World
Our understanding of dark matter just became even more warped — literally
World
The Moon’s surface is rusting — and Earth may be to blame
World
Close-up shots of the Sun reveal popcorn-like sunspots
All stories in Space
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Astronomers witnessed the birth of the first intermediate black hole
An international team of astronomers witnessed the birth of the first intermediate-mass black hole ever detected. On May 21, 2019, a pair of gravitational wave observatories — The Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, and Virgo, a three-kilometer-long ...
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Space telescopes are great — so why do we still build ground-based ones?
At the dawn of the 17th Century, Galileo Galilei began the first major search of the night sky (as well as the Sun!) using a new Dutch invention — the telescope. In the era when William Shakespeare wrote the works that would make him famous, people (and telescopes) were bound ...
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Alien-human hybrids are unlikely but not impossible, scientists say
Human-alien hybrids fill science fiction stories, and the most famous of these is Mr. Spock from Star Trek — the logical science officer of the starship Enterprise. Seeing such real-life beings born from alien and human parents in the future, however, remains unlikely — but not ...
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NASA's impressive new AI can predict when a hurricane intensifies
NASA has developed a machine learning model that, in tests, predicted when a hurricane will intensify more accurately than ...
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New study suggests we all might be children of alien organisms
Panspermia means “seeds everywhere,” and the concept represents the idea that life on Earth may have been seeded by biological lifeforms from outer space. This long-controversial idea recently received some experimental support from a new study out of Japan. These extremes of ...
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Hubble reveals Andromeda has made contact with our galaxy
A magnificent cloud of diffuse halo of plasma surrounding our galactic neighbor, Andromeda, was recently mapped by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope. This envelope of electrically-charged particles stretches 1.3 million light years from it’s home galaxy, halfway ...
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There's an asteroid heading for Earth — but scientists tell us not to worry
Social media around the world lit up over the weekend, discussing the possibility that an asteroid (known as 2018 VP₁) could crash into Earth on November 2. It seemed only fitting. What better way to round off a year that has seen catastrophic floods, explosions, fires, and storms ...
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Astronomers think our Sun may have a long lost twin
A twin star of the Sun may have formed along with our solar system, a new study from the Center for Astrophysics finds. If confirmed, the presence of a second star would explain mysteries of the Solar System. This would mean the Oort Cloud at the edge of our system likely formed ...
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A supernova may have caused Earth’s mass extinction 359 million years ago
The cause of the Devonian period extinction 359 million years ago, ranked as one of the five great extinctions of life ...
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This AI just found 50 new planets in a huge NASA dataset
An algorithm has confirmed the existence of 50 new planets in a world-first for machine learning in astronomy.
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This Mars helicopter will be the first ever to fly on another planet
Batteries onboard the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity are charged up, prepping systems for the historic Mars 2020 mission ...
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Red giant star Betelgeuse dimmed because it ‘sneezed,’ astronomers explain
The dimming of Betelgeuse seen at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 explained — the red giant star “sneezed.” Betelgeuse ...
