Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
A new study led by the Southwest Research Institute offers groundbreaking insights into TOI-270 d, an exoplanet orbiting 73 light years from Earth. The planet, falling between Earth and Neptune in size, may be a rocky super-Earth cloaked in a dense, scorching atmosphere. Researchers believe TOI-270 d could serve as a key reference point for understanding sub-Neptune exoplanets-a planetary class

London, UK (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
Researchers at the University of Southampton have engineered a groundbreaking optical device that mimics the light-trapping properties of black holes and the theoretical expulsion behavior of white holes, offering an innovative analog to these cosmic entities. The team based their design on the concept of coherent perfect absorption, enabling the device to either fully absorb or repel ligh

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
Gravitational waves, the faint tremors in spacetime triggered by cataclysmic cosmic phenomena like black hole collisions and stellar explosions, have opened a groundbreaking observational frontier in astrophysics. But detecting these elusive signals demands precision instruments whose design complexity has long challenged scientists. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science o

Berkeley CA (SPX) Apr 16, 2025
Imagine a Slushee composed of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice. Now picture these ice-encrusted slushballs, dubbed "mushballs," raining down like hailstones during a thunderstorm, illuminated by intense flashes of lightning. Planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, now say that hailstorms of mushballs accompanied by fierce lightning actually exi

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
A new study led by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) offers a compelling explanation for Mars' puzzling magnetic field distribution, revealing that the planet's ancient magnetism may have originated from a hemispheric field generated by a molten core. Mars once boasted a global magnetic field strong enough to protect its atmosphere, much like Earth's. Today, that shie

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
NASA's Lucy spacecraft is preparing for a pivotal encounter on April 20, 2025, as it targets asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson, a three-mile-wide object located in the main asteroid belt. This flyby, led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), will serve as a rehearsal ahead of Lucy's primary mission: investigating the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit. These ancient Trojan ast

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Apr 16, 2025
Scientists have hypothesized since the 1960s that the Sun is a source of ingredients that form water on the Moon. When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind smashes into the lunar surface, the idea goes, it triggers a chemical reaction that could make water molecules. Now, in the most realistic lab simulation of this process yet, NASA-led researchers have confirmed this pre

Boston MA (SPX) Apr 16, 2025
On board Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft, which made a moon landing on March 6, were cutting-edge MIT payloads: a depth-mapping camera and a mini-rover called "AstroAnt." Also on that craft were the words and voices of people from around the world speaking in dozens of languages. These were etched on a 2-inch silicon wafer computationally designed by Professor Craig Carter of the MIT Depar

Researchers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the magnetar SGR 0501+4516 was not born in a neighbouring supernova as previously thought. The birthplace of this object is now unknown, and SGR 0501+4516 is the likeliest candidate in our galaxy for a magnetar that was not born in a supernova. This discovery was made possible by Hubble’s sensitive instruments as well as highly accurate reference data from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft.