Space news stories

Look Up! One of The Year’s Best Meteor Showers Is Visible This Month
20th July 2023 | sciencealert.com | Humans, Space

Annually, between July 17 and August 24, the Perseid meteor shower puts on one of the brightest cosmic events of the year. This year the meteor shower is predicted to reach its peak on the night of August 13, as Earth passes through the densest part of the Comet 109/Swift-Tuttle’s trail.

New technique represents major breakthrough in search for aliens, scientists say
19th July 2023 | independent.co.uk | Humans, Space, Tech

A new technique is a dramatic breakthrough in the search for alien life, astronomers say. See the research here.

Ryugu asteroid samples are sprinkled with stardust older than the solar system
18th July 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Space

Slivers of Ryugu material, snagged by the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to come from the solar system’s frozen fringes rather than from the asteroid itself, scientists report July 14 in Science Advances. These foreign fragments could illuminate details of the solar system’s history.

This Meteorite Left Earth. Thousands of Years Later, It Came Back.
14th July 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Earth, Space, Weird

They say what goes around comes around, but it’s unlikely the saying was supposed to ever refer to meteorites. And yet here we are. Scientists are seeking to confirm that a black rock discovered in Morocco in 2018 departed Earth’s pull for outer space, only to return to it like a prodigal child.

The ‘man in the moon’ may be hundreds of millions of years older than we thought
13th July 2023 | livescience.com | Ancient, Space

Much of the moon’s surface is 200 million years older than previously estimated, a new analysis suggests.

The Entire Universe Could Be Twice as Old as We Thought
13th July 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Space

By marrying the existing expanding Universe theory with a fringe explanation called the tired light hypothesis, Gupta has found the Big Bang could have taken place an astonishing 26.7 billion years ago. That’s twice as old as current models predict. This research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Stars From The Dawn of The Universe Found Hidden in The Heart of Our Own Galaxy
10th July 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Space

Ancient stars born during the Cosmic Dawn have been identified in the center of the Milky Way. As part of a survey to uncover some of the oldest known stars in the Universe, scientists conducted a comprehensive search for these ancient but elusive stars. Their findings have been presented at the UK’s annual National Astronomy Meeting.

Large sub-surface granite formation signals ancient volcanic activity on moon’s dark side
6th July 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Space, Weird

A large formation of granite discovered below the lunar surface likely was formed from the cooling of molten lava that fed a volcano or volcanoes that erupted early in the moon’s history—as long as 3.5 billion years ago.

Astronomers observe time dilation in early universe
5th July 2023 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Humans, Space

Events appear to unfold five times slower when the universe was a tenth of its present age, in effect, predicted by Einstein.

A Stunning Revelation Could Mean Betelgeuse Is Set to Blow
3rd July 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Space

A little more than 650 light-years from Earth, an old, red star lies dying. A fresh prognosis on Betelgeuse’s condition based on its pulsations gives the celebrated supergiant just a few decades before it collapses in a final flash of glory. This research is available on arXiv.

Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea, but new observations demand a radical rethink
30th June 2023 phys.org | Humans, Space

Our ideas about the universe are based on a century-old simplification known as the cosmological principle…In our recent review published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, we discuss how new discoveries force us to radically re-examine our assumptions and change our understanding of the universe.

Recent Gullies on Mars Suggest Water Could Flow on The Planet Again in The Future
30th June 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Humans, Space

Ravine-like channels on Mars are something of a puzzle. They look like the gullies in Antarctica caused by melting glaciers, but the elevated locations of many of the features aren’t places we’d expect to find recently flowing water. The research has been published in Science.

Nasa aims to mine resources on moon in next decade
29th June 2023 | theguardian.com | Humans, Space

US space agency Nasa has ambitions to mine resources on the moon in the next decade, with the goal of excavating the soil there by 2032.

A newfound gravitational wave ‘hum’ may be from the universe’s biggest black holes
29th June 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Space

Beneath the explosions, collisions and other intermittent bangs in the cosmos, scientists suspect a nonstop soundtrack plays, created by ripples in spacetime continually washing through the universe. After more than a decade of searching, scientists may have finally heard that background hum. See the research here.

A star cluster in the Milky Way appears to be as old as the universe
26th June 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Space

Star cluster M92, a densely packed ball of stars roughly 27,000 light-years from Earth, is about 13.8 billion years old, researchers report in a paper submitted June 3 to arXiv.org. The newly refined age estimate makes this clump of stars nearly the same age as the universe.

UFO Mystery: Controversy Swirls Around Report of Retrieved ‘Craft’
12th June 2023 | sciencealert.com | Humans, Space, Weird

Claims the US government has secretly retrieved crashed alien spacecraft and their non-human occupants are hardly new…Now, however, journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal have injected fresh vigor into these aging claims – apparently with the Pentagon’s approval.

News stories covering Space, from the macro to the micro, including Space exploration, quantum physics and quantum weirdness.