We breathe oxygen and nitrogen gas in our atmosphere every day, but did you know that these gases also float through space, around and between galaxies? Our team captured a high-resolution view of how these elements make it so far out into the universe. Our study is now published in Monthly Notices of the Royal ...
After a decade of silence, one of the most powerful magnets in the universe suddenly burst back to life in late 2018. The reawakening of this “magnetar,” a city-sized star named XTE J1810-197, born from a supernova explosion, was an incredibly violent affair. The snapping and untwisting of the tangled magnetic field released enormous amounts ...
How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature. Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material — mainly dust ...
How stable are planetary systems? Will Earth and its seven siblings always continue in their steady celestial paths, or might we one day be randomly ejected from our cosmic home? Physicists understand the rules that govern the orbits of two celestial bodies, but as soon as a third is added (let alone a fourth, fifth, ...
Scientists have no reported evidence of the actual conditions in Hell, perhaps because no one has ever returned to tell the tale. Hell has been imagined as a supremely uncomfortable place, hot and hostile to bodily forms of human life, similar to a black hole. Thanks to a vast astronomical survey of the entire sky, ...
Since antiquity, Mars has been a source of myth, lore, and inspiration. It is also an exciting place to research — a legitimate candidate for us to find some form of alien life. Since the 1960s, Mars has been a popular destination for space missions. For the first time, NASA has invited the private sector ...
Capable of receiving both radio frequency and optical signals, the DSN’s hybrid antenna has tracked and decoded the downlink laser from DSOC aboard NASA’s Psyche mission. An experimental antenna has received both radio frequency and near-infrared laser signals from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft as it travels through deep space. This shows it’s possible for the giant dish antennas ...
What is the universe made of? What role does “dark energy” play? This question has driven astronomers for hundreds of years. For the past quarter of a century, scientists have believed “normal” stuff like atoms and molecules that make up you, me, Earth, and nearly everything we can see only accounts for 5 percent of ...
Like a shiny, round ornament ready to be placed in the perfect spot on a holiday tree, supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) gleams in a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. As part of the 2023 Holidays at the White House, First Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden debuted the first-ever ...
The scientific worldview has made great contributions to humanity’s flourishing. However, as science advances into territory once firmly held by religion — attempting to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life, and consciousness — science communication often paints a fairly pessimistic picture of the world. Take a few examples. An article in New ...