre-high antennas

Responses to dust injections of 400 million tonnes from a Bennu-type asteroid impact

How would an asteroid strike affect life on Earth?

New simulations reveal that the climate, atmospheric chemistry and even global photosynthesis would be dramatically disrupted by an asteroid collision

NASA launches $488m megaphone-shaped SPHEREx observatory to map the universe

Craft will plot the distribution of galaxies to better understand cosmic inflation

Thirty years of the Square Kilometre Array: here’s what the world’s largest radio telescope project has achieved so far

The precursors to the world’s most sensitive radio telescope are already changing our view of the cosmos

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