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For decades, Pluto remained one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system, until July 14, 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft became the first mission to visit it up close, capturing breathtaking images of the distant world.It took over nine years for New Horizons to reach Pluto after blasting off atop an Atlas 5 rocket on Jan. 19, 2006. After traveling billions of miles through the solar system, New Horizons sent home stunning images of Pluto and its moons, making headlines around the world. It took more than 15 months for the spacecraft to send all of the...

NEW YORK — For sale: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock. Estimated auction price: $2 million to $4 million. Why so expensive? It's the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth. Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning what's known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140...

Gravitational waves from massive black holes challenge current astrophysical models The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves using the US National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO observatories. The powerful merger produced a final black hole approximately 225 times the mass of our Sun. The signal, designated GW231123, was detected during the fourth observing run of the LVK network on November 23, 2023. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, made history in 2015 when it made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time. In that case, the...

This artist's conception depicts ordinary matter in the warm, thin gas making up the intergalactic medium (IGM)—which has been difficult for scientists to directly observe until now. Different colors of light travel at different speeds through space. Here, the artist has used blue to highlight denser regions of the cosmic web, transitioning to redder light for void areas. Credit: Jack Madden, IllustrisTNG, Ralf Konietzka, Liam Connor/CfA ==================================================================================== Using Caltech's DSA-110 radio telescope, astronomers pinpoint whereabouts of "fog" between galaxies ============================================================== The vast majority of matter in the universe is dark—it is entirely invisible and detected only through its gravitational effects....

Scientists predict up to 100 invisible galaxies may orbit the Milky Way, hiding just beyond our current detection limits. Credit: Shutterstock *********************************************************************** Astronomers may be on the verge of uncovering a long-lost galactic population. Using ultra-high-resolution simulations and sophisticated modeling, researchers at Durham University predict that the Milky Way could be surrounded by up to 100 previously undetected satellite galaxies. These faint, elusive “orphan galaxies” may have been stripped of their dark matter halos, making them nearly invisible to current telescopes. But with the advent of powerful new instruments like the Rubin Observatory, scientists believe we’re finally approaching the ability...

The Eagle takes flight this July. Look east after dark to find Aquila, the soaring constellation anchored by Altair, while Mars glows in the west and Venus and Jupiter greet the sunrise. Credit: Shutterstock July’s skies offer a feast: Mars glows at dusk while Mercury peeks out briefly, Venus blazes before dawn, and Jupiter joins it for a photogenic pairing. Saturn lingers past midnight, and the Moon stages close encounters with Mars and the morning planets. Sixty years after Mariner 4’s trailblazing flyby, stargazers can celebrate by tracing Aquila the Eagle soaring overhead, using bright Altair to sketch its wings...

Attention Spaceflight enthusiasts! As you may know, the US Senate just saved SLS, Orion and Gateway with a $10 million investment. What you may not know, is that a recent GAO report revealed that those programs are even more over budget than we thought! And meanwhile, the fiscally responsible NASA programs are getting cut! Congress saves over budget SLS and Gateway, cuts fiscally responsible NASA programs!/a> | 14:42 The Angry Astronaut | 198K subscribers | 14,018 views | July 6, 2025

That’s the conclusion reached by one researcher from the University of North Carolina: black holes can’t exist in our Universe — not mathematically, anyway. “I’m still not over the shock,” said Laura Mersini-Houghton, associate physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. “We’ve been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about.” In a news article spotlighted by UNC the scenario suggested by Mersini-Houghton is briefly explained. Basically, when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses under its own gravity after blasting its outer layers into space —...

You can manipulate a black hole as much as you like but you’ll never get rid of its event horizon, a new study suggests. This may sound a little odd, the event horizon is what makes the black hole, well… black. However, in the centre of a black hole, hidden deep inside the event horizon, is a singularity. A singularity is a mathematical consequence, it is also a point in space where the laws of physics do not apply. Mathematics also predicts that singularities can exist without an associated event horizon, but this means that we’d be able to physically...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A supermassive black hole appears to be homeless in the cosmos without a galaxy to nestle in, Hubble Space Telescope scientists reported on Wednesday. Most monster black holes lurk at the heart of massive galaxies, slurping up matter from the galactic center with a pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. But a team of European astronomers reported in the journal Nature that a particular black hole some 5 billion light-years away has no evidence of a host galaxy. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. The...

A dangerous misconception exists in the field of ufology that there are no astronomers who have seen UFOs. But nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, there is a long list of famous astronomers who have had remarkable UFO sightings. In 1952, J. Allen Hynek, the astronomical consultant for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book held a conference with a group of astronomers. He asked about UFOs and received some shocking responses. “Over forty astronomers were interviewed,” he said, “of which five had made sightings of one sort or another. This is a higher percentage than among the...

Schrödinger’s cat is a reasonably simple explanation of an extremely technical and unexpected scientific concept. But when Schrödinger first introduced it, he was making an entirely different point. Schrödinger's Cat: A History of Quantum Physics | 13:52 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.56M subscribers | 36,579 views | June 20, 2025 | ✪ Members first on June 19, 2025

Astronomers have spotted a new comet, moving on a trajectory that indicates that it whizzed into our solar system from interstellar space and is just passing through. It's only the third time scientists have discovered this kind of visitor from outside our solar system. The first two, 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov, intrigued astronomers because of the chance to observe pieces from another star system beyond our own. "This is like our chance to randomly sample what's going on in the rest of the galaxy," University of Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott recently told NPR, saying he and most other researchers really...

For only the 3rd time in history, astronomers have found an interstellar object hurtling through our solar system...The Minor Planet Center (MPC) confirmed its new designation on July 2, 2025, as 3I/ATLAS, or C/2025 N1. The MPC also said:There are tentative reports of cometary activity … with a marginal coma and a short 3-arcsecond tail....We are currently being visited by what appears to be a comet from another solar system...We only know of two other interstellar objects that have entered into our solar system before, 'Oumuamua and Comet 2I/Borisov. The nature of 'Oumuamua is still a matter of debate, and...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently detected a planet that could possibly sustain life based on temperature readings, which has a mass approximately 100 times the size of Earth. The planet, which astronomers believe is orbiting a young red dwarf star approximately 34 light years away, has been dubbed TWA 7b and is roughly the size of Saturn. An initial analysis suggests the planet has a temperature of near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is warm enough to support life. Scientists believe life can grow and reproduce starting at about 5 degrees Fahrenheit and as high as 251 degrees Fahrenheit, per...

In a groundbreaking achievement, researchers at Oxford University have successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation between quantum computers, a feat that was previously confined to theoretical discussions and early-stage experiments. The team, led by physicist Dougal Main, managed to create a functioning logic gate between two quantum processors located about six feet apart. This represents a significant advancement in quantum computing, opening new possibilities for quantum networks and the realization of scalable quantum systems. Their work is featured in a study published in Nature, and it marks a pivotal moment in the race to create powerful, distributed quantum computers. Quantum Teleportation: A...

NASA’s new Andromeda images unveil stunning insights into dark matter and black holes. Image credit: NASA | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel In the latest release from NASA, stunning new images of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) have captured the attention of the global scientific community. Andromeda, located around 2.5 million light-years from Earth, is the closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. These new images, which include data from multiple advanced telescopes, offer fresh insights into the complex dynamics of this galactic neighbor. The images were made possible through a collaboration of some of the world’s most powerful space-based...

A simulation of the ‘cosmic web’, the vast network of threads and filaments that extends throughout the Universe. Stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters spring to life in the densest knots of this web, and remain connected by vast threads that stretch out for many millions of light-years. These threads are invisible to the eye, but can be uncovered by telescopes such as ESA’s XMM-Newton. Credit: Illustris Collaboration / Illustris Simulation ======================================================================== A vast filament of gas stretching across the cosmos may help solve the mystery of the Universe’s missing matter. Astronomers have identified a massive filament of hot gas connecting...

Screenshot of fireball via Collin Rugg on X This isn’t something you see every day! Residents in the southeastern part of the United States spotted a massive fireball streak through the skies on Thursday afternoon. The American Meteor Society reported receiving over 140 reports from residents of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina who had spotted a fireball. Residents in Georgia reported feeling an earthquake as the fireball crossed the sky. The National Weather Service assured residents in Georgia that the earthquake they felt was “the result of the sonic boom from the meteor or space junk.” WATCH:...

A meteorite, complete with shock wave, light trail, and flight noises (rumbles, light a train or close airplane) struck the ground northeast of Atlanta this afternoon, 26 June 2025. Impact was visible from dash cameras in vehicles on I85 near the South Carolina border. Meteor is any solid object hitting the atmosphere but burning up before it hits the ground. A meteorite is a rocky solid that survives its flight through the atmosphere and hits the ground as a solid. Damage is unknown, some reports claim a house was struck.