Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
First stars born later than thought
New results from the Planck mission indicate that the first stars began to shine 550 million years after the Big Bang.
- Astronomy
Asteroids or planets might trigger a supernova
Rocky debris falling onto a white dwarf might trigger some supernovas.
- Planetary Science
New Horizons snaps new photos of Pluto
Pluto and its moon Charon appear as two smudges in the first pictures taken since New Horizons came out of hibernation.
- Physics
When entering a black hole, fasten your seat belt
Rapidly spinning black holes can generate turbulence, a new analysis shows.
- Astronomy
Giant rings encircle young exoplanet
Stretching 90 million kilometers from their center, 37 stripes of dust around exoplanet were probably crafted by moons.
- Cosmology
Dust erases evidence for gravity wave detection
The claimed detection of primordial gravitational waves does not hold up after taking into account galactic dust, a new analysis concludes.
- Astronomy
Neptune-like worlds could become habitable
Mini-Neptunes can drift toward their stars and lose their atmospheres, leaving behind ice-rich rocky cores that can become watery worlds.
- Astronomy
Oldest solar system unearthed by Kepler
Five rocky planets orbit the 11.2-billion-year-old star Kepler 444, suggesting that Earth-sized worlds formed in the early universe.
- Quantum Physics
Top 10 scientific mysteries for the 21st century
Solving the Top 10 scientific mysteries facing the 21st century will not be all fun but could be mostly games.
- Planetary Science
Large asteroid buzzes Earth
Asteroid 2004 BL86 swings by Earth today at three times the distance to the moon, the closest asteroid encounter until 2027.
- Planetary Science
Decades-old idea brought to fruition: a mission to Mercury
In 1965, engineers proposed sending a spacecraft to Mercury with help from another planet’s gravity – a technique now used in many interplanetary missions.
- Physics
How blueshift might beat redshift
Even though the expanding universe makes light redder, light emitted by collapsing stars and dust clouds could appear unusually blue.
