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?
Astronomy
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?
A Star That Drains Its Partner Has Been Broadcasting the Crime Scene for 20 Years
A puzzling radio signal stumped astronomers for two decades. The culprit turned out to be a white dwarf quietly draining its companion star — and broadcasting every meal.
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.
Mini Neptune Planets Clogged with Diesel Exhaust
A chemical engineer looked at JWST's baffling exoplanet data and recognized something instantly: the spectral signature of diesel soot.
A Space Peanut Is Tumbling Through the Asteroid Belt
It's shaped like a peanut, it wobbles on two axes, and it used to have water. NASA called this flyby a warm-up. The asteroid apparently didn't get that memo.
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?
Fireball Over Boston Detonates With the Force of 300 Tons of TNT. Casual Saturday.
A 5.6-metric-ton iron meteor exploded over Boston creating a sonic boom. NASA has a technical name for where it landed.
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.