This is an artist’s concept of the nearby exoplanet, LTT 1445Ac, which is the size of Earth. NASA, ESA, L. Hustak (STScI) Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have measured an exoplanet and found it to be almost exactly the same size as Earth. However, despite it being Earth-sized, with a rocky surface and nearly …
Gamma rays are the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, containing the most energy, and come … [+] from stars exploding as supernovae. getty A massive burst of gamma rays produced by the explosion of a star almost two billion light-years away was so powerful that it changed Earth’s atmosphere, according to scientists. Gamma rays are the …
Team trekking to cave near Myvatn, Iceland. Agustín Martínez There are likely two great universal truths about astrobiology. Most life in the universe is expected to be unicellular (single-celled). And just because a certain region of a planet or moon is habitable doesn’t mean it’s inhabited. Even so, there’s a whole new generation of geomicrobiologists …
About 5 and a 1/2 years from now, astronomers predict, an asteroid about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall will streak through space within 20,000 miles (32,200 kms) of Earth, the closest any celestial object of that size will have come to our planet in modern history. When it does, a spacecraft …
An unnamed undersea volcano, located about one kilometer (half a mile) off the southern coast of Iwo … [+] Jima, formed a new island in the western Pacific. Kyodo News/AP An unnamed island located about 1 kilometer (half a mile) off the southern coast of Iōtō Island in the western Pacific is the newest addition …
The aurora borealis in Northumberland on the north east coast of England on November 5, 2023. (Photo … [+] by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images) PA Images via Getty Images The northern lights—also called the aurora borealis—could be visible in northern U.S. states after a spike in magnetic activity on the sun on Thursday, …
This image of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from the James … [+] Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego Data from the two most famous space telescopes—Hubble and James Webb—have been combined to produce an epic image of two massive …
Astronaut Frank Borman, who died this week, suiting up on launch day for NASA’s Apollo 8 mission … [+] around the moon, on December 21, 1968. NASA It’s Christmas Eve in 1968, a year of war, assassinations and protests. A voice crackles on radios across the world. “From the crew of Apollo 8, we close …
Atomic oxygen has been directly detected both on the dayside and nightside of Venus, reports … [+] a Nature Communications paper. getty New data from a retired NASA telescope suggests that there is atomic oxygen in the atmosphere of Venus. Although it’s been inferred before, this is the first direct detection on the planet’s day side. Revealed …
The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) as seen from Bloomington, Indiana, earlier this year. (Photo … [+] by Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Solar physicists predict that aurora could be visible from northern U.S. states on Sunday after a major eruption was yesterday observed on the sun by the National …