Space

Recent Space Stories

A short gamma-ray burst followed by 10 minutes of X-rays may reveal a long-lived magnetar born from a neutron star merger.

Einstein Probe catches a neutron star merger glowing far longer than expected

Einstein Probe caught an ordinary short gamma-ray burst followed by an extraordinary X-ray glow lasting nearly 10 minutes.

Joshua ShavitupdaPublished Oct 2, 2026 9:07 AM PDT

Planetary chemistry suggests Earth grew mostly from pebble-built protoplanets, while Mars formed mainly from larger planetesimals.

Space New evidence challenges the idea that Earth and Mars formed the same way Joseph Shavit

Four lunar satellites kept a BeiDou navigation network stable for 60 days, cutting autonomous orbit error to just 0.35 meters.

Space The Moon could solve a stubborn GPS navigation problem for satellites around Earth Joseph Shavit

The binary star system 70 Ophiuchi AB, or 70 Oph AB, can be seen near the center of this image taken by the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1937.

Space 170-year-old search narrows the hunt for planets around nearby binary system 70 Ophiuchi Joseph Shavit

An artist's concept of a gas giant planet orbiting a red dwarf.

Space JWST uncovers a surprisingly cold atmosphere on the giant planet HATS-6 b Joseph Shavit

New zircon dating suggests Oklahoma’s Ames crater is about 100 million years younger than thought and may date to the Late Devonian.

Space Oklahoma crater may be 100 million years younger than thought, shifting it toward a mass extinction event Joseph Shavit

Enceladus may sort and concentrate ocean chemicals into individual ice grains, potentially making rare biosignatures easier to detect.

Space Saturn’s moon Enceladus offers new clues in the search for alien life Joseph Shavit

A view of CHIME at night, with the Milky Way in the background.

Space Canadian radio telescope (CHIME) is turning hydrogen into a map of cosmic expansion Joshua Shavit

Chang’e-6 samples contain the first natural lunar γ-iron, a magnetic nanoparticle phase that may preserve clues to the Moon’s ancient fields.

Space Chang’e-6 samples reveal a form of magnetic iron never before found on the Moon Joseph Shavit

Artist's illustration of a supermassive black hole at the center of a radio galaxy launching powerful jets (shown in pink) all the way into the galaxy's CGM.

Space Supermassive black holes leave a glowing trail far beyond their host galaxies Joseph Shavit

Perseverance found Jezero rocks altered by at least three water systems involving carbonates, silica and later hydrothermal fluids. This Mastcam-Z-enhanced color photo mosaic shows a butte near Jezero crater.

Space NASA finds a surprisingly complex history of water on ancient Mars Joseph Shavit

A gravitational tug involving Earth’s inner core may explain why the planet’s day length shifts by milliseconds over decades.

Space Earth’s inner core may be quietly changing the length of our days Joshua Shavit

Enceladus may naturally concentrate biosignatures in ice grains, while experiments show microbes can tolerate its unusual ocean chemistry.

Space Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus may make alien life easier to find than scientists thought Joseph Shavit

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission found that Bennu shares a distinctive isotopic fingerprint with asteroid Ryugu and rare CI carbonaceous chondrites.

Space Asteroid Bennu may have formed much closer to the Sun than scientists thought Joseph Shavit

Artist's visualization of an early galaxy and its surrounding gaseous environment. The orange structures represent metal-enriched gas being expelled from the galaxy, illustrating how young galaxies began dispersing heavy elements into their surroundings within the universe's first 500 million years. The visualization is based on publicly available FIRE-2 cosmological simulation data and is not a direct telescope image.

Space JWST finds early galaxies were already spreading the ingredients for planets and life Joseph Shavit

The Moon is magnetically quiet today, but a buried volcanic structure on its far side may preserve evidence of a very different past.

Space Buried volcanic structure suggests that our Moon once had a powerful magnetic field Joseph Shavit

The illustration shows how Jupiter uses a series of regions called shocklets to interact with the solar wind and slow it before it reaches the planet’s main bow shock.

Space NASA’s Juno reveals how Jupiter’s giant magnetic shield absorbs the solar wind Joseph Shavit