Astronomy, Archaeo-astronomy and other interests

Latest News

Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today

  • Tens of Thousands of Fast Radio Bursts Could Help Solve the Greatest Cosmic Mysteries

    Artists' impressions of Fast Radio Bursts from the neighboring Triangulum Galaxy detected by the ground-based radio telescopes. Credit: ASTRON/Futselaar/van Leeuwen

    A new study led by researchers from Caltech demonstrates the effectiveness of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as a tool for measuring cosmological distances and the clustering of matter.

  • Could the Clues to Ancient Alien Civilizations Be Hiding in a Bucket of Moon Dust?

    Image of the south pole of the Moon. Credit - NASA/JPL/USGS

    Most of our experience with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been focused on capturing radio signals that alien species have sent out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. That creates a huge “synchronicity” problem - what if there aren’t any alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals now, but there were a billion years ago? The Milky Way is around 13 billion years old - hoping that we exist at the same time as an alien civilization that happens to be actively messaging is a huge leap of faith. But, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv and submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology by Lewis J Pinault, as associated researcher at the SETI Institute, and his co-authors, we could take a completely alternative approach to trying to find alien civilizations - by looking for evidence of them in lunar dirt.

  • A New Catalog of Close to 3,000 Supernova Challenges Theories on Dark Energy

    Artist's illustration of a supernova breaching the surface of the star mere hours after it was first detected. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

    The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion.

  • Earth From Orbit Is Unpredictable and Messy. Could 'Liquid' AI Clear the View?

    View of Eritrea, partially covered in clouds, taken form the ISS. Credit - Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center

    Monitoring Earth from above is a messy, inconsistent business. Clouds can block a satellite view, the angle of the Sun can create huge shadows, and orbital paths might not take a system across the same general area for weeks. That inconsistency is hard to deal with for traditional software, and can even confuse standard deep learning algorithms. But, according to a new review paper by researchers Raul-Alexandru Gorgan and Dorian Gorgan of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, there’s a new type of frontier AI that could be able to help - bio-inspired Liquid Neural Networks.

  • A New Design For A Plasma Engine Fuels On Only Thin Air

    Fully Assembled RF Helicon-based Plasma Thruster. Credit - F. Romano

    Choosing what orbit to put a satellite in always comes with trade-offs. When it comes to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 100-450 km, there are distinct advantages. Remote sensing cameras can take better pictures, comms and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag will automatically clean up dead satellites. But there’s also a cost - air friction requires any satellite in this orbit to use an engine near constantly to stay in orbit, which in turn requires fuel - typically in the form of expensive gases like Xenon. So, as part of his PhD thesis at the University of Stuttgart, which is available in arXiv, Francesco Romano decided to solve that problem by using the very air molecules that cause that friction as fuel for a plasma engine to keep satellites aloft indefinitely in VLEO.

  • Venus Moon Would Have Been Doomed From The Start, Says New Paper

    Ultraviolet image of Venus. Credit: Wikipedia

    Venus likely never had a moon and even if it did, it would have soon been torn asunder by the planet’s own gravity, says prominent planetary astrophysicist.

  • Dense Galaxies Are Carving Out A Bubble in the Early Universe

    Researches working with JWST data have found an overdensity of galaxies in the early Universe. They're close together and interacting, and they may be carving out a bubble of ionized hydrogen. Is the space telescope seeing the first signs of cosmic reionization? Image Credit: Wu et al. 2026. ApJ

    Light could only travel freely in the Universe after cosmic reionization. Before that, neutral hydrogen stopped photons from travelling. The JWST has found evidence of an overdensity of galaxies carving out a bubble of reionization. Is this how it all started?

  • How Big Can The Universe's First Starbursts Get?

    Artist's conception of a massive Pop III star in the early universe. Credit - NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine

    As our telescopes have improved and we’ve been able to peer farther back in time, we’ve begun finding more fascinating features of the universe. But one thing we definitely haven’t found yet is Population III (Pop III) stars. These were the earliest stars in the universe, formed completely from pristine hydrogen and helium, with no “metals” (i.e. elements heavier than those two) polluting their processes. They are also theorized to be absolutely massive, and “die with passion” as Bill Wurtz once put it in a famous YouTube video. A new paper, available in pre-print form on arXiv by Tae Bong Jeon from the Cosmic Frontier Center at the University of Texas at Austin, looks at just how massive those starbursts could be, and whether the James Webb Space Telescope could detect one.

  • What's Carving Active Gullies on Mars? It's Not Water

    Some of the "frosted" gullies as seen on Mars. Credit - NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

    Scientists were shocked when they received the first images of Martian gullies. They were even more shocked as those gullies appeared to change over time. Their similarities to gullies seen on Earth were uncanny, but all of Earth’s gullies are formed by the water run-off, and Martian is too cold and has too sparse an atmosphere to have liquid water on its surface. Whatever has been causing those changing gullies couldn’t have been water, so what was it? A new paper from Apolline Leclef of the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale at Université Paris-Saclay and her colleagues, available in pre-print on arXiv, shows how they are likely caused by CO2 frost turning into a fluid.

  • NASA's Next Great Observatory Could Spot Oceans on Distant Worlds

    Image of the specular reflection (i.e. glint) off of Titan, captured by Cassini. Credit - NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho

    We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets so far. Dozens of them have been in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where, at least in theory, they could host an ocean. But we’ve never definitively found a liquid ocean on another planet. A new paper from researchers Eleanor Cornish and Tyler Robinson of the University of Arizona, available in pre-print on arXiv and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, looks at a unique way we might be able to find one - by looking for its “glint”.