space

In a galaxy 31 million light-years away, astronomers believe they have just found evidence of a planet. After a painstaking research effort combing through thousands of signals, a team led by Rosanne Di Stefano of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that a huge dip in X-ray light from the Whirlpool Galaxy is best explained by an extragalactic planet. The rese

If it's quiet solitude and beauty you seek, there is no better place than the surface of Mars. Mars has earned its moniker as the red planet, but the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can transform the subtle differences of soils into a rainbow of colours. For 10 years, HiRISE has recorded gorgeous - and scientifically valuable - images of Mars. Its photos are

We're now used to seeing beautiful shots of space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, but that doesn't mean they're not still jaw-dropping in their gorgeousness – and this picture of galaxy cluster Abell 3827 certainly fits that description. What you're looking at here is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies of different shapes and sizes, some 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth, with the e

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy is back with a new high-definition look at the moon. The 85-megapixel image was taken right in McCarthy's backyard and shows all the glorious details that one would expect. In fact, one could pour over the image for hours to pick apart all the craters and geographical markings on the moon's surface. Interestingly, the final image isn't completely as it ap

In modern times, a great deal of research has focused on the way that artificial light sources mess up our sleep and health, due to the unnatural effects of illumination after the Sun goes down. But just how unnatural is night-time light anyway? After all, humans have always been exposed to variable levels of light at night, due to reflections of sunlight from the waxing and waning Moon – and

The image above may look like a fairly normal picture of the night sky, but what you're looking at is a lot more special than just glittering stars. Each of those white dots is an active supermassive black hole. And each of those black holes is devouring material at the heart of a galaxy millions of light-years away - that's how they could be pinpointed at all. Totalling 25,000 such dots, as

Creating a quantum computer requires an ability to stroke the edges of reality with the quietest of touches. Too much 'noise' and the delicate state of the system collapses, leaving you with a very expensive paperweight. One way to reduce the risk of this occurring is to build in checks and balances that help to shield the blurred state of reality at the core of quantum computers - and now scie

A global period of upheaval 42,000 years ago was the result of a reversal in Earth's magnetic field, new research has found. According to radiocarbon preserved in ancient tree rings, several centuries' worth of climate breakdown, mass extinctions, and even changes in human behaviour can be directly linked to the last time Earth's magnetic field changed its polarity. he research team has name