2+ day, 19+ hour ago   (597+ words) Black holes might be hiding something from us. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a simple black hole is surprisingly easy to describe. It has just three main properties: its mass, how fast it spins and its charge. That’s…...

6+ day, 14+ hour ago   (243+ words) The Mount Lemmon Observatory survey has spotted a new asteroid, less than 1 meter across (less than 3 feet across) that’s headed for Earth. The impact should happen in Earth’s atmosphere near northwest Australia around 16 to 16:30 UTC (11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m....

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (312+ words) Today, on September 3, 2026, ESA’s BepiColombo spacecraft is moving one crucial step closer to entering Mercury’s orbit. Bepicolombo launched to space way back October 20, 2018, from Kourou, French Guiana. The spacecraft has spent eight years maneuvering into position so that it can…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (639+ words) On July 23, 2026, astronomers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison announced the confirmation of GJ 523b, an unusually dense mega-Earth first detected in data from NASA’s TESS telescope. GJ 523b is 2.5 times the diameter of Earth. Some super-Earths can be that large, but…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (708+ words) How is that possible? A new study, led by researchers at Stanford University in California, suggests an explanation. The researchers said on August 25, 2026, that gases slowly escaping from below the planets’ surfaces might replenish the gases that have been lost....

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (548+ words) But it was largely overlooked until Kari Sivertzen posted it on X on August 12, 2026. The image shows what looks like a “jellyfish” shape in the distance. The “tentacles” look like they are touching the top of a rocky hill. What…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (510+ words) When searching for possible signs of alien life on exoplanets, scientists tend to focus on atmospheres that might be earthlike. That is, atmospheres dominated by nitrogen, oxygen or even carbon dioxide. But there’s another possibility that has been largely overlooked....

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (77+ words) EarthSky Then, in 2008, NASA released a newly restored version of the original 1966 image of Earth. NASA used refurbished machinery and modern digital technology. Consequently, the new image is higher resolution than what was possible when it was originally taken. Wow!...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (639+ words) Only one spacecraft from Earth has ever visited Pluto. That was New Horizons in 2015. It found that Pluto has an extremely thin, but hazy, atmosphere made mostly of nitrogen. But we knew before New Horizons that Pluto’s atmosphere should thicken…...