Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
An image to relish
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of an object that looks like a giant hamburger.
- Planetary Science
It’s only a sharper moon
Astronomers have taken what appears to be the sharpest image of the moon ever recorded from Earth.
- Astronomy
Lonely Universe
In a universe dominated by a mysterious antigravity force, dubbed dark energy, distant galaxies will eventually recede from each other faster than the speed of light and observers in our Milky Way some 50 billion years from now will see only a handful of other galaxies in the sky.
- Astronomy
Close Encounter
In mid-August, asteroid 2002 NY40 came within 524,000 kilometers of Earth. Students from Yale University using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory captured a sequence of images of the 700-meter asteroid. Strung together into a movie, these images demonstrate the asteroid’s impressive speed, as seen from Earth over a period of two hours. The […]
- Planetary Science
Lost in Space: Comet mission appears to have broken apart
A spacecraft that had just begun its journey to two comets has fallen silent and may have broken apart.
- Astronomy
X-Ray Chaos: Violence shows itself in a nearby galaxy
New X-ray observations provide additional evidence that Centaurus A, the nearest radio-wave-emitting galaxy to Earth that has a supermassive black hole, is a maelstrom of violence.
- Astronomy
Visible Matter: Once lost but now found
New observations confirm that most of the visible matter in the universe lies hidden in vast, hard-to-detect gas clouds between galaxies.
- Astronomy
Icy Split: Comet fragments into 19 pieces
A comet has split into 19 fragments strung out along a million-kilometer-long chain.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Twist: X’s may mark spots where black holes merge
If whacked by a companion black hole, a big, jet-emitting black hole may spew superhot plasma in a new, crosswise direction.
- Astronomy
An assault on comets
Over the next few years, a trio of comet missions, one of which was launched recently, promises to provide the closet look yet at the core of these icy relics from the formation of the solar system.
- Astronomy
Moveable Feast: Milky Way dines on its neighbors
Astronomers have found new evidence that the Milky Way is a cannibal, devouring streams of stars from its nearest galactic neighbors.
- Astronomy
Pluto or bust?
A new National Research Council report may revive plans to send a spacecraft to explore Pluto and its neighborhood.
