Space news stories

The concept of aliens is quite old. Long before human civilization developed a scientifically accurate understanding of the cosmos, people across the world looked up at the sky and wondered what was out there.

This is advance notice of a total lunar eclipse that takes place next weekend. A total lunar eclipse is when the moon passes through the shadow of the Earth.

There’s something wonderful about sitting under the night sky, watching a meteor shower play out overhead.

Within the Milky Way, astronomers have just identified eight new examples of these echoing black holes. Previously, only two had been identified within our galaxy.

Dark matter is one slippery substance. As far as we can tell, it has to exist for our current models of the Universe to work. But not only can we not see it, feel it, or interact with it in any way – we’re not even sure what dark matter really is.

In two weeks’ time, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is going to present the world with new information about our Milky Way.

In the early hours of 30 April 2022, we’ll have the chance to see Venus and Jupiter ‘nearly collide’ as they appear to move incredibly close together from our vantage point.

We still don’t know just how the first life emerged on Earth. One suggestion is that the building blocks arrived here from space; now, a new study of several carbon-rich meteorites has added weight to this idea

The two brightest planets will be a beauty to spot if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizon.

Image from: User:1j1z2 (Wiki Commons)

Surface features similar to ones seen on Greenland ice sheet suggest underground liquid water that could host organic matter.

Beacon of Galaxy message could be sent into heart of Milky Way, where life is deemed most likely to exist.

Nasa’s Hubble telescope has determined the comet’s icy nucleus has a mass of about 500 trillion tonnes and is 85 miles (137km) wide – larger than the US state of Rhode Island.

A new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started.

Five planets, visible to the naked eye, are poised to line up and march across the sky this summer in an unusual alignment that will be graced by the light of the moon.

No matter where you’re standing on Earth, you can only ever see one face of the Moon. Its other cheek is perennially turned away from our planet, and this far side is much more pockmarked with craters than the one facing us.

The super-distant galaxy could have either a supermassive black hole or a nursery of incredibly quick-forming stars.