Last Saturday’s “ring of fire” eclipse, which blocked out 98 percent of the sun’s surface, was a rare and spectacular sight for those who got to view it. But the total solar eclipse in 2024 is going to be a particularly special event. On April 8, when the eclipse will cross the United States, the […]
Clara Sousa-Silva seeks molecular signatures of life in alien atmospheres
Ask Clara Sousa-Silva about her research and she’ll be absolutely clear: Yes, she is looking for aliens. But she is not hunting them. “The idea that I’m hunting anything, I find very distasteful,” she says. “I have spent my life … trying to let go of the notion that I have to go somewhere to […]
NASA’s first look at a sample from asteroid Bennu reveals life’s building blocks
NASA scientists are just beginning to reveal details about roughly 250 grams of dust and rocks brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu. The samples are the result of the first U.S. mission to return a sample from an asteroid, and the largest cache of material ever collected beyond the orbit of the moon. […]
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx has returned bits of the asteroid Bennu to Earth
Seven years is a long time to wait for your carrier service to deliver a package. That’s how long it’s been since NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft set off to gather rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu. But the package has now been safely delivered. On September 24, the spacecraft flew near Earth and dropped off […]
Recoiling black holes could move at nearly one-tenth the speed of light
Collisions between black holes can launch newly melded cosmic sinkholes at speeds up to nearly one-tenth the speed of light, researchers report August 18 in Physical Review Letters. Moving that fast — about 28,500 kilometers per second — it would take about 13 seconds to complete the average trip from Earth to the moon. The […]
India’s successful moon landing follows recent failures by other countries
Space is hard, as the saying goes. As humans have endeavored to launch themselves and their machines beyond Earth, that maxim has been proven again and again. Recent attempts to touch down on the moon — a feat first accomplished nearly 60 years ago by the former Soviet Union’s robotic Luna-9 probe — have been […]
The James Webb telescope may have spotted stars powered by dark matter
The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted objects in the early universe that might be a new kind of star — one powered by dark matter. These “dark stars” are still hypothetical. Their identification in JWST images is far from certain. But if any of the three candidates — reported in the July 25 Proceedings […]
Humans haven’t set foot on the moon in 50 years. That may soon change
A perfect ending for the final Apollo — Science News, December 23, 1972 Project Apollo ended this week. The last moon men … returned to Earth … and splashed down on a target in the Pacific Dec. 19.… All of the surface and orbital instruments appear to be working with the exception of the surface […]