How puffy white dwarfs could shed light on mysterious dark matter

White dwarfs are giving up more of their secrets, with the discovery that the hotter they are, the puffier their outer layers are. While this finding may sound immaterial, understanding the structure of white dwarfs could ultimately prove key in discovering what mysterious dark matter is made from. White dwarfs are the core remains of … Read more

Did the ‘Lower Decks’ finale just set up an exciting new ‘Star Trek’ spin-off?

“All Good Things”, “What You Leave Behind”, “Endgame”… Now “The New Next Generation” becomes the latest addition to the pantheon of memorable “Star Trek” season finales, as the franchise’s only out-and-out comedy, “Lower Decks”, goes out in style. After last week’s multiverse-hopping adventures, the race is on to save the prime universe from a fissure … Read more

SpaceX will launch Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander to the moon in mid-January with these 10 NASA payloads

Firefly Aerospace’s first mission to the moon is nearly ready to fly. The company’s Blue Ghost lunar lander arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Monday (Dec. 16) for integration with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the robotic probe — as well as the private Japanese moon lander Resilience … Read more

‘Missing link’ black hole in the Milky Way’s densest star cluster is still missing

New research may have delivered bad news for scientists who thought they had discovered a “missing link” black hole in a dense Milky Way star cluster. The new findings imply that, rather than a rare intermediate-mass black hole, there is a cluster of stellar-mass black holes in Omega Centauri, believed to be the remains of … Read more

Unraveling the mystery of blue straggler stars

The globular cluster M53, imaged here by the Hubble Space Telescope, is home to mostly older stars – but also a population of strange, young-looking blue straggler stars. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA Meet HD 65907, an imposter. It’s a star that appears far too young for its age. Astronomers have finally cracked the case of this … Read more

This baby exoplanet is made of different stuff than its birth cloud

Planets can differ from the swirling envelopes of gas and dust from which they are born, astronomers have found. The revelation seems to indicate that the planet formation model favored by scientists may be overly simple. A team led by researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois made this discovery while observing a still-forming planet and … Read more

Human artifacts abandoned on Mars should be cataloged to track our migration beyond Earth

Scientists are calling for the cataloging of human artifacts left on Mars — from spacecraft and landers to rovers, probes, and other debris — to document humanity’s earliest steps in interplanetary exploration. “Our main argument is that Homo sapiens are currently undergoing a dispersal, which first started out of Africa, reached other continents, and has … Read more

The JWST Looked Over the Hubble’s Shoulder and Confirmed that the Universe is Expanding Faster

It’s axiomatic that the Universe is expanding. However, the rate of expansion hasn’t remained the same. It appears that the Universe is expanding more quickly now than it did in the past. Astronomers have struggled to understand this and have wondered if the apparent acceleration is due to instrument errors. The JWST has put that … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope catches monster black hole napping after ‘overeating’ in the early universe

Napping after overfeeding on food is a dilemma many of us will be fortunate to face on Christmas Day. New research has shown that, billions of years ago, some early black holes also had to nap after overindulging. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers spotted a dormant supermassive black hole that existed just … Read more

Starris: Optimax Space Systems and LLNL announce commercialization partnership for monolithic telescope technology to support tactically responsive space missions

This is a customer submitted press release. Submit your press release. Ontario, N.Y. / Livermore, Calif. — Starris: Optimax Space Systems and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announce a commercialization partnership for LLNL’s patented monolithic telescope technology — which accelerates rapid deployment of modular optical designs for high-resolution or high sensitivity space imagery. Starris has … Read more