Space

With all the new discoveries that seem to occur almost monthly, it’s sometimes hard to remember that finding exoplanets is still a relatively new and difficult science.  As part of those continual discoveries, back in 2018 a team announced they had found a planet candidate around Barnard’s Star, one of […]

In the past few decades, the number of planets discovered beyond our Solar System has grown into the thousands. At present, 4,389 exoplanets have been confirmed in 3,260 systems, with another 5,941 candidates awaiting confirmation. Thanks to numerous follow-up observations and studies, scientists have learned a great deal about the […]

Astronaut Peggy Whitson already has her name in the history books, but now there’s a new entry to add: first woman named to head up a privately funded space mission.

In a new survey, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have managed to pinpoint the location of several Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). FRBs are powerful jets of energy that, until recently, had mysterious, unknown origins. The research team, which includes University of California Santa Cruz’ Alexandra Manning and Sunil Simha, […]

Gravitational-wave astronomy is very different from that of electromagnetic light. While gravitational waves are faint and difficult to detect, they also pass through matter with little effect. In essence, the material universe is transparent to gravitational waves. This makes gravitational wave astronomy a powerful tool when studying the universe. But […]

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane crossed its 50-mile-high space boundary over New Mexico for the first time today, after months of challenges.

In outer space, an object’s location has a huge impact on its temperature.  The closer the object is to its star, the hotter it most likely is.  Heat then plays a major role in what materials are present in that object’s atmosphere, if it has one.  Lighter elements such as […]