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The Best Milky Way Photographers of the Year Show the Beauty of Our Galaxy

“Deadvlei” by Stefan Liebermann. Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia. The trees in Deadvlei have been dead for over 500 years. Located in Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia, these saplings grew after local rivers flooded because of severe rainfalls, but died after the sand dunes shifted to section off the river. High above and far in the distance, the band of our Milky Way galaxy forms an

Traces of a Mysterious Particle Predicted Decades Ago May Have Been Detected

Evidence of a long-sought hypothetical particle could have been hiding in plain (X-ray) sight all this time. The X-ray emission coming off a collection of neutron stars known as the Magnificent Seven is so excessive that it could be coming from axions, a long-predicted kind of particle, forged in the dense cores of these dead objects, scientists have demonstrated. If their findings are confi

Humans Have Left Some Cat Breeds With Grimaces Forever Stuck on Their Faces

It's no accident that cats are adorable: We've selectively bred them across generations for maximum cuteness. But that breeding has a downside: It's left some of our feline friends with permanent frowny faces that cannot show emotions. In particular, new research published in December in the journal Frontiers of Veterinary Science suggests that selective breeding for the "brachycephalic," or fl

In 1110, The Moon Vanished From The Sky. We May Finally Know Why

Almost a millennium ago, a major upheaval occurred in Earth's atmosphere: a giant cloud of sulphur-rich particles flowed throughout the stratosphere, turning skies dark for months or even years, before ultimately falling down to Earth. We know this event happened because researchers have drilled and analysed ice cores - samples taken from deep within ice sheets or glaciers, which have trapped s

Physicists Observe Fleeting ‘Polaron’ Quasiparticles For The First Time

Polarons are important nanoscale phenomena: a transient configuration between electrons and atoms (known as quasiparticles) that exist for only trillionths of a second. These configurations have unique characteristics that can help us understand some of the mysterious behaviours of the materials they form within – and scientists have just observed them for the first time. Polarons were mea

This Extremely Fluffy Exoplanet Is Changing Our Understanding of Planetary Formation

One of the fluffiest exoplanets we've ever found in the Milky Way galaxy is challenging our understanding of how giant planets form. It's called WASP-107b, orbiting an orange dwarf star 211 light-years away, and it was already known as one of the lowest density exoplanets when its discovery was announced in 2017. A new analysis shows the puffy planet is even puffier than astronomers thought.

Solar Wind Is Strangely Drawn to Earth’s North Pole, And Scientists Don’t Know Why

Likely the most well-known result of the Earth's magnetic field are the Aurora Borealis and Australis (Northern and Southern Lights). When charged particles from the solar wind run into the Earth's magnetic field, they can occasionally elicit spectacular light displays. For years now, scientists have thought that the charged particles that cause those displays were sent in equal numbers toward

17-Year-Old High Schooler Discovered A New Planet Only 3 Days Into His NASA Internship

Back in summer 2019, 17-year-old high school student Wolf Cukier from New York joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to start his internship, where his job was to examine variations in star brightness captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, also known as TESS. On the third day of his internship, the teenager discovered a brand new planet lying in a system

Multiple underground water reservoirs discovered on Mars, new study finds

A number of liquid bodies have been found on Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that liquid water could exist on the Red Planet long believed to be desolate and hostile to life. A number of liquid bodies have been found on Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that liquid water could exist on the Red Planet long believed to be desolate and hostile to life. A major new study publis

Microbial Life on Venus? Here’s What You Really Need to Know About The Major Discovery

Venus, the Evening Star, may gleam prettily in our night sky, but up close it's about as inhospitable as a rocky planet can be, with sulphuric acid rains, a suffocating CO2 atmosphere, and a surface atmospheric pressure up to 100 times greater than Earth's. Based on our understanding of life on Earth, Venus would be among the last places in the Solar System you'd look to find living creatures.