On 24 June 2019, NASA is sending an atomic clock into space. Not just any old atomic clock, either. It’s up to 50 times more accurate than the atomic clocks aboard GPS satellites, its precision only changing by one second every 10 million years. It’s only the size of a toaster, yet it could revolutionise

Last week, Curiosity made its strongest detection of methane on Mars yet. Its laser spectrometer instrument registered a methane spike of 21 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in the Gale Crater, a region the rover has been exploring since it landed in 2012. Generally, methane presence on Mars has a global average of 10

Galaxy mergers are not particularly rare, but they are important events. Not only for the galaxies involved, but for scientists trying to piece together how galaxies evolve. Now, astronomers using ALMA have found the earliest example yet of merging galaxies. The pair of merging galaxies in question is called B14-65666, an unwieldy name, but scientifically

Saturn may be the most showy, but it’s not the only planet in the Solar System circled by rings. And the 13 rings around Uranus just spilled previously unknown details when they photobombed a thermal image astronomers took of the ice planet. For the first time, researchers have determined the temperature of the rings, and

When stars are young, they’re often surrounded by a ring of dust and gas known as a protoplanetary disk. Eventually, the material in this disk can clump together, forming everything from planets to asteroids. Now, an international team of researchers has found a young star with thin rings and gaps in the outer part of

In the hunt for alien life, scientists often focus on the “Goldilocks zone“, the region around a star where the temperature would be just right for liquid water to exist on an orbiting planet’s surface. But now, a team from Harvard University is suggesting there’s another kind of Goldilocks zone we should consider in our

Our search for extraterrestrial intelligence requires spanning distances so vast, sometimes it may feel even worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Since the 1960s, astronomers have combed through billions of radio channels looking for anything out of the ordinary, as this could suggest not only some other form of life, but perhaps also

Engineers have captured some eye-popping footage of one of the densest parts of a satellite getting fried into vapour inside an ultra-hot plasma wind tunnel. They destroyed it in the name of science, of course. The researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) wanted to better understand how satellites burn up in Earth’s atmosphere as

Sally Ride’s journey to become the first American woman in space, and the youngest person ever sent into orbit, began with a handwritten letter. She wrote to NASA in 1977 after seeing an article in The Stanford Daily as she was finishing up her PhD in astrophysics at the university. The article said that NASA

Astronomers are convinced they’ve found two new Earth-like planets in our galaxy, and both appear so similar to our own, they’re now among the top 19 known exoplanets with potentially habitable environments. Orbiting a neighbouring star in the constellation of Aries just 12.5 light years away, one of these two planets might in fact hold

To say there are some myths circulating about Martian dust storms would be an understatement. Mars is known for its globe-encircling dust storms, the likes of which are seen nowhere else. Science fiction writers and Hollywood movies often make the dust storms out to be more dangerous than they really are. In The Martian, a

The planet Mars does not bruise easily, but when it does, the result is practically a work of art. A fresh impact crater, spotted in April by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), is unlike anything astronomers have seen before. Remarkable for both its size and its impact waves, the black-and-blue mark stands out like a

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to us, at 4.37 light-years (about 25 trillion miles) away. In 2016, astronomers discovered an exoplanet orbiting one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. Spurred on by that discovery, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has developed a new instrument to find any other planets that

If you want to know what a talent for scientific visualizations looks like, check out Eleanor Lutz. She’s a PhD student in biology at the University of Washington, and at her website Tabletop Whale, you can see her amazing work on full display. Her latest piece is a map showing all the orbits of over

In its final year, Cassini plunged where no spacecraft had plunged before, down in the space between Saturn and its rings. Again and again it dove, for a total of 22 orbits. In the data collecting during those breakneck dives, astronomers have just found new information about the way tiny moons sculpt and carve those

Opportunity’s final message home is not much to look at on its own. If you’re old enough to remember film cameras, it looks like the final exposure on a roll of film, developed but partly missing. It’s a suitable epitaph for Opportunity’s mission. Opportunity captured this image with the left half of its PanCam, or

The origins of the Solar System’s heavy elements such as gold and platinum have been a source of great interest to astronomers. One of the most popular theories is that they were scattered into space by neutron star collisions. New research, however, has found another origin: an oft-overlooked type of star explosion, or supernova. These,

The beginning of the end of our galaxy is just a few billion years away. That’s when the glittering disk of the Milky Way is projected to smash into its nearest neighbor, a spiral galaxy called Andromeda. The force of the collision will fuse the black holes at the centers of the galaxies, producing a

Here on Earth we’re making big plans to send the first humans to Mars, but it looks like Starfleet may have gotten there first. In the expanse of the Hellas Planitia, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed a huge formation in the shape of the organisation’s famous chevron logo. “Enterprising viewers will make the discovery

Thanks to the far-reaching optics of the Hubble telescope, and some smart visible-light spectral analysis, scientists have detected what looks a lot like sodium chloride – or good old table salt – on Jupiter’s moon Europa. That means the salty ocean hidden just beneath the surface of this moon could be more like Earth’s oceans

Antlia 2, the “ghost of a galaxy” orbiting the Milky Way, is a dark horse in more ways than one. Not only is it so faint it was only just discovered last year, it may now be responsible for curious ripples in the hydrogen gas that makes up the Milky Way’s outer disc. According to

It was the year 2000 and scientists had never seen anything like it: astronomers reported evidence of “superflares” on distant stars – solar outbursts many thousands of times more energetic than typical solar flares. As researchers observed over subsequent studies, these intense eruptions were more common on young, rapidly rotating stars, and on stars exhibiting

The Moon is home to one of the largest known impact craters in the Solar System. At 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) across, the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the Moon’s far side covers nearly a quarter of the lunar surface – and there’s something massive buried beneath it. We can’t see it from here on Earth,

NASA just announced that it will officially allow regular citizens – not just certified astronauts – on board the International Space Station, as well as commercial and marketing activities. Tickets to the ISS won’t come cheap. NASA will be charging private companies about US$35,000 a night for use of the station’s facilities, according to The

Two months before the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon for the first time, another NASA capsule snuck tantalisingly close – only to become lost for decades. The Apollo 10 mission was supposed to be a “dry-run“, in which all operations except the actual lunar landing were performed. With two popular cartoon characters as the

Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet. We’re sober, yo! The fact of the matter is,

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says there’s a very simple reason his other company, Blue Origin, is working on a giant lunar lander to make moon travel as easy as an aeroplane flight: Humanity’s very survival relies on colonizing space, starting with the moon. So he told attendees during his time on stage Thursday at Amazon’s

On 25 May 2019, a strange, double-asteroid (1999 KW4) flew past Earth at a distance and speed that is likely to make a lot of people nervous. As always, there was no danger, since the asteroid passed Earth at a minimum distance of 5.2 million km (3.23 million miles), over 15 times greater than the

A colossal magnetic field stretching between two clusters of galaxies has been observed for the first time. Roughly a billion light-years away, the ‘bridge’ of radio-emitting plasma spans 10 million light-years, following a filament in the mysterious cosmic web that connects the Universe. The space between clusters of galaxies isn’t completely dark and empty. Long

The most remote location on Earth has many names: It’s called Point Nemo (Latin for ‘no one’) and the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Most precisely, its exact coordinates are 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude. The spot is about 2,250 km (1,400 miles) from any spot of land

Astronomers peering into the dark heart of the Milky Way galaxy have seen a vast, rotating disc of cool gas, circling the supermassive black hole that therein resides. Long has this disc been hypothesised; now, it is revealed in all its turbulent glory. “We were the first to image this elusive disk and study its

PDS 70, the star that last year gave us the first ever confirmed direct image of a planet being born, had an extra trick up its protoplanetary disc. In follow-up observations, astronomers have found a second planet – and managed to take photographs of both. This gives it the added honour of being only the

The 50th anniversary of You-Know-What is coming up and LEGO is getting in on the celebration. The much-beloved company has released a replica of the Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Lander. The new lander is part of LEGO’s Creator Expert collection. LEGO teamed up with NASA on this effort, and the model boasts quite a few

A huge discovery that was incompatible with our current theories of dark matter and galaxy formation may have just been resolved. After a new analysis, astronomers have determined that NGC1052-DF2 – found last year to contain absolutely no dark matter – is a lot closer to us than previous calculations estimated. Which means that it

The first film of a total solar eclipse has been restored by specialists at the British Film Institute (BFI) and made available for viewing. The film was taken in North Caroline in 1900 by Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne was a British man who was a magician turned film-maker. He took the film as part of a

Death, for stars, isn’t always a straightforward affair. In fact, it can get downright weird. Astronomers have just identified a star made from the remnants of two dead stars that fused together, which reignited fusion in the core – bringing the new star back to life. The star is called J005311, 10,000 light-years away in

The Universe is so unimaginably big, and it’s positively teeming with an almost infinite supply of potentially life-giving worlds. So where the heck is everybody? At its heart, this is what’s called the Fermi Paradox: the perplexing scientific anomaly that despite there being billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy – let alone outside

Clay is a big deal on Mars because it often forms in contact with water. Find clay, and you’ve usually found evidence of water. And the nature, history, and current water budget on Mars are all important to understanding that planet, and if it ever supported life. Right now, MSL Curiosity is at Mt Sharp

Curiosity is one busy rover. Since touching down on Mars in 2012, it’s helped astronomers locate the planet’s missing methane, delivered new evidence that Mars was once wet, and even provided clues of extraterrestrial life. But all work and no play makes Curiosity a dull bot, so it recently kicked back to do some cloud-watching

Based on this recently released snapshot of the night sky captured by NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), we can safely assume Superman gets no sleep at night. Just look at that thing.  The sparkling dots and tangled loops are the result of nearly two years of effort to study cosmic sources of X-rays

Astronomers have detected the presence of ammonia mixed in with the rusty colouration of Pluto’s surface. This could have fascinating implications for the icy dwarf planet, as researchers have detailed in two new studies. Firstly, that ammonia-tainted ice hints at a salty, organic-rich ocean hiding beneath Pluto’s surface – one that may contain the right

Every 11 years, the Sun cycles through from riotous flare and sunspot activity to a quieter period, before ramping up again. It’s almost as regular as clockwork, and for years astronomers have been wondering what causes it. Now, they’ve proposed a new solution. Even though the Solar System’s planets are much smaller than the Sun,

When you get close to a blazing star, you can discern a region where medium-sized planets like our own icy Neptune are scarce. Known as Hot Neptunian Deserts, these rings of intense irradiation and heat are found right across the Universe – but they may not be as inhospitable as we once thought. Like Icarus

For the first time, researchers have successfully generated electricity from americium, one of the radioactive elements we’ve pinned our hopes on as a promising alternative to rocket fuel, for powering farther and farther ventures out into space. It’s a new milestone in experiments with the synthetic element, which doesn’t occur naturally but is a by-product

A star system located some 16,000 light-years away from Earth is flaring in an unexpected manner, and scientists are working to explain what’s going on with it. The star in question is called AG Draconis: a well-known binary star that’s been observed by astronomers since the late 19th century. But while AG Draconis may have

You know how stars do. They’re out there, doing their thing, fusing a whole bunch of hydrogen into helium, shining up the joint. But some stars are just a little bit different from the norm. Not content with simply lighting up the night sky like a giant disco, they zoom, shimmer, dim and even hang

A strange feature on the surface of Mars has kept scientists guessing about its origin. It’s a surface deposit of a mineral which is more common in the interiors of planets. A new study shows that this interior mineral was probably brought to the surface by an ancient explosive volcano. Nili Fossae is located in

Humans and our primate relatives differ in many ways, but the fact we walk on two legs is one of the most obvious. Precisely how our ancestors evolved that trait is a well-debated mystery. Now, there’s a new idea. What if one of the contributing factors was giant explosions in the sky? It’s not as