A Black Hole Might Split in Two by Growing a Pair of Pants
Merging black holes are old news. Physics nearly forbids the reverse, but a few strange loopholes stay open.
Astronomy
Mars Is Two-Faced. Deep Down, Only One Side Runs Hot.
Deep inside Mars, one half refuses to cool off like the other. What keeps it warm is still unsolved, and the answer may be tied to the planet's great divide.
A Baby Star Overpoured the Heavy Alcohol by a Factor of 100
Something in the cold nursery of a young star is turning out far more of one ingredient than any recipe allows. Nobody knows which step the recipes left out.
A Smudge Logged in 1955 May Be a Cosmic Jet's Crash Site
A decades-old catalog entry filed without a category may mark the end of a cosmic jet's path. And the system firing it won't flicker the way it should.
Rain Is Impossible on Pluto. Its Glacier Looks Wet Anyway.
Something is wetting the ice on a world too cold for rain. The best suspect sits at the bottom of a glacier, and most of Pluto hasn't been mapped closely enough to check for more.
A Comet From Another Star Arrived With an Accent
Something drifting in from deep space carries a chemical fingerprint our comets don't match. It hints at what kind of star made it. Where that star is remains a mystery.
One White Dwarf Is Green. Another Is Salmon Pink.
Most of these stellar corpses live up to their name. A few do not, and the ingredient behind two of the strangest sits in your salt shaker.
The Dying Sun Will Cough. Saturn May Not Survive the Fit.
Saturn and its neighbors were supposed to outlast the universe many times over. One model suggests their real expiration date depends on how messily the Sun exhales.
Zombie Star Lurks at the Center of a Supernova
What strings the wreckage of a medieval star blast into evenly spaced beads? Each leading explanation hits a snag.
Black Hole Wears a Star as a Disguise
Webb keeps finding little red dots in the young universe, and nobody agrees on what they are. One of them gave up its power source.
The Farthest Radio Flash Ever Had a Hidden Return Address
The best ground telescopes saw nothing there. Even so, the signal has a home galaxy. What actually fired it is an open question.
Phoenix Planet Seems Reborn From Star's Ashes
This star's light holds a metal no white dwarf had shown before. The planet suspected of feeding it was born in a way ordinary worlds are not.
Every Morning, Mars Builds a Giant Cloud Out of Thin Air
Clouds usually need a speck of dust to get started. One on Mars appears to manage without, and the air it requires has never actually been measured.
A Neutrino Arrived Alone. A Fifth Dimension May Have Kept the Light.
Something may have exploded on our cosmic doorstep and sent exactly one messenger. Everything else that should have escaped never showed up. So where did it go?
Venus May Have Eaten Its Own Moon
Venus is moonless today. It might have kept a moon for close to 2 billion years. What became of it is the part that keeps the question open.
When a Star Steals a Planet, the Moons Go Too
A rogue planet flung into interstellar darkness might not be traveling solo. One of the things it could be dragging along has a hidden ocean in it.
Betelgeuse Is Haunted by a Hotspot That Should Be Long Gone
The surface of a dying giant should never look the same twice. Two images taken years apart show one bright patch that never got reshuffled. What is holding it there?
The Sun Is the Prime Suspect in a Missing Planet Case
Three long-standing mysteries about our sun. One proposed explanation that's either brilliant or deeply unsettling. What exactly is buried down there?