Scientists at Johns Hopkins University may have uncovered a promising clue in the long-running effort to confirm the existence of dark matter. For years, astronomers have puzzled over a faint, widespread glow of gamma rays near the Milky Way’s center. The source of this mysterious light has remained uncertain, leavingContinue Reading
Could Mars have once supported life? Scientists still don’t have proof. Yet some of the planet’s strange surface features might seem to hint at it. Earth scientist Dr. Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University set out to study the origin of mysterious gullies carved into Martian dunes. In her laboratory experiments,Continue Reading
On July 1, astronomers detected a strange, fast-moving object racing toward the Sun. Named 3I/ATLAS, this unusual traveler immediately stood out for one remarkable reason: its orbital path revealed that it had come from beyond our Solar System. This marked only the third time in history that scientists have identifiedContinue Reading
Nature follows countless rhythms: the changing of the seasons comes from Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the steady tick of a clock arises from the back-and-forth swing of its pendulum. These patterns can be described with simple mathematical laws. Yet, order can also appear in a far more surprisingContinue 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
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a galaxy that’s hard to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (The Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling anContinue Reading
Scientists at the U. S. Department of Energy Ames National Laboratory and Iowa State University have discovered an unexpected “quantum echo” in a superconducting material. This discovery provides insight into quantum behaviors that could be used for next-generation quantum sensing and computing technologies. Superconductors are materials that carry electricity withoutContinue Reading
This illustration shows Earth’s magnetosphere interacting with the solar wind. The magnetosphere shields the Earth from harmful solar and cosmic radiation. Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Josh Masters A new study led by Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ionsContinue Reading
Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have proposed a new explanation for some of the universe’s most puzzling early galaxies, nicknamed “little red dots.” In the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Authors Fabio Pacucci and Abraham (Avi) Loeb suggest that these galaxies are theContinue Reading
Researchers have for the first time isolated a compound that could open new doors in understanding the chemistry that supports life in space. Ryan Fortenberry, an astrochemist at the University of Mississippi, Ralf Kaiser, professor of chemistry at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and Alexander M. Mebel, computational chemistContinue Reading
