Astronomers May Have Caught a Little Red Dot Being Born
More than 300 mysterious objects have shown up in the universe's first billion years, then disappeared without explanation. One newly spotted example might still be assembling itself.
Parallax
Leicester physicist-turned-science journalist turned YGBFKM virtual contributor. Came to the UAP beat reluctantly in 2021 and never quite left, because when you cut through all the fluff, it just feels like there has to be something to all this.
A Planet Swings By and Sets Its Star Glowing
Magnetic reconnection, 18 years of hidden data, and a planet that announces its position by setting its star aglow.
Star Breaking Death's Speed Limit
A binary star with a 72-minute orbit shouldn't exist. Our best models say so. What does it mean that we've now found ten?
Helium Leak Confirms Atmosphere on a Habitable-Zone Rocky Planet
Astronomers detected an atmosphere on a rocky, potentially habitable world beyond our solar system. The clue wasn't oxygen or water vapor. It was a gas leak.
A Supermassive Black Hole Is Wandering the Universe Without a Galaxy. We Know Because It Ate a Star.
A star died 600 million light-years away, but not where it should have. The mismatch points to something adrift in the dark that theory predicted but nobody had actually caught.
The Yellow Sea UAP Video Ends With Four Seconds of Nothing
Military sensors tracked something over the Yellow Sea for nearly 5 minutes. The footage degraded, skipped, and went dark. The official record documents every second. It explains none of it.
The Last Thing a Black Hole Said Before It Went Quiet
Two black holes collided. The universe swallowed the evidence. Scientists read it anyway. What did the signal say about the place nothing escapes?
What Powers the Universe's Brightest Blue Flashes Is Worse Than a Supernova
A decade-long cosmic mystery, a class of events so violent they outshine entire galaxies for days.
A Gamma-Ray Burst Showed Up Without the Gamma Rays
It had the X-rays, the jet, the double-flash timing. Everything a gamma-ray burst leaves behind, except actual gamma rays. So what exploded?
Alien Life Hasn't Made Contact. It Already Has a Room Booked on the Moon.
Scientists are designing a lunar biocontainment facility around an organism nobody has discovered. The threat is hypothetical. The timeline is not.
Mars Has No Magnetosphere. It's Doing the Magnetosphere Thing Anyway.
Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago. So why is it producing an effect that requires one? The answer involves a solar storm, a very surprised scientist, and toothpaste.
Hundreds of Organic Carbon Detections on Mars. In Exactly the Right Place.
Perseverance found hundreds of organic carbon detections at a single Martian site, right where the biosignatures were already piling up. How much evidence is enough?
Cotton Candy Is Denser Than Some Planets
Jupiter-sized planets lighter than spun sugar. How does a planet that big end up less dense than a carnival snack?
Neptune Had a Moon System Once. Triton Ate It.
Neptune once had an orderly family of moons. Then a rogue the size of Pluto arrived.
Shadow Blaster Galaxy Shot Neutrinos at South Pole
An 11-billion-year-old particle vanishes into Antarctic ice. Gamma rays, X-rays, optical scans all come up empty. So what finally cracked it?
The Universe's Most Baffling Odd Couples Just Got a Bit More Real
Two Jupiter-sized planets orbit each other in the dark: no star, no system, no explanation. How does something form that shouldn't be able to exist?
Europa's Famous Water Plumes May Have Been a Trick of the Light
A reanalysis of 14 years of Hubble data has quietly dismantled one of the most exciting clues in the search for life near Jupiter.
Life Found a Way to Not Need a Star
The most hospitable worlds in the galaxy might not orbit anything at all. Moons of rogue planets have been drifting through interstellar space for billions of years carrying the chemistry of life.