Researchers from Heriot-Watt University have released striking images of an asteroid impact crater hidden deep beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. These images confirm that the 9 km (~5.6 mile) wide Nadir Crater, lying about 300 meters (~1000 feet) below the ocean floor, was created when an asteroid slammedContinue Reading
Researchers have made a major leap in solar physics by finding the first direct evidence of small-scale torsional Alfvén waves within the Sun’s corona. These elusive magnetic waves, first theorized in the 1940s, have long been suspected to play a key role in heating the Sun’s outer atmosphere. The findings,Continue Reading
Dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to make up most of the Universe, might not be completely invisible after all. A new study suggests it could leave behind a faint red or blue “fingerprint” in light that passes through regions filled with it. Researchers at the University of York proposeContinue Reading
When arranged in just the right ways, two-dimensional materials can display unusual and valuable quantum effects such as superconductivity and exotic types of magnetism. Understanding why these effects arise, and how to control them, remains one of the biggest challenges for physicists and engineers. A new study published in NatureContinue Reading
A group of scientists, including researchers from the University of Tokyo, has found evidence that liquid water once moved through the asteroid that eventually gave rise to the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. Remarkably, this activity took place more than a billion years after the asteroid first formed. The discovery, which reliesContinue Reading
For more than a century and a half, astronomers have been captivated by the distant galaxy OJ 287, located about five billion light years from Earth. Its puzzling variations in brightness have long hinted that two enormous black holes may be orbiting and merging at its center. Now, an internationalContinue Reading
The Sun’s polar regions remain one of the least explored areas in solar science. Space-based observatories and ground telescopes have given us extraordinary images of the Sun’s surface, atmosphere, and magnetic fields, but nearly all of those observations come from within the ecliptic plane — the narrow zone where EarthContinue Reading
A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University has captured the clearest and most detailed view ever of a dying star before its dramatic explosion. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the international group identified the source of a supernova, known as its progenitor, in mid-infrared light for theContinue Reading
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Humboldt University in Berlin have developed a way to capture nearly all the light emitted from tiny diamond defects known as color centers. By placing nanodiamonds into specially designed hybrid nanoantennas with extreme precision, the team achieved record photon collection atContinue Reading
For nearly two centuries, it was unclear that the bright spot in the constellation Virgo, which Charles Messier had described in 1781 as “87: Nebula without stars,” was in fact a very large galaxy. As a result, there was initially no explanation for the strange jet discovered in 1918 emergingContinue Reading
