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Explanation: This pretty nebula lies some 1,500 light-years away, its shape and color in this telescopic view reminiscent of a robin's egg. The cosmic cloud spans about 3 light-years, nestled securely within the boundaries of the southern constellation of the Furnace (Fornax). Recognized as a planetary nebula, egg-shaped NGC 1360 doesn't represent a beginning, though. Instead, it corresponds to a brief and final phase in the evolution of an aging star. In fact, visible at the center of the nebula, the central star of NGC 1360 is known to be a binary star system likely consisting of two evolved white...

Explanation: What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the top? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies, our Milky Way has distinct spiral arms. Our Sun and most of the bright stars we see at night are in just one arm: Orion. Gaia data bolsters previous indications that our Milky Way has more than two spiral arms. Our Galaxy's center...

When a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Dr John Clauser, labels the claims about greenhouse gases warming the Earth as “pseudoscience” and describes them as “a dangerous corruption of science,” I urge you to take notice. He further stated that “the IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation,” and remarked that climate science has “metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience.”Similarly, Professor Harold (Hal) Lewis, a distinguished physicist, called such claims “the biggest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud” he had encountered in his lifetime. Another German physicist expressed outrage upon discovering that much of what the IPCC and the media presented...

Conceptual image depicting end of the universe by generative AI (© The 2R Artificiality - stock.adobe.com) In a nutshell * Scientists discovered that neutron stars and white dwarfs are slowly evaporating, shortening the universe’s expected lifespan from 10^1100 years to 10^78 years. * All massive objects lose energy through a process similar to how black holes evaporate, with denser objects deteriorating faster. Despite this “earlier” end, the universe’s death is still inconceivably far in the future—neutron stars will last 10^68 years and white dwarfs about 10^78 years. ================================================================================ NIJMEGEN, Netherlands — Scientists have just calculated that our universe will end...

Explanation: What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies, our Milky Way has a very thin central disk. Our Sun and all the stars we see at night are in this disk. Although hypothesized before, perhaps more surprising is that the disk appears curved at the outer edges. The colors of our...

Deep beneath the thick ice that covers East Antarctica, scientists are revealing new discoveries about a mystery that has been hidden beneath the continent’s frozen exterior for half a billion years. According to newly published research, clues to the formation of a mountain range the size of the Alps tucked away below Antarctic ice are being revealed, offering geologists a unique glimpse at the processes behind their formation. The Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, initially discovered by Soviet scientists during an expedition in 1958, have puzzled researchers for decades. Now, these massive features beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface, which were formed long ago...

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap and dim inner and outer rings. This Webb image also shows 9 of the planet’s 27 moons – clockwise starting at 2 o’clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI ================================================================= A rare celestial alignment in April 2025 gave NASA scientists the chance to study Uranus in exceptional detail as it passed in front of a distant star. This stellar occultation, visible only from parts of western North America,...

Explanation: If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982. The desolate landscape it saw included flat rocks, vast empty terrain, and a featureless sky above Phoebe Regio near Venus' equator. On the lower left is the spacecraft's penetrometer used to make scientific measurements, while the light piece on the right is part of an ejected lens-cap. Enduring temperatures near 450 degrees Celsius and pressures 75 times that on Earth, the hardened Venera...

For centuries, most scientists have shared the belief that light behaves as both a wave and a particle. This idea, then, became the central component to quantum theory, sprouting the field of science known as quantum mechanics. The double-slit experiment supported the idea, showing bright and dark bands that indicated wave-like interference. But now, a new study suggests that this experiment might not lock us into seeing light as a wave. According to the experts, we can interpret those interference bands using quantum particles alone. The research was led by Gerhard Rempe, the director of the Max Planck Institute for...

CREDIT: NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) ************************************************************** A traveling black hole stalking the cosmos for stellar prey recently revealed itself to NASA telescopes in a tidal disruption event (TDE), shredding and swallowing a star in a radioactive burst. With its brilliant flash, the TDE AT2024tvd lit up several observatories, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the NRAO Very Large Array. The TDE event took place 600 million light-years from Earth, allowing astronomers a new glimpse at black hole physics to be published in a future issue of The Astrophysical Journal...

Explanation: This picture from July 1997 shows a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, deflated landing airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this 3D stereo view of the surface of Mars. Barnacle Bill is the rock just left of the house cat-sized, solar-paneled Sojourner. Yogi is the big friendly-looking boulder at top right. The "couch" is the angular rock shape visible near center on the horizon. Look at the image with red/blue glasses (or just hold a piece of clear red plastic over your left eye and blue or green over your...

For the first time, physicists have demonstrated a phenomenon known as the Terrell-Penrose effect, which causes an object moving close to the speed of light to warp before our eyes. The new findings, a collaboration between TU Wien and the University of Vienna, once again confirm a key prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity by making an optical illusion of relativistic motion observable for the first time. Terrell-Penrose Effect According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, objects moving close to the speed of light experience unusual effects, including changes in length and time compared to objects at rest. Many relativistic...

A Soviet spacecraft launched in 1972 on a failed mission to Venus is believed to have crashed back onto Earth early on Saturday morning. The European Space Agency, which was monitoring the craft's uncontrolled descent, said it was last spotted by radar over Germany. At at the time of its expected crash, radars could no longer detect the Kosmos 482, concluding that “it is most likely that the reentry has already occurred.”

Sometimes, all the details line up just right to make an incredible story. It just took these dominoes some 10,000 years to line up. This is the story of the Gribben Basin buried forest outside of Marquette, Michigan. They Accidentally Found an 11,000-Year-Old Forest. Twice. | 16:38 Alexis Dahl | 105K subscribers | 122,241 views | April 25, 2025

Explanation: How do black holes create X-rays? Answering this long-standing question was significantly advanced recently with data taken by NASA’s IXPE satellite. X-rays cannot exit a black hole, but they can be created in the energetic environment nearby, in particular by a jet of particles moving outward. By observing X-ray light arriving from near the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy BL Lac, called a blazar, it was discovered that these X-rays lacked significant polarization, which is expected when created more by energetic electrons than protons. In the featured artistic illustration, a powerful jet is depicted emanating from...

Pinching pennies and landing a crew of astronauts on the Moon before a geopolitical rivalry aren't two endeavors that go hand-in-hand. The Trump administration released NASA's proposed 2026 discretionary budget last week. The federal space agency would see a $6 billion cut if implemented as written, roughly a 24% decrease compared to 2025. However, the White House is confusingly still committed to beating China to the lunar surface despite shuttering all the projects working towards that goal. The proposed 2026 budget has a 10% increase for human space exploration, but the $7 billion allocated won't be used for the significant...

History has been made by Stratolaunch, a hypersonic flight test research company headquartered in Mojave, California. The fully autonomous Talon-A2, equipped with landing gear, has successfully exceeded speeds of Mach five and completed its second autonomous landing at Vandenburg Space Force Base. This mission documentary follows the first recovered flight of TA-2, the result of five years of effort and dedication marking a pivotal moment in sustainable hypersonic flight test for our country. Congratulations to the Stratolaunch team and partners on this success! Next steps: fly TA-2 again and again, increasing the cadence of hypersonic flight tests for the United...

Starship Flight 9: New Local Notice to Mariners cites NET May 19 for launch. Obvious caution required as we wait for status on Ship 35. NASASpaceflight.com on Facebook

China pulls off a stunning space rescue, using a gravity slingshot to save its stranded moon satellites from certain destruction. A render of the navigation system. Image credit: CSU | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel In March 2024, China launched two satellites, DRO-A and DRO-B, as part of an ambitious mission aimed at positioning them in a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. Their task was to provide critical navigation and tracking support for spacecraft within Earth-moon space. However, due to a malfunction with the Yuanzheng-1S upper stage of the launch vehicle, the satellites were stranded in an...

Explanation: Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the death explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second. You can see the expansion by comparing these sharp images from the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. The...