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.
Astronomy
The Same Molecule in Your Raspberry Jam Turned Up Near the Center of the Galaxy
The same sugar molecule in raspberries just turned up near the galactic center, in quantities nobody expected. What that means for life on Earth is still wide open.
Two Planets We've Been Calling Ice Giants May Be Full of Magma
The two planets have been called ice giants for decades. Modeling suggests their interiors may be roiling oceans of magma instead.
Black Holes Are Messy Eaters. Now We Have the Radio Receipts.
Scientists assumed black holes went silent after swallowing a star. Turns out they were just warming up.
A Dying Star May Spark an Entire Baby Universe Inside Itself
What if a dying star doesn't collapse into a black hole, but births an entirely new universe instead? The math behind gravastars just got a lot harder to ignore.
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.
A Star the Size of 1,500 Suns Went from Red to Yellow
WOH G64 shifted colors over a decade. The leading explanation is that the star may be approaching a supernova.
A Galaxy Did a Supersonic Cannonball. A Student in the Himalayas Caught the Glow.
A galaxy plowing through near-empty space fast enough to leave a glowing 1.8-million-light-year scar and a student in the Himalayas found it first.
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 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?
The Universe's First Stars Were Monsters. We Just Found Their Fingerprints.
They burned for a few million years, then vanished. But these universe-scale monsters left something behind, and it took 13 billion years and the right telescope to read it.
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?