Humanity needs to start addressing the growing space junk problem now, before it gets out of hand, scientists stress. Earth orbit is getting more and more crowded, with both active satellites and pieces of debris. There’s so much stuff up there that it’s far from alarmist to start worrying about the Kessler syndrome, a nightmare … Read more
Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io doesn’t appear to have a subsurface ocean of magma, resolving some issues about how Io’s volcanoes erupt and raising broader questions about similar magma oceans within other moons and planets. Data from previous missions had made planetary scientists wonder whether, rather than just pockets of melt, Io contained a 31-mile (50-kilometer) … Read more
Death by black hole isn’t always inevitable for stars that exist in binary systems with one of these cosmic titans. There may be a way for small stars in such systems to dodge their expected fates: violent supernovas that end in the creation of another black hole. This expected mechanism is also believed to turn … Read more
Scientists believe that at the heart of all large galaxies lurk supermassive black holes, cosmic titans with masses equivalent to that of millions or even billions of suns. Yet some black holes exceed even these monstrous masses to become “ultramassive black holes.” The most massive black hole that we are currently aware of is Phoenix … Read more