space

By now, we have discovered hundreds of stars with multiple planets orbiting them scattered throughout the galaxy. Each one is unique, but a system orbiting the star HD 158259, 88 light-years away, is truly special. The star itself is about the same mass and a little larger than the Sun - a minority in our exoplanet hunts. It's orbited by six planets: a super-Earth and five mini-Neptunes. Aft

Just over a year ago, on 12 April 2019, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration made a detection of gravitational waves, rippling out across space-time from the epic collision of two black holes from 2.4 billion light-years away. By now, marvellously, this is nothing out of the ordinary in and of itself. But, as astronomers have now revealed, the actual GW 190412 collision was something we have never seen

In the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic, many of us find ourselves adjusting to working from home, with all the distractions of kids, pets, unfinished DIY projects and Netflix specials to contend with. This move to WFH has touched every business and industry where such a shift is possible, and luckily that includes the team responsible for the Mars Curiosity rover, which normally opera

Stuck at home with clear skies? We're all in a similar situation, as the ongoing pandemic sees most of the worldwide amateur astronomy community observing from home or from their backyard. One astronomical sure-fire event coming up this week requires no special equipment, just a set of working 'Mk-1 eyeballs' and a clear sky: the April Lyrids. These springtime meteors get their name from the

When the first known comet from interstellar space was spotted traversing the Solar System in late August of last year, astronomers snapped to attention. 2I/Borisov was an extraordinarily rare opportunity to study the formation of comets around other stars. In those initial measurements, 2I/Borisov seemed a heck of a lot like comets from the outer Solar System. But a new analysis has revealed t

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Prince Rupert's drop, this weird, scientific enigma is a seemingly simple glass object created by dripping molten glass into very cold water. That process creates all kinds of crazy physical properties, which we'll go into later, but the end result is a teardrop-shaped piece of glass that's practically unbreakable at its bulbous 'drop' end, but will

Data from a network of newly installed weather stations atop Mount Everest shows that the mountain experiences some of the most intense sunlight on the planet. As alpine mountaineers are all too aware, the sun can be brutally fierce atop snow-capped peaks. Preliminary data from the weather stations on Mount Everest suggests this effect is amplified to an astounding degree at the top of the w

They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange "sediment organism" that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria. This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with time scientists found it could make other things too, like bacterial n

One of the defining characteristics of the mysterious deep-space signals we call fast radio bursts is that they are unpredictable. They belch out across the cosmos without rhyme or reason, with no discernible pattern, making them incredibly hard to study. Now, for the first time, astronomers have found a fast radio burst (FRB) that repeats on a regular cycle. Every 16.35 days, the signal nam