Companies seek profits in the race for space metals
By Sarah Scoles In April 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched to space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. While the mission, courtesy of a company called AstroForge,…
Exoplanet WASP-69b has a cometlike tail
Dakotah Tyler, University of California, Los Angeles Located 163 light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet named WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy. The star…
Elon Musk raises the possibility of finding alien ruins
During a recent interview at the Milken Institute’s global conference in Los Angeles, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk made some thought-provoking comments about humanity’s potential to one day discover traces of long-extinct alien societies….
Oxygen-rich rocks suggest similarities between Mars and Earth
Rocks strewn across an ancient Martian shoreline could suggest that the Red Planet was more reminiscent of Earth in its past, according to recent findings. These rocks, uncovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, contain…
A “cosmic glitch” in gravity
Researchers from the Universities of Waterloo and British Columbia have shed new light on the behavior of gravity on a cosmic scale, suggesting a possible “cosmic glitch” that could explain the strange observations…
Sustainable jet engine for future propulsion systems
NASA engineers are pushing aviation toward a more sustainable future with a scaled-down jet engine that fits comfortably on a desk. This advancement, represented by the less than 4.5-foot-long DGEN380 Aero-Propulsion Research Turbofan…
James Webb will investigate possible signs of Life on K2-18b
From discovering planets orbiting distant stars to investigating molecules in the atmospheres of these distant worlds, scientists have been searching for clues that could indicate the presence of life forms beyond our planet….
NASA releases supernova time lapses
NASA recently released two new films that offer a fascinating look at the transformations taking place in two iconic celestial sources: Cassiopeia A and the Crab Nebula. Both represent the remnants of massive…
Spiders photographed on Mars?
In fact, these formations are not actually spiders that have been photographed on Mars. The small, dark shapes emerge when spring sunlight hits layers of carbon dioxide deposited during the dark months of…
Why a Gravitational Wave Observatory on the Moon?
Scientists detected the first long-predicted gravitational wave in 2015, and researchers have been eager for better detectors ever since. But Earth is hot and seismically noisy, and this will always limit the effectiveness…