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Studying old paintings can give us a surprising glimpse of historic natural history. In 1611, the Flemish painter Jan Brueghel the Elder finished his epic allegorical painting Air. In it, he depicted the Muse of Astronomy, Urania, reclining on a cloud as a menagerie of feathered birds surrounds her. But while studying the animals in the picture, one researcher spotted something far more intriguing: in the top right corner, there appeared to be a bat carrying a bird in its mouth. For most people, this might not mean much. But for the ecologist Pedro Romero-Vidal it set his mind racing,...

The near-Earth Object 2009 FD, as seen by the ESO's Very Large Telescope (Image Credit: ESO) Every year, more than 5,000 tons of material with cosmic origins lands on Earth’s surface, with as much as 15,000 tons of this “space dust” making its way into the atmosphere but vaporizing during reentry. The resulting rain of micrometeorites that reaches our planet consists mostly of tiny objects anywhere from 30 to 200 micrometers in size, based on past studies. But what are the origins of these large volumes of material that accumulate over time as they shower the Earth throughout the year?...

If they were visible to the naked eye, these structures would be huge in the sky. Image Credit: UCLan/Stellarium ========================================================================= The cosmological principle states that, on the largest scales, the universe is uniform and isotropic. In other words, it should look broadly the same no matter where you are or which direction you look. You would not expect to find a single enormous structure in one particular region of the sky. Finding two in relatively close proximity is even more surprising. Five years ago, researchers discovered the Giant Arc, a vast crescent of galaxies stretching 3.3 billion light years across...

The Chinese Tianwen-2 mission has captured the first imagery of a space object that some astronomers are calling Earth’s “quasi-moon.” The object was captured in images released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), after its Tianwen-2 spacecraft reached the tiny asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. Initially discovered in 2016, the asteroid became the target of a sample return mission launched by China on 28 May 2025. Officially the CNSA’s second mission under its Planetary Exploration of China Program, Tianwen-2 aims to return close to 100 grams of samples from the surface of the small object. Earth’s Mysterious Quasi-Moons Quasi-moons are the...

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Two 18-year-olds are facing several charges after court documents say they had a homemade “plasma cannon” on the property of Smith High School in Greensboro. Solomon Caravello-Bell and Chayce Harricharan were arrested July 5, according to a magistrate’s order filed in Guilford County. Court documents show Caravello-Bell and Harricharan are charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, malicious use of an explosive to damage property, felony breaking and entering and possessing an explosive on educational property. According to the magistrate’s order, investigators said the suspects had a homemade plasma cannon at Smith High School. The...

Summary: Researchers have shown that ultracold atoms can be driven into a strange new quantum state called a fractional Fermi sea, where particles organize themselves in unexpected ways. The discovery points to a new phase of matter that goes beyond established quantum theories and could expand the possibilities of quantum simulation...The newly created state displays several unusual characteristics. Mathematical correlations between particles reveal pronounced ripples, known as Friedel oscillations, along with distinctive decay behavior across all levels of repulsive interactions.Perhaps most importantly, the state exhibits properties that differ from those expected for Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids, which have long served as the...

This hybrid design offsets the energy required to initiate and sustain the plasma. - Realta Fusion ============================================================ An experimental fusion reactor in Madison, Wisconsin, has achieved a technical milestone by converting plasma energy directly into usable electricity for the first time in the private sector. The successful trial used the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror, a research device operated alongside the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The newly developed hardware drew multiple amperes of electrical current at an electrical potential of roughly 100 volts. It produced enough output to illuminate several incandescent light bulbs. Realta Fusion, the company developing this magnetic mirror fusion...

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter was designed to fly five times on Mars, instead it flew 72. For nearly three years, the four-pound drone defied expectations, becoming the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on another planet. It scouted terrain, mapped hazards, and proved aviation works in Mars' thin atmosphere. On January 18, 2024, during what should have been a routine test, its rotor blades shattered on landing, ending its flying but not its mission. In a valley sculpted by ancient rivers, the small helicopter now rests partially buried in red dust, one blade severed and lying 49 feet away in...

Explanation: Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? The answer seems likely to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock. The unusual asteroid Itokawa was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005 which imaged and documented its unusual structure and mysterious lack of craters. Analyses of the border regions between smooth and rugged sections indicate that jostling of the asteroid might be creating segregation between large and small rocks near the surface, like the Brazil nut effect. The robotic Hayabusa actually touched down on one...

The orbits of long-period comets suggest a star passed by our Sun and caused some havoc we're still seeing. Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, is a very famous long-period comet. Image Credit: ESO/E. Slawik ================================================================= The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light-years away. This has not always been the case, as all stars in the galaxies move about. Observations suggest that just 2.5 million years ago, there was a star that passed very close to the Solar System, and this passage might still have consequences we can see today. Data from the ESA Gaia...

This image will help us discover countless new exoplanets. The full Euclid image. Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay) Pointing the telescope to look at the central region of the galaxy wasn't just because it’s pretty or because Euclid can. The research team will use this incredible image and the data behind it to discover and characterize planets. This is possible thanks to a technique known as microlensing. Any object with mass warps spacetime. Galaxies, clusters, and black holes can create a strong gravitational lensing effect: space-time warps so much that...

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed the colorful secret of the Pink Planet, the coldest object of its type ever directly observed. A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University has revealed their findings in a recent paper published in The Astronomical Journal, finally describing the rose-colored haze covering the planetary-mass companion GJ504b, thanks to JWST data. For over a decade, researchers have speculated that atmospheric salt clouds may create the pink planet’s strange hue, but this is the first concrete evidence for the hypothesis. The Pink Planet Since its discovery in 2013,...

Via NBC, we're about to see a whole lot more of outer space than we've ever witnessed before: After nearly two decades of development, $4.3 billion and the labor of hundreds of scientists and engineers, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is less than three months from launch. From a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth, the telescope is expected to survey the cosmos, capturing panoramas of hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies. With this observatory, NASA hopes to unravel the secrets of dark matter and dark energy and discover thousands of planets beyond our solar...

Trenta, Helion`s 6th fusion prototype. Helion Helion Energy has an agreement with Microsoft to supply 50 MW of fusion power by 2028. US-based fusion energy company Helion has received the regulatory clearances to build the world’s first fusion energy power plant. The company has received a Radioactive Materials License (RML) and a Radioactive Air Emissions License (RAEL) from the Washington Department of Health (DOH), clearing the way to begin construction of the generator building at the power plant site. As the world looks for newer ways to meet it energy demands without emitting carbon, fusion energy seems to be the...

In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew ejected the lunar module, named Snoopy, from the command module into orbit, never to be seen again – or so they thought Astronomer Nick Howes, along with flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program, have spent years looking for it The team believe they may have found the four-meter wide vehicle Now all they need is someone with the expertise to go and retrieve it The Apollo 10 mission was a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place two months later in July 1969

A team of astronomers are planning an epic quest to track down the 42-year-old lunar module that's adrift in the solar system. It's not often I read about a new project that leaves me undecided whether it's totally crazy or a stroke of genius. I was recently sent a press release of such a project and, having read it over a few times, I think I'm leaning toward the latter. The idea is the brain child of British amateur astronomer Nick Howes who not only has a passion for hunting for asteroids, but also for the Space Race -- in...

It's not often I read about a new project that leaves me undecided whether it's totally crazy or a stroke of genius. I was recently sent a news release of such a project and, having read it over a few times, I think I'm leaning toward the latter. The idea is the brain child of British amateur astronomer Nick Howes who not only has a passion for hunting for asteroids, but also for the Space Race — in particular, the Apollo era.

On June 27, the asteroid will approach at a distance of around 0.01715 astronomical units. It hasn't been this close since at least 1600 CE. Potentially hazardous asteroid 152637 (1997 NC1) seen by the Virtual Telescope Project, when it was around 10.5 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: Gianluca Masi/The Virtual Telescope Project Potentially hazardous asteroid 152637 (1997 NC1) is about to make its closest approach in over 400 years, in an event only seen once every decade. At these distances, and given the size of the asteroid, it should be possible to view using a small...

The uncertainty of science: In two somewhat self-righteous press releases today from two different academic organizations, scientists who have been for three decades touting the somewhat uncertain evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, thus requiring the ad hoc creation of something they label “dark energy” to explain it, insisted that their theory is still right despite publication of a paper last year that said their evidence was weak and unconvincing. The headlines of the first press release is especially insulting to the very concept of the scientific method: - Royal Astronomical Society: ‘Crisis averted’ as experts confirm...

The Parker Solar Probe this past week successfully completed its 28th close fly-by of the Sun, zipping past its surface at a distance of only 3.8 million miles. During this solar encounter, which started June 3 and ends Saturday, June 13, Parker’s four scientific instrument packages gathered data from inside the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona. Parker will begin returning detailed spacecraft telemetry on June 14, with science data transmission set to run from Wednesday, June 17 to Tuesday, June 30. …Parker also equaled its record-setting speed of 430,000 mph — a mark that, like Parker’s distance to the Sun, was...