Science

Our Milky Way galaxy's most common type of star is called a red dwarf - much smaller and less luminous than our sun. These stars - or so it was thought - simply are not big enough to host planets much larger than Earth.But the discovery of a planet at least 13 times Earth's mass orbiting very close to a red dwarf only 11% of the sun's mass has astronomers going back to the drawing board on planetary formation theory involving this prevalent type of star. The mass ratio of this planet with its star is more than 100 times greater than that of Earth and the sun."We discovered a planet that is too massive for its star," said Penn State astronomer Suvrath Mahadevan, one of the leaders of the study published this week in the journal Science.The star, called LHS 3154, is relatively close to u...

Astronomers using planet-hunting satellites have discovered a rare solar system with six planets moving completely in sync with one another, as if they were untouched by any outside force since being created billions of years ago.The Associated Press reported that the discovery was announced on Wednesday, and it could provide insight into how solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy are created.The newly discovered system is about 100 light-years away, with a single light year equaling 5.8 trillion miles.THOUGHT-PROVOKING, CLIMACTIC SPACE-RELATED MOVIES THAT WILL CAPTIVATE YOU THROUGH BOUNDLESS JOURNEYS This image provided by NASA shows an artist’s illustration of the Tess telescope. Astronomers have discovered six planets orbiting a bright nearby star in perfect rhythmic harmony. They s...

Dog goes sledding down backyard snow slopes A 12-year-old Sheltie dog named Roxie was seen sledding in her backyard in Waukesha, Wisconsin. See the dog glide down the hill — and watch as another dog winds up zooming past her! Authorities in New Jersey are investigating after they were notified of mysterious tar balls peppering the beaches of the Jersey Shore.The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Monmouth County officials said that tar balls of various sizes and shapes have been found along the Jersey Shore in recent weeks. In a press release, the USCG said that officials were first notified about the mysterious tar balls ranging in size from approximately 1–2 inches and smaller on an approximately 6-mile stretch near Seven Presidents O...

Have you ever dreamed of going to space? Well, now part of you can, through NASA's Message in a Bottle campaign.Since June 1, 2023, NASA has been collecting names to send up to space on the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Ever since the campaign kicked off, there have been more than 900,000 names collected from submissions from all around the world.BLACK HOLES EXPLAINED: WHY THEY'RE SOME OF THE STRANGEST OBJECTS IN SPACEThe Europa Clipper spacecraft is set to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2024. After its launch, the spacecraft will begin a 1.8 billion-mile journey to explore Jupiter's moon, Europa. The mission of the Europa Clipper spacecraft is to gather information about Jupiter's moon, Europa, to determine if it can potentially support life. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwR...

The world’s largest iceberg has moved for the first time in 30 years after finally freeing itself from the ocean floor near Antarctica — and it could end up causing problems for wildlife.Iceberg A23a "calved," or fell off the greater glacier on the continent, from the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf and floated in the Weddell Sea before it ended up caught on the ocean floor in 1986. The piece of ice, at a size of 1,500 square miles and weighing nearly a trillion metric tons, is about three times the size of New York City. The size makes it the world’s largest iceberg in the world, only briefly losing the title to iceberg A76 before that iceberg split into three fragments.The iceberg’s trajectory will see it leave Antarctic shallows and enter the greater Southern Ocean, moving along...

To infinity and beyond?A NASA spacecraft has beamed a near-infrared laser nearly 10 million miles into space breaking new ground for the agency.The laser, which is encoded with test data, was fired from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft and then sent back to Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, the agency said. The test data was transmitted about 40 times farther than the distance between the moon and the earth, which NASA says is about 238,900 miles. The SpaceX Starship, for context, traveled around 93 miles into space last week.  NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached...

A robotic space chemist could create oxygen on Mars using materials from the planet’s surface, Chinese researchers behind the project say. A refrigerator-sized machine equipped with artificial intelligence and a robotic arm broke down material from five meteorites and analyzed it to identify a chemical formula that creates a substance that can cause oxygen to separate from water. Researchers said it would have taken a human 2,000 years to find that formula. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)? “Oxygen supply must be the top priority for any human activity on Mars, because rocket propellants and life support systems consume substantial amounts of oxygen, which cannot be replenished from the Martian atmosphere,” the researchers wrote. “Here we demonstrate a robot...

The most distant and oldest black hole ever seen using NASA telescopes may explain how some of the celestial voids in the universe formed, according to the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. A black hole 13.2 billion light-years from Earth was spotted at the center of the UHZ1 galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. It was formed 470 million years after the big bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago, making it the oldest ever discovered, according to NASA. ‘SMOKING GUN EVIDENCE’: WHAT A ‘MONSTER’ BLACK HOLE WAS DISCOVERED DOING THAT CONCERNED SCIENTISTS NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope teamed up to make this discovery. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Ákos Bogdán; In...

If humankind is ever to establish long-term bases on the moon, there will be a need for a regular source of food. It is not practical, however, to think you can plant corn or wheat in plain lunar soil in greenhouses on the moon and expect a bumper crop – or any crop at all. But scientists are taking steps toward making moon agriculture a real possibility. Researchers said on Thursday they have found a way to turn inhospitable lunar soil fertile by introducing bacteria that enhance the availability of phosphorus, an important plant nutrient. They performed experiments growing a relative of tobacco using simulated moon soil, more properly called lunar regolith, in a laboratory in China. They found that such soil treated with three species of bacteria produced plants with longer ste...

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which was launched in October 2021 to research Jupiter’s asteroids, snapped a picture of a smaller asteroid near Mars last week, which presented scientists with a shocking surprise. The asteroid Lucy snapped a picture of is named Dinkinesh, and it turns out the space rock has a dinky moon orbiting it. The Associated Press reported that the discovery was made when Lucy conducted a flyby of Dinkinesh in Mar’s main asteroid belt, nearly 300 million miles away. NASA SPACECRAFT CATCHES ‘EERIE FACE’ ON JUPITER This photo provided by NASA shows a photo taken by the Lucy spacecraft during Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, 300 million miles from Earth. It turns out Dinkinesh, which is only a half-mile across, has a dinky sidekick … just one-t...