There are a lot of ways for dead stars to blow their tops. Astronomers discovered this explosive diversity when they assessed 3,628 exploding white dwarfs during a next-generation sky survey conducted using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) between March 2018 and December 2020. That means that this dataset of nearby supernovas is several times larger … Read more
Two of the most powerful people in the world continue to push the “stranded astronaut” narrative. In a recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were asked about the administration’s plans for space, their commitment to landing astronauts on Mars and the plan to “rescue,” … Read more
You can find Cassiopeia the Queen in the northwest in the evening around the month of February. It’s one of the easiest constellations to spot! It has the shape of an M or W. If you have a dark sky, you can also look above Cassiopeia for a famous binocular object, the Double Cluster in … Read more
If Intermediate-Mass Black Holes (IMBHs) are real, astronomers expect to find them in dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. There’s tantalizing evidence that they exist but no conclusive proof. So far, there are only candidates. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has found 300 additional candidate IMBHs. Logic says that IMBHs should exist. We know of … Read more
Every Martian year (which last 686.98 Earth days), the Red Planet experiences regional dust storms that coincide with summer in the southern hemisphere. Every three Martian years (five and a half Earth years), these storms grow so large that they encompass the entire planet and are visible from Earth. These storms are a serious hazard … Read more
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July 2015. Sailing onward, the probe carried out a Jan. 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond Neptune called the … Read more
Using 16 years of data from NASA’s gamma-ray detecting Fermi spacecraft, astronomers have discovered that “microquasars,” systems in which a black hole is slowly devouring a star, may be small, but they pack one heck of a punch. Despite their diminutive nature, this research suggests even microquasars snacking on small stars can have an impressive … Read more
As far as we can tell, life needs water. Cells can’t perform their functions without it. Some have suggested that other exotic liquids, like liquid methane, could do the job on worlds like Saturn’s moon Titan. That idea is highly speculative, though. So, it makes sense that NASA is launching a spacecraft dedicated to the … Read more
Essential info: Price: $99.99/£89.99 Model number: 76313 Number of pieces: 931 Dimensions: 4 x 11 x 2.5 inches (11 x 28 x 7cm) Recommend age: 12+ I don’t think any other Lego set has been quite as ‘what you see is what you get’ as the Marvel Logo & Minifigures set. As the name suggests, … Read more
In an effort to learn more about astronaut health and the effects of space on the human body, NASA is conducting a new experiment aboard the International Space Station to speed up the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus improving the health safety not only of astronauts but patients back on Earth. Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant … Read more