Space & Time

A 178-year-old mystery surrounding one of the earliest recorded examples of space weather affecting technology has been solved by an international team led by Lancaster University.

Dwarf galaxies—with a mass equal to about a billion suns, but often considerably less—are the most abundant in the universe. However, because of their low luminosity, they are very difficult to detect. They have mostly been discovered in the vicinity of the Milky Way, in what is called the Local Group, but also, and in large quantities, at greater distances, where current instrumentation cannot distinguish individual stars.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have measured the most powerful gas outflow ever recorded from a “dead” galaxy outside our cosmic neighborhood and found that even outflows this extreme may not be enough to permanently shut down star formation.

Venus may have once had a moon, but new research suggests the planet’s incredibly slow rotation could have doomed it. Computer simulations showed that instead of gradually drifting away like Earth’s moon, a Venusian moon would likely spiral inward until it crashed into the planet, with larger moons falling even faster.

A new study suggests Earth formed almost entirely from material in the inner Solar System, challenging the idea that water-rich material from beyond Jupiter played a major role. If correct, Earth’s water may have been present much closer to the young Sun than scientists previously thought.

Astronomers have confirmed that one of the fastest-changing stars ever observed has entered a new stage of its evolution, offering a rare opportunity to watch a star’s life unfold on human timescales.

The longest satellite data record of ice-sheet change ever assembled has revealed that Greenland and Antarctica have lost a staggering 11 trillion tonnes of ice since the 1970s, driving global sea level up by more than three centimetres.However, the new findings also highlight that the story is not simply one of ice melting at the surface. The glaciers that drain these vast ice sheets are also flowing faster, channelling enormous quantities of ice directly into the ocean.

This image shows a prominent ice cliff near Mars’s south pole. With striking swirls of purple, pink and red, it’s a far cry from the colour palette we usually associate with the Red Planet.

SpaceX announced Tuesday that it was planning to send its flagship rocket, Starship, into orbit, a key step in its project to one day reach the moon or Mars.

The United States has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space, a remarkable revelation after previous warnings about countries such as Russia possibly weaponizing a global frontier long agreed in treaties to be used for only peaceful purposes.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have developed a way to unravel changing weather patterns on distant worlds. Using this approach, they discovered that the weather on a well-studied brown dwarf, SIMP 0136, previously linked to northern lights-like phenomena, is largely shaped by just two dominant processes: changes in temperature and the vertical structure of its clouds.

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprising changes in the rings around Chariklo, a small object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Over just a few years, its inner ring became more opaque while its outer ring became less opaque. The results suggest that rings around small Solar System bodies may be much more dynamic than scientists previously believed. What is causing the changes remains a mystery.

This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects into a new mass range and revealing new insights about the star-formation process.

The sun is the reason life exists on our small, blue planet. It provides solar radiation that warms the planet and ignites intricate biochemical processes like photosynthesis, producing oxygen for life to breathe. However, while the sun is known for giving life, it can also take it away with solar flares, geomagnetic storms and solar radiation storms, collectively referred to as space weather.

Launched on Oct. 20, 2018, the joint ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has traveled for almost eight years, using a carefully planned but eventful sequence of planetary flybys and solar-electric propulsion to gradually approach its destination, Mercury. The mission is now entering the final stage of its journey to the smallest and innermost planet of our solar system.

This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope released to the public so far. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects into a new mass range.

Astronomers have discovered that winds from a supermassive black hole are about 100 times more powerful than previously thought. XRISM observations showed the resulting turbulence spreading roughly 300,000 light-years, extending far beyond the black hole’s host galaxy. The energy involved rivals several billion supernova explosions, revealing just how dramatically black holes can influence the space around them.

Astronomers have found that a nearby galaxy’s black hole is blasting out a far more powerful and hidden gas outflow than previously realized. Studying NGC 1068, a well-known galaxy with an actively feeding black hole at its center, researchers combined new infrared observations with existing data to map how the black hole’s energy is reshaping the surrounding gas. The results are reported in a paper published Aug. 6 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Most of our experience with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has focused on capturing radio signals that alien species have sent out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. That creates a huge “synchronicity” problem—what if there aren’t any alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals now, but there were a billion years ago? The Milky Way is around 13 billion years old—hoping that we exist at the same time as an alien civilization that happens to be actively messaging is a huge leap of faith.

Video: 00:03:22 ESA’s state-of-the-art FLEX Earth Explorer satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite have been launched together aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, marking a new milestone in Europe’s Earth Observation Programmes. Flight VV30 lifted off on 15 September at 03:21 (14 September at 22:21 local time).  FLEX is designed to reveal a phenomenon invisible to the human eye: the faint fluorescence emitted by plants as they photosynthesise. Equipped with a Fluorescence Imaging Spectrometer, FLEX will detect and measure this incredibly weak signal from orbit. Because the fluorescence varies with plant health and environmental conditions, the measurements will provide scientists with new information about photosynthetic activity and vegetation stress on a global scale. Sentinel-3C is the third in the Sentinel-3 series.  Carrying a suite of cutting-edge instruments, Copernicus Sentinel-3C will continue the mission’s task of measuring systematically Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics. The mission also provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting.  Europe’s Vega-C rocket can launch 2300 kg into space, such as small scientific and Earth observation spacecraft. At 35 m tall, Vega-C weighs 210 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant-powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over for precise placement of satellites into their desired orbit around Earth. This flight was a first dual launch for Vega-C, using a secondary payload adapter called Vespa. Sentinel-3C was placed on top of Vespa inside the main fairing and once deployed the Vespa adapter opened to reveal FLEX for its injection into orbit.   

The European Space Agency’s FLEX Earth Explorer satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite have been launched together aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, marking a new milestone in Europe’s Earth Observation Programmes.

When JWST’s first science results started rolling in, it was a triumph for scientific vision and persistence. For years, the fate of the powerful space telescope was uncertain. It went way over budget, and for 25 years, troubling conversations accompanied its ongoing development. Several times, it seemed like it would be canceled, and in 2011, Congress came close to ending the program.

Choosing an orbit for a satellite always comes with trade-offs. Very low Earth orbit (VLEO), between 100–450 km (62–280 miles), has distinct advantages. Remote-sensing cameras can take better pictures, communications and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag automatically cleans up dead satellites.

A new study of nine nearby galaxies has shown that actively growing supermassive black holes may contribute to, rather than prevent, star formation in their host galaxies.

Before there was Earth, there was chemistry. In the unimaginable cold, dark clouds where stars and planets are born, carbon molecules assemble into more complex forms—starting a chemical journey that could eventually deliver some of life’s basic ingredients to young planets. There’s only one problem: These molecules need heat to form. At least that’s what scientists have long believed. But new research from FIU chemist Alexander Mebel reveals such chemistry can actually happen at temperatures nearing absolute zero, which is -460°F (-273°C).

In May 2024, Earth experienced its most intense geomagnetic storm since the Halloween storms of 2003. This “superstorm” filled night skies in many parts of the world with colorful aurorae, and it disrupted some infrastructure, such as GPS signals used by agricultural equipment.

Every second, particles zip through your body at nearly the speed of light. They rain down from a storm high in the sky, where cosmic rays, a powerful type of interstellar matter, constantly strike atoms in Earth’s atmosphere. The impacts break them apart into a shower of particles that rain to the ground.

Astronomers have identified a peculiar radio transient in the Milky Way that has remained active for more than two decades, defying the behavior expected of known classes of galactic radio sources. The paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 21 discusses the rare event that may have caused this bizarre radio emission.

Video: 00:06:30 Plants may look still and silent, but every leaf is constantly responding to its environment.As plants photosynthesise, they emit an incredibly faint glow called fluorescence. Invisible to our eyes, this signal can reveal how plants are using sunlight and how they respond to heat, drought, pests and other environmental stresses.ESA’s Fluorescence Explorer, or FLEX, will detect this faint signal from space. Using its highly sensitive FLORIS instrument, FLEX will map plant fluorescence across Earth, giving scientists a new way to observe plant health and photosynthetic activity on a global scale.These observations will help us better understand how vegetation responds to a changing climate, including the effects of drought, and improve our understanding of the global carbon and water cycles.Every leaf tells a story. With FLEX, we’re learning how to read it.Learn more about FLEX.

The discovery of water in dark craters at the moon’s poles has sparked a “moon rush” to establish bases there, followed by villages, cities and heavy industry. How sustainable is this rush?

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened many wonders of the cosmos to scientists since it began science operations a few years ago. But one thing it hasn’t done is find an “exomoon.” These still-theoretical moons orbit exoplanets in other star systems, and JWST was supposed to find a plethora of them.

A distant star has captured astronomers’ attention over the past decade, teasing them with indications that it will soon explode as a supernova. But new research shows that something else entirely is behind the star’s outbursts. Rather than an impending catastrophic explosion, a previously unseen companion may be responsible for the star’s behavior.

The surface of Mercury is filled with craters, ridges and steep cliffs. Over billions of years, as the planet’s interior cooled, the planet also shrank. Just as the skin of a drying fruit wrinkles when what is inside it shrinks, Mercury’s rocky surface crumpled into ridges and cliffs as its interior cooled and the planet contracted. Mercury has quite literally grown smaller with age.

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. When two black holes orbit each other and merge, they produce gravitational waves (i.e., ripples in spacetime) that can resemble those emitted by mergers involving other exotic compact objects.

An eye surgeon with a passion for space since childhood predicts that as astronauts start to make journeys to the moon and Mars in the near future, eye surgery in space will eventually become a necessity.

A massive worldwide survey of physicists has revealed surprisingly little agreement about some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. No majority backed the standard cosmological model, a leading explanation for dark matter, or any single theory of quantum gravity. One area of stronger agreement stood out: 68% said the Big Bang does not necessarily represent the beginning of time. Researchers say the divisions show just how alive and unsettled the frontiers of physics remain.

We’ve found more than 5,500 exoplanets so far. Dozens of them are in the habitable zones of their parent stars, where, at least in theory, they could host an ocean. But we’ve never definitively found a liquid ocean on another planet.

An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in “precision cosmology” by measuring the amount of helium created in the universe’s first five minutes with unprecedented accuracy.

Scientists have engineered yeast to turn PET plastic and agricultural waste into ingredients for protein-rich, 3D-printed cookies called µBites. Developed partly for NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, the system can produce proteins, fats, vitamins, and even vanilla flavoring from waste materials. Researchers hope the unusual technology could eventually help address both plastic pollution and food insecurity, while also supplying food in extreme environments such as deep-space missions.

A century-old mystery in Venus’s clouds just became more intriguing, as scientists calculated how strongly the unidentified material behind its dark ultraviolet patterns must absorb light. The results sharply narrow the possibilities and could help future spacecraft determine whether the mysterious substance is organic, inorganic, or something unexpected.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft reached another milestone this summer, a first for space agencies. On Sunday, July 5, the probe conducted the first successful laser-ranging experiment during a flyby of asteroid Torifune, the first exploration target of Hayabusa2’s Extended Mission. This latest milestone will advance the capabilities of JAXA and other space agencies as they pursue future missions involving near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and other deep-space objects.

A new study suggests that the young stars orbiting the Milky Way’s central black hole may have a surprisingly ordinary origin. But the black hole’s influence may be what makes their origin look more exotic than it really is. Along with shaping their orbits, it may also destroy their stellar companions. The paper outlining this work was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Aug. 11.

The COSMOS field, or Cosmic Evolution Survey Deep Field, is one of the most famous patches of the universe observed by astronomers. Located in the constellation Sextans, this region was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in segments from 2003 to 2005 using its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). With support from ground-based and other space-based telescopes, the resulting images were then stitched together to create a stunning picture of cosmic evolution.

Scientists have discovered that Mercury’s surface contains far less silicon dioxide than previously thought, pointing to an unexpectedly hot volcanic past. The finding suggests ancient lava may have originated from deeper, more extensively melted parts of the planet’s mantle.

Week in images: 07-11 Sep 2026 Discover our week through the lens

Unconventional quantum theories may imply that time itself has a tiny fundamental uncertainty, placing an ultimate limit on how precisely any clock could measure it. The effect is far beyond current detection, but it could reveal a hidden connection between quantum mechanics, gravity, and spacetime.

Scientists have discovered that the Moon-forming collision may have depended heavily on how hot and physically strong early Earth and Theia were. New simulations found that some impacts create the familiar disk of debris that later becomes the Moon, while others can produce an intact Moon in only about five hours. The results challenge the long-standing assumption that the enormous collision could be modeled as if both worlds behaved mostly like fluids.

Two major alien-life announcements in 2025 generated enormous excitement, but most astrobiologists remained unconvinced. Only 6.6% of surveyed experts thought possible biological molecules on K2-18b probably represented extraterrestrial life, while 15.1% said the same about intriguing mineral patterns in a Martian rock.

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS contains exceptionally high levels of methanol, suggesting it formed under conditions very different from those that shaped most comets in our solar system. ALMA also revealed that tiny icy grains around the comet are releasing methanol like miniature comets, giving astronomers an unusually detailed look at an object from another star system.

A new analysis of more than 1,700 supernovae is questioning whether the universe is really accelerating at all. After accounting for the ages of the stars that produce these explosions, researchers found signs that cosmic expansion may actually be slowing. They also argue that the apparent acceleration changes with direction, which would be difficult to explain with dark energy. Other cosmologists dispute the conclusion, setting up a major test for upcoming observatories.

Astronomers have detected an exceptionally faint hydrogen radio signal from billions of light-years away using South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope. Instead of finding galaxies one at a time, the technique measures their combined hydrogen glow across enormous stretches of space. The successful detection shows that astronomers may soon be able to create much larger 3D maps of the Universe.

Physicists have directly observed a long-predicted quantum effect of gravity, putting one of Einstein’s foundational ideas to a striking new test. Using ultracold atoms, researchers split an atom’s quantum wave so that one part was held in place while the other fell freely under gravity, then reunited the two to measure the tiny difference that emerged.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured a plume from the eruption of Anak Krakatau on Saturday, 5 September.

Astronomers have identified a surprisingly young population of fading radio galaxies whose supermassive black holes have already switched off their powerful jets. The confirmed remnants range from about 8 to 42 million years old, suggesting many may disappear from view much faster than previously recognized. More distant remnants also seem to fade especially quickly, helping explain why they have been so difficult to detect.

Deep beneath Mars, scientists have found evidence of enormous magmatic systems once thought to require Earth-like plate tectonics. Seismic measurements suggest molten rock repeatedly evolved and recycled itself through the Martian crust, potentially across hundreds or thousands of kilometers. The discovery challenges long-held ideas about how complex planetary crusts form.

A huge 10-sided atmospheric pattern has appeared around Saturn’s south pole, giving the planet a surprising counterpart to its famous northern hexagon. Hubble data suggest the strange decagon only began emerging in the past few years and is still growing stronger. Researchers hope continued observations will reveal why it suddenly formed and whether it could persist for decades.

Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for making stars, has barely declined. Using China’s FAST radio telescope and data from roughly 2.5 million galaxies observed by DESI, researchers found that star formation was about 2.5 times higher 4.5 billion years ago, while neutral hydrogen levels were only about 1.4 times higher.

September’s sky features brilliant Venus, the Milky Way’s hazy center, and the seasonal turning point of the equinox. The month ends with a glowing Harvest Moon rising near Saturn and faint Neptune.

Solar sails pushed by powerful lasers could reach incredible speeds, but relativity may eventually make the light itself work against them. At around 75% of the speed of light, scattered photons can begin creating drag, adding a surprising obstacle to interstellar travel.

NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help explain ancient ice ages as well as how early Earth stayed warm enough for liquid water when the Sun was much dimmer.