Space news stories

The explosion is more than 10 times brighter than any recorded exploding star – known as a supernova.

Crusts, cracks and other geologic features on sand dunes near the Martian equator are leading researchers to believe there may have been water there much more recently than previously thought. See April 2023 research here and Jan 2021 research here.

Quasars, the most extreme phenomena in the universe, are triggered when galactic collisions deliver gas to feeding black holes, new research suggests.

The nature of dark matter is a longstanding puzzle. However, a new study by Alfred Amruth at the University of Hong Kong and colleagues, published in Nature Astronomy, uses the gravitational bending of light to bring us a step closer to understanding.

Bubbles of radiation billowing from the galactic center may have started as a stream of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, new observations suggest.

Hydrogen released during large impacts might have boosted Mars’s surface temperature above freezing for thousands or even millions of years, enabling liquid water to flow over the Red Planet. See research here.

A popular and easy method for validating whether or not a chunk of rock is a meteorite, and what kind of meteorite it is, has been inadvertently erasing invaluable information locked inside. See the research here.

European Space Agency probe due to arrive in 2031 to scan icy moons and study Great Red Spot

What do medieval monks and volcanic eruptions have in common? According to a team of researchers led by the University of Geneva, quite a bit because chronicles from the 12th and 13th century are helping volcanologists to precisely date ancient eruptions based on descriptions of lunar eclipses. See the research here.

Image from: .scopex (Wiki Commons)

It’s being described as the most detailed ever map of the influence of dark matter through cosmic history. A telescope in Chile has traced the distribution of this mysterious stuff on a quarter of the sky and across almost 14 billion years of time.

The hellscape of Venus is riddled with even more volcanoes than scientists thought. See the research here.

In a new study, astronomers propose that extraterrestrial life could exist in so-called terminator zones, the border between light and dark halves of an exoplanet.

An ultramassive black hole about 30bn times the mass of the Sun has been discovered by astronomers in the UK.

Our planet hides its scars well. It’s a shame, actually, as evidence of previous asteroid strikes might help us better plan for the next catastrophic impact. In fact, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center chief scientist, James Garvin, thinks we might have been misreading traces of some of the more serious asteroid strikes that have occurred within the past million years

Vestiges of a moon-forming cataclysm could have kick-started plate tectonics on Earth. See research here.