Space (Pre 2013)


5 December 2012

Radioactive elements may make alien life more likely on exoplanets


An abundance of radioactive elements observed in a number of exoplanetary systems would make the constituent planets much warmer, say scientists at Ohio State University, who contend that this planetary inner-heat could significantly expand the so-called Goldilocks zone around stars where life could evolve...

30 November 2012

New evidence for water and organics on Mercury


Scientists say data transmitted by the Messenger spacecraft provide compelling support for the notion that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters...

15 November 2012

Nomad planet spotted?


Astronomers say they have identified an astronomical body that is very probably a nomad planet - a free-floating planet that wanders through space without a parent star...

2 November 2012

Asteroid belts' location critical for evolution of complex life


A new study suggests that the size of an asteroid belt - and its proximity to a giant Jupiter-like planet - needs to be just right for complex life to evolve in a planetary system...

25 October 2012

Dark matter not so dark; may be peppered with rogue stars


Astronomers have suggested that the dark matter halos that envelop entire galaxies may not be completely dark after all, and could contain rogue stars that have been flung out of the galaxy...

18 October 2012

Earth-sized planet found nearby in Alpha Centauri system


Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have discovered a planet about the same mass as Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system - the closest star system to Earth...

11 October 2012

Surprising spiral structure observed around dying star


Astronomers using the ALMA telescope in Chile have observed an unusual spiral structure in the gas surrounding the red giant star R Sculptoris...

9 October 2012

Mystery object delays Curiosity rover's soil scooping


A mysterious bright object lying on the Martian surface has delayed the Curiosity rover's soil sampling activities until mission control can identify the metallic object...

27 September 2012

Ancient Buddhist statue, filched by Nazis, was carved from meteorite


A 1,000 year-old Buddhist statue discovered by a Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938 has been analyzed by scientists and found to be carved from a rare ataxite meteorite...

26 September 2012

Hubble images provide farthest-ever montage of early Universe


Using multiple images from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of our deepest-ever view of the Universe. Called the eXtreme Deep Field, the hybrid image contains around 5,000 galaxies - some from a time when the Universe was only a few hundred million years old...

30 August 2012

Sugar molecules observed in distant planet formation


For the first time, astronomers have identified molecules of glycolaldehyde - a simple form of sugar - in the gas surrounding a distant young star. The discovery shows that some of the chemical compounds needed for life existed in this relatively young solar system at the time of planet formation...

29 August 2012

Binary star has multiple orbiting planets


Astronomers have found the first multi-planet solar system orbiting a binary star. Importantly, the discovery shows that planetary systems can form and survive even in the chaotic environment around a binary star...

20 August 2012

Curiosity's laser zaps first Martian rock


The rover Curiosity has zapped a fist-sized Martian rock with its laser, producing a cloud of ionized plasma that will be analyzed by Curiosity's spectrometers...

8 August 2012

First 3-D images from Curiosity


NASA has received the first 3-D images from the rover Curiosity's hazard cameras as well as an image shot from orbit that shows the rover and the discarded parachute and sky crane used in Curiosity's descent...

7 August 2012

Orbiter captures Curiosity's descent


The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted to Earth an astounding picture of the rover Curiosity as it descends by parachute towards the surface of Mars...

6 August 2012

Curiosity Live: countdown to Mars landing


Follow our live blog as NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft begins the most complicated planetary landing ever attempted to gently place the car-sized Curiosity Rover on Mars' surface...

24 July 2012

Inflatable heat shield survives re-entry test


Developed by NASA, a large heat shield inflated with nitrogen has successfully completed a re-entry trip through Earth's atmosphere while travelling at speeds of up to 7,600 mph...

21 July 2012

Titan's rivers create a puzzle for geologists


Captured by the Cassini spacecraft, detailed images of rivers of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan point to a mysterious geologic history...

19 July 2012

Earliest spiral galaxy "astounding"


Looking back 11 billion years, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed for the first time a spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before other comparable spiral galaxies formed...

12 July 2012

New moon discovery adds to Pluto's mystery


The discovery, by the Hubble telescope, of a fifth moon orbiting Pluto has astronomers wondering how the dwarf planet accrued such a complex collection of satellites...

6 July 2012

Astronomers ponder proto solar system vanishing act


Displaying all of the characteristics of a solar system in the making, a massive cloud of dust and rocky debris orbiting a nearby star has vanished, leaving astronomers mystified as to what could have happened to the dusty disc that was much more massive than Saturn's rings...

1 June 2012

Andromeda-Milky Way collision visualized


After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of Andromeda and our own Milky Way galaxy, scientists at NASA have visualized what the eventual collision of the two galaxies will look like and where our own solar system will end up...

24 May 2012

Nomad planets seeding life throughout the universe?


According to new calculations, planets adrift in space without a "home" solar system are abundant in the universe and scientists have proposed that these nomad planets might not only sustain life, but transport it as well...

5 May 2012

Venus transit to help identify possible neo-Earths


Hoping to eventually identify Earth-like planets in other solar systems, astronomers plan to point the Hubble telescope at the Moon's Tycho crater during the upcoming transit of Venus across the Sun and analyze the reflected Venusian atmospheric spectra...

1 May 2012

Hundreds of rogue stars found outside galaxy


Astronomers say they have identified more than 600 stars that have been violently flung out of the Milky Way toward Andromeda; stellar victims, the scientists believe, of the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's core...

25 April 2012

SETI needs self-replicating robot explorers, argues prof


Autonomous, self-replicating robots are the best way to explore the universe, locate extraterrestrial life and perhaps even clean up space debris, argues Penn State professor John D. Mathews, in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society...

19 April 2012

New blow to dark matter theory


The most detailed study to date of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for the existence of the mysterious invisible substance known as dark matter...

29 March 2012

Earth to Moon on a cup of fuel


A new low-cost ionic motor could dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration, with its European developers saying it could propel a satellite to the Moon using just a tenth of a liter of fuel...

9 February 2012

Milky Way's black hole in asteroid feeding frenzy


The X-ray flares that are observed on a daily basis from the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may represent the demise of asteroids plunging into the singularity, according to an analysis of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory...

12 January 2012

Milky Way has "billions" of habitable planets


Working with data from telescopes located around the world, an international team of astronomers have shown that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception and that there are likely billions of planets in our galaxy where humans could live...

21 December 2011

Earth-sized exoplanet identified


Two new planets - christened Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f - are the smallest yet discovered outside our solar system. Astronomers say one is the same size as Earth and the other about the size of Venus...

7 December 2011

Solar flares sandblasting the Moon


Solar storms remove a surprisingly large amount of material from the lunar surface, computer simulations have revealed, leading NASA scientists to speculate that solar storms may also be a major factor in atmospheric loss on Mars and other planets...

6 December 2011

Springtime on Earth II


The Kepler space telescope has identified a large, rocky exoplanet 600 light years distant with a surface temperature of about 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees F), comparable to a comfortable spring day on Earth...

24 November 2011

Running the numbers on alien life


A multi-institute team of scientists have proposed a new method for assessing the likelihood of life on alien worlds (exoplanets) while another group is mulling the possibility that alien space probes might be residing in our solar system...

17 November 2011

New Europa fractured surface theory holds water - and maybe life


Taking observations of Earth's ice sheets and floating ice shelves and applying them to Europa, scientists say Jupiter's moon appears to have a vast body of liquid water located relatively close to the surface under constantly fracturing ice sheets...

11 November 2011

Lost: one giant planet


Computer simulations of the early solar system suggest the possibility that our system had more than four giant planets initially and that one was ejected as the solar system settled into its current form...

4 November 2011

SETI needs to see the light, say astrophysicists


SETI's quest to find radio signals transmitted by extraterrestrial civilizations has so far failed to locate any alien shock jocks, so two astronomers have suggested a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights...

3 November 2011

US astronomers give nod to complex organics in space


The controversial notion that complex organic molecules could be relatively common in interstellar space has garnered support from US and European astronomers' observations of a series of diffuse interstellar bands that were first discovered 90 years ago...

27 October 2011

Stars manufacturing complex organic matter?


Analysis of the spectral emissions from distant novae suggests that compounds of unexpected complexity - some resembling coal and petroleum - are abundant throughout the universe and are being made by stars...

7 October 2011

Energy levels of Crab Pulsar defy explanation


An international team of scientists has detected pulsed gamma rays from the neutron star at the heart of the Crab Nebula with energies far higher than theoretical pulsar models can explain...

4 October 2011

First images from ALMA radio telescope


The world's most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile, has captured its first image - a pair of colliding galaxies...

16 September 2011

First exoplanet with twin suns discovered


The discovery of exoplanet Kepler-16b is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet - a planet orbiting not one, but two stars...

25 July 2011

Largest water mass in universe discovered


A reservoir of water that is 100,000 times the mass of the sun has been detected in a massive vapor cloud surrounding a quasar 12 billion light years distant...

1 July 2011

Space travel safer with shiraz


Intriguing new research suggests that the "healthy" ingredient in red wine, resveratrol, may prevent the negative effects of weightlessness that astronauts suffer...

9 June 2011

New class of supernova discovered


They're bright, blue-and a bit strange, say Caltech astronomers who are puzzling over the lack of hydrogen in the spectrums of a number of distant stellar explosions. Detailing the discovery in Nature, the astronomers said that six supernovae of this type had so far been identified...

6 April 2011

Strong evidence for liquid water in comet


The idea that comets are "dirty snowballs" frozen in time looks set for revision now that scientists have found evidence of liquid water in samples of the Wild-2 comet returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission...

18 March 2011

Cassini tracks equatorial methane rainstorms on Titan


Showers on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rains to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The observations are the first of rain falling on Titan's surface at low latitudes...

7 March 2011

Discoverer of alien bacteria says life probably exists "everywhere"


A NASA scientist has sparked controversy with claims that he has identified bacterial microfossils in several meteorites. If proved correct, the implications are that life is widespread throughout space, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets...

27 January 2011

Hubble snaps most distant galaxy yet


Astronomers have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope to it limits by finding what they believe to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe - a mini-galaxy at a distance of 13.2 billion light years that formed only several hundred million years after the Big Bang...

20 January 2011

More evidence for asteroids creating life on Earth


All life on Earth uses "left-handed" amino acids to build proteins and NASA has now found that a greater number of asteroids were capable of creating these left-handed amino acids than previously thought...

29 October 2010

No shortage of neo-Earths


One of astronomy's current goals is to determine the number of sun-like stars that have an earth-like planet. Now, a new guesstimate from the University of California - Berkeley puts that number at a very high 1-in-4...

18 October 2010

New optics capture exoplanet 63 million light years distant


New optical technology has allowed an international team of astronomers to obtain images of an exoplanet in the Beta Pictoris system 63 million light years away...

20 October 2010

One-way Mars missions mooted


Fancy watching the sun rise over Olympus Mons? Or perhaps taking a stroll across the vast plains of the Vastitas Borealis? The only catch is you can never return to Earth...

30 September 2010

Newly discovered exoplanet may be habitable


Planet hunters have discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist and human habitation might be possible...

25 August 2010

Astronomers detect distant solar system with five planets


Astronomers have discovered a planetary system 127 light-years away that contains at least five planets that orbit a star at distances that follow a regular pattern much like our own solar system...

3 August 2010

Sun-storm to hit within 24 hours


Sky watchers might get to enjoy some spectacular Northern Lights tomorrow, thanks to a massive explosion on the surface of the Sun that blasted a huge quantity of plasma directly at the Earth...

30 June 2010

Brewing a primordial broth on Titan


Replicating the atmosphere of Titan and blasting it with UV light has allowed researchers to create organic macromolecules that they think are a model for the chemistry of pre-life Earth...

23 June 2010

Expolanet's winds blow at 10,000 kmh


Astronomers have measured a superstorm for the first time in the atmosphere of the exoplanet HD209458b, where carbon monoxide winds blow at 10,000 km per hour from the hot day side to the cooler night side of the planet...

14 June 2010

Mars' missing water


Scientists have uncovered fresh evidence for a massive ocean that once covered a third of Mars' surface. But the big question is where did all the water go?

11 June 2010

Exoplanet orbit tracked


For the first time, astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves to the other side of its host star...

20 May 2010

Anomalous supernova puzzles astronomers


Supernova 2005E, discovered five years ago by the University of California's Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, is a calcium-rich supernova that defies categorization, leading astronomers to speculate that it may hint at new and unusual physics...

12 May 2010

Intergalactic gas cloud could hold universe's "missing" matter


Astronomers have new evidence that a vast reservoir of hot, diffuse gas about 400 million light years from Earth could contain the "missing matter" of the universe...

29 April 2010

Discovery of asteroid water hints at oceans' origins


Scientists have detected a thin layer of water ice and organic molecules on the surface of the asteroid 24 Themis, a finding that adds weight to the theory that Earth's oceans resulted from an asteroid impact...

17 March 2010

"Fleeing galaxies" tracked deeper into universe


A new study of distant galaxy clusters mysteriously streaming at a million miles per hour towards the constellations Centaurus and Hydra has tracked this enigmatic "dark flow" to twice the distance originally reported...

2 March 2010

SETI needs to get real, urges new book


For the last 50 years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been dominated by a hunt for tell-tale radio signals. But a new book suggests bold new innovations are required if we are ever to hear from our cosmic neighbors...

25 February 2010

Astronomers cop an eyeful of giant planet's demise


An international group of astrophysicists have been documenting how the massive exoplanet known as WASP-12b is being stretched, distorted and slowly destroyed by its host star...

13 November 2009

Rosetta anomaly stumps scientists


When Rosetta swings by Earth today for a critical gravity assist, orbital data will be collected that could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades...

25 September 2009

Boffins ponder moon-water formation


There are potentially two types of water on the moon: exogenic, meaning water from outside sources, such as comets striking the moon's surface, and endogenic, meaning water that originates on the moon. Scientists suspect that the water that was recently revealed on the moon's surface is endogenic. Now, they are devising theories for how it formed...

21 September 2009

New explanation for gamma ray bursts


The traditional model for gamma ray bursts involves super-hot plasma that surrounds a black hole, but a new theory suggests that the jets come directly from rampant black holes in the process of devouring stars...

18 September 2009

Camera network plots meteorite landings


A network of cameras in the Nullarbor Desert in Western Australia has allowed researchers to track the fiery atmospheric entry of a meteorite and then compute the object's landing point and origin...

7 September 2009

Far out: measuring GDP from orbit


Measuring economic growth in developing countries is a tricky business, but Brown University economists believe the accuracy of GDP estimates might be improved by using images of nighttime lights as seen from space...

22 July 2009

Jupiter pummeled


Something slammed into Jupiter over the weekend, creating a massive bruise that was picked up by an amateur Australian astronomer on Sunday. Now, University of California astronomers have used the Keck II telescope in Hawaii to better capture an image of the moon-sized blemish...

13 July 2009

Neptune discovered by Galileo?


An Australian physicist has been studying cryptic annotations in Galileo's notebooks and believes the Italian astronomer may have identified the planet Neptune in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date...

3 July 2009

Fermi Telescope reveals new type of pulsar


A new class of pulsars detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is solving the mystery of previously unidentified radio-quiet gamma-ray sources...

10 June 2009

The strange case of the shrinking star


Betelgeuse, the bright red supergiant star in the constellation Orion, has shrunk by more than 15 percent over the past 15 years, and astronomers aren't sure why...

23 April 2009

Scientists mull polarized light tell-tales from alien life


Like life on Earth, extraterrestrial life should create an environment with a large amount of molecules that favor one kind of handedness (chirality), and now, scientists believe we may be able to identify life-harboring planets by looking for left- (or right-) handed reflected light from these planets...

18 March 2009

Extraterrestrial amino acids left-handed


NASA scientists analyzing the dust of meteorites say that the extraterrestrial biological molecules brought to Earth by meteorite impacts could help explain why the chemistry of life on Earth is left-handed...

9 January 2009

Newly detected cosmic noise hints at mysterious events in universe's past


Newly detected background radio "noise" that is louder than the combined radio emissions of all of the galaxies in the universe suggests something "new and interesting" must have occurred as galaxies first formed, when the universe was less than half its current age...

10 December 2008

CO2 detected on distant extrasolar planet


The Hubble telescope has detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star, a possible indicator of extraterrestrial life...

26 November 2008

Organic molecule hints at alien life


Scientists have detected glycolaldehyde (an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life) 26,000 light years from Earth in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets may exist...

14 November 2008

Exoplanets galore! Four distant planets imaged


It never rains, it pours. The Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck and Gemini North Earth-based telescopes in Hawaii have been used to capture images of four exoplanets orbiting distant stars...

6 November 2008

Force-field minimizes space radiation danger


Scientists have shown that a simple, portable magnetic field generator inside a spaceship should be sufficient to deflect the dangerous highly charged particles of the solar wind away from the spacecraft and the astronauts inside...

3 October 2008

Next-gen adaptive optics produce sharpest ever planetary images


A two-hour exposure of Jupiter using a next generation adaptive optical technique to remove atmospheric blur has produced the sharpest whole-planet picture ever taken from an Earth-based telescope...

24 September 2008

Astronomers mull planetary smash 'em up derby


Two Earth-like planets in apparently stable, mature orbits some 300 light-years from Earth appear to have recently suffered a violent collision, leaving astronomers scratching their heads as to what could have triggered such a massive event and questioning whether such a collision could happen in our own solar system...

11 September 2008

Gamma ray burst was brightest ever


Astronomers from around the world have combined data from ground and space based telescopes to paint a detailed portrait of a stellar explosion that was 200 million times brighter than the galaxy that contained it...

11 August 2008

Sol System "Pretty Special," Say Astronomers


Existing models that attempt to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way, but a new study using recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars turns that view on its head and indicates that solar systems like our own are likely quite rare...

31 July 2008

Titan Moist, Say Cassini Boffins


Scientists using an instrument on NASA's Cassini orbiter have confirmed that at least one other body in our solar system has a liquid lake. The lake, probably composed of ethane, is 150 miles long and located near the south pole of Saturn's moon, Titan...

16 June 2008

DNA Precursors In Meteorite Confirmed As Extraterrestrial


Scientists examining pieces of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969, say that the nucleobases found in the fragments are almost certainly extraterrestrial in origin, leading them to believe that these important building blocks for DNA and RNA may be common throughout the cosmos...

6 June 2008

Moon Dust Could Be Key Ingredient For Giant Lunar Telescope


A cocktail of nanotubes, moon dust and epoxy forms a concrete-like substance that NASA researchers say would be ideal for fabricating a (relatively) low-cost mirror telescope on the moon that would allow the direct imaging of extrasolar planets...

5 June 2008

Line-Of-Sight SETI Revamp Proposed


Earth-based astronomers can detect extrasolar planets as they transit across the face of distant stars, so alien astronomers should be able to detect the Earth as it moves across the face of our sun. That's the logic behind a novel proposal to search for extraterrestrial radio signals in a tiny segment of the sky called the ecliptic band...

23 May 2008

Turbulent Times On Jupiter


Astronomers say that the increased turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging, prompting a theory that Jupiter is in the throes of a major climate shift...

5 May 2008

Solar System's "Bouncing" Linked To Mass Extinction Events


A new computer model of our solar system's movement relative to the Milky Way indicates that it "bounces" up and down through the plane of the galaxy; a cycle that scientists say is a "beautiful match" with the mass extinction events that occur periodically on Earth...

17 April 2008

ETs Very Unlikely, New Calculations Suggest


The chance of intelligent life emerging on another planet is very low - less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years, according to a new mathematical model...

16 April 2008

Quantifying Space Radiation Dangers


Cancer researchers are working to estimate the risk astronauts on long voyages will face from exposure to the high energy radiation that is ubiquitous in space...

14 March 2008

Meteorites Spiced Up Primordial Soup


The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten some special ingredients from outer space...

10 March 2008

Brits Invite ET Over For Corn Chips


Snack food company Doritos is sponsoring a competition to beam a user-created advertisement (using a 2-billion watt transmitter) at a solar system 42 light years away from Earth...

7 March 2008

First Light For Binocular Telescope


The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona has captured images using its twin, side-by-side primary mirrors together for the first time, achieving first "binocular" light...

18 February 2008

Plenty Of Earth-Like Planets Out There, Say Astronomers


Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope now believe that at least 1-in-5 neighboring solar-mass stars in the Milky Way may form terrestrial worlds...

9 January 2008

An Inconvenient Galaxy


The discovery of two new components within a puzzling spiral galaxy confirm that it must have a pair of arms winding in the opposite direction from most other galaxies...

2 January 2008

Polarization Technique Used To "See" Exoplanet


For the first time, astronomers have been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet...

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