Read More 2026-07-22 How Sunlight Spends Millennia Before Reaching Earth Energy produced in the Sun's core can take around 170,000 years to reach the surface. This article explains the photon random walk, revised diffusion estimates, and why sunlight is both immediate and ancient.
Read More 2026-07-21 SpaceX Schedules New Starship Launch After Engine Fix SpaceX plans an early-morning Starship launch after fixing a propulsion fault that forced a July abort. The flight will carry 20 Starlink satellites on a suborbital test of deployment and laser links.
Read More 2026-07-20 How a New Entropy Rule Rewrites Black Hole Thermodynamics Penn State researchers propose measuring black hole entropy using dynamical horizons, extending Hawking's thermodynamic laws to evolving black holes and improving interpretation of mergers and evaporation.
Read More 2026-07-19 Saltwater Chemistry Discovered Inside Hillsborough Meteorite A New Jersey meteorite recovered in 2024 reveals salt-rich brines once flowed through its parent asteroid, driving organic chemistry and producing amino acids that could inform origins-of-life theories.
Read More 2026-07-18 Nearby Black Hole Ignites a Persistent Radio Beacon A nearby spiral galaxy has sustained an extraordinary radio outburst for over eight years. Astronomers investigate a long-lived jet from a rapidly accreting black hole, offering a laboratory for early-Universe phenomena.
Read More 2026-07-18 Starship Launch Abort: Raptor Engine Fail Halts SpaceX Push SpaceX aborted a Starship launch when four new Raptor engines failed to ignite. The company will replace engines and delay the next attempt as it investigates, with implications for Starlink deployment and investor confidence.
Read More 2026-07-17 NASA Chooses Companies to Advance Moon and Mars Technologies NASA selected 41 proposals from 37 U.S. companies to co-develop technologies for sustained Moon and Mars exploration, focusing on power, surface operations, orbital logistics, and dust protection.
Read More 2026-07-17 Behind Mars Missions: JPL, Lockheed Martin and HiRISE Teams A concise look at the institutions running Perseverance and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailing roles from JPL and Caltech to Lockheed Martin, the University of Arizona, and BAE Systems.
Read More 2026-07-16 Astronomers Find the Faintest Planet Ever Seen from Earth Astronomers have confirmed Beta Pictoris d, the faintest planet ever directly imaged from Earth, using VLT and JWST data. The detection reveals a cooler, lower-mass gas giant and highlights the value of archival observations.
Read More 2026-07-15 When Light Turns Hostile: Drag on Relativistic Solar Sails A new analysis shows that at roughly 75% of light speed, diffusely scattered photons can create drag on laser-driven solar sails, reducing acceleration efficiency and shaping materials and mission design.
Read More 2026-07-14 How Earth Might Escape the Sun's Red Giant Embrace and Survive New models suggest Earth could be pushed outward as the Sun becomes a red giant, escaping direct engulfment. Fate depends on a competition between tidal drag and stellar mass loss.
Read More 2026-07-14 NASA Wants Four Volunteers to Spend a Year in Mars Habitat NASA is recruiting four people to live for a year in a Mars-like habitat at Johnson Space Center to study long-duration isolation effects, train operations and refine technology for future Moon and Mars missions.
Read More 2026-07-13 How Ancient Quasars Reveal Our Universe’s First Giants Euclid has revealed 31 quasars from the universe's first 700 million years, including the two earliest known at redshifts 7.69 and 7.77. These findings challenge models of rapid supermassive black hole growth and open new follow-up opportunities with JWST and ALMA.
Read More 2026-07-11 Why the Milky Way’s Gamma-Ray Glow Keeps Dark Matter Alive A new machine-learning analysis that includes photon energies reopens the debate over the Milky Way’s gamma-ray glow, keeping dark matter a viable explanation and challenging pulsar-based models.
Read More 2026-07-11 Tiny Shoe-Box Satellites Could Expose Orbital Nuclear Arms Researchers propose using shoebox-sized satellites with neutron detectors to identify hidden nuclear warheads in Earth orbit, offering a non-intrusive verification method to bolster the Outer Space Treaty and space security.
Read More 2026-07-09 Meteorite Tests Sharpen Rosalind Franklin’s Search Laboratory tests on the Murchison meteorite validate MOMA’s ability to separate chiral molecules like pristane and phytane, sharpening ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover strategy for detecting potential biosignatures on Mars.
Read More 2026-07-09 An Unknown Chemical Signature Appears on Pluto and Titan JWST detected an unidentified infrared absorption feature on both Titan and Pluto. Astronomers consider novel organics, complex ice mixtures, and upcoming missions like Dragonfly for definitive answers.
Read More 2026-07-08 Hidden Asteroid Floods Earth with Unseen Cosmic Dust Researchers identify a surprising source of Earth's micrometeorites: a sulfur-rich, carbon-bearing asteroid not represented in meteorite collections. New analyses suggest as much as 10 percent of incoming cosmic dust may come from this hidden parent body.
Read More 2026-07-07 Orbital Data Centers Threaten Ground Telescopes' View Satellite megaconstellations such as Starlink are creating light interference that threatens ground-based observatories. ESO simulations show significant impacts on telescopes like the VLT and Vera C. Rubin Observatory, prompting calls for limits and darker satellite designs.
Read More 2026-07-06 Hubble Captures Messier 3: 500,000 Ancient Stars Revealed Hubble’s new portrait of Messier 3 reveals more than 500,000 stars, a record number of RR Lyrae variables, and clues that the cluster formed from an ancient merger, offering insights into the Milky Way’s history.
