Space
- Planets
Jupiter’s intense auroras heat up its atmosphere
Jupiter’s hotter-than-expected upper atmosphere may be warmed by charged particles slamming into the air above the poles.
- Space
Explainer: How auroras light up the sky
The northern and southern lights are considered natural wonders of the world. Here’s how these and related splendid sky glows form.
- Space
Let’s learn about dark matter
Dark matter is only detectable by the gravitational pull it exerts on visible objects, like stars and galaxies.
- Space
This image may be the first look at exomoons in the making
These observations offer some of the best evidence yet that planets around other stars have moons, or exomoons.
- Space
Born in deep shadows? That could explain Jupiter’s strange makeup
Dust that blocked sunlight might have caused the gas giant to form in a deep freeze, a new study suggests.
- Space
Cosmic filaments may have the biggest spin in outer space
These rotating threads of dark matter and galaxies stretch millions of light-years. Scientists want to know how their spin begins.
- Space
Moon-sized white dwarf is the smallest ever found
This dead star is also spinning very fast and has an amazingly powerful magnetic field.
- Space
Spin in this Milky Way bar may show cosmic dark matter does exist
A method akin to studying a tree’s rings reveals the timeline of a slowdown in those stars at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
- Space
Huge arc of galaxies is surprising and puzzling cosmologists
The arc appears to violate a cosmic rule that on such large scales, matter will be evenly distributed.
- Space
Light from space has record-breaking energy
Hundreds of newly detected gamma rays hint at environments in the cosmos that accelerate particles to energy extremes.
- Space
The Milky Way’s ‘yellowballs’ are clusters of baby stars
The mysterious cosmic objects — first spotted by citizen scientists — turn out to be infant stars of various masses.
- Space
Stars made of antimatter could lurk in our galaxy
Fourteen sources of gamma rays in our galaxy look like they could be antistars — celestial bodies made of antimatter.
