News

Most comets brighten gradually as they approach the sun. 3I/ATLAS did something different. At 2.5 AU (about 2.5x Earth's distance from the Sun), it suddenly flared up. This wasn't a one-time explosion. It was a sustained activation of the entire surface.

An ancient Chinese text from 709 BCE described the sun as "completely yellow above and below." Today, that single sentence is helping scientists measure the rotation of the Earth. Previous attempts to date this eclipse failed. The math said the eclipse shadow missed the capital city of the Lu Duchy. However, the new study realized historians had been looking at the wrong Qufu. The ancient city was actually located 8 kilometers east of the modern location.

Sagittarius B2: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has pierced the dense galactic center to reveal the most active star factory in the Milky Way. Sgr B2 is located just a few hundred light-years from the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center. It is an extreme environment. Astronomers are puzzled by its efficiency. Compared to the rest of the Galactic Center, Sgr B2 is punching way above its weight class.

Astronomers from India have found a "grand-design" spiral galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang—an era when such order was thought to be impossible.

For years, scientists were baffled by Kappa Tucanae A. Dust this close to a star should be vaporized or blown away by radiation pressure almost instantly. Yet, it persists. Using the MATISSE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's interferometer, the team found the answer: a companion star.

Using ESA's XMM-Newton satellite, astronomers have peered through the dust of a distant galaxy to find a hidden monster at its core. NGC 3221 is a luminous infrared galaxy located 200 million light-years away. Previous observations hinted that something powerful lurked at its center, but the galaxy's "edge-on" orientation means we look through layers of gas and dust that block visible light.

Why do gels age? Why does sauce separate? A new lab on the International Space Station uses lasers to study the hidden "slow motion" of soft matter without the interference of gravity. On Earth, studying soft materials (like gels, glasses, or emulsions) is difficult because gravity pulls heavier particles down. This "sedimentation" masks the subtle internal restructuring processes that determine a product's shelf life.

Mars is hostile. With temperatures plunging to -90°C, thin air, and radiation, building a shelter is the first priority. But transporting construction materials from Earth is prohibitively expensive. The solution is ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization). We must build with what we find: Regolith (Martian soil). But loose dust doesn't make a wall.

On the reddish-orange surface of Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover spotted something unusual: bright white rocks scattered like breadcrumbs. Analysis confirms these are Kaolinite—a clay mineral that, on Earth, forms primarily in tropical rainforests.

New balloon-mounted probes have captured the strongest radiation spike at aviation altitudes in 20 years, confirming the reach of a major X5 solar flare. The solar flare on November 11, 2025, was an X5 class event. It triggered a Ground Level Enhancement (GLE), meaning energetic particles punched through the atmosphere all the way to the surface.

Astronomers long assumed brown dwarfs behaved like Jupiter: stable, banded stripes of wind. But Western University's Stanimir Metchev and team found something different. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, they observed VHS 1256B, a "super-Jupiter" 10x heavier than our own. It showed extreme fluctuations in brightness, suggesting a violently changing atmosphere.

Billions of years ago, Mars was wet. A new study maps 16 massive river basins that may have been the planet's best cradles for life. Researchers from UT Austin, led by Abdallah S. Zaki and Timothy A. Goudge, didn't discover new rivers. Instead, they did something simpler but profound: they connected the dots. By piecing together existing maps of valley networks, lakes, and canyons, they identified 16 massive watersheds exceeding 100,000 km².