Sifting through decades-old data from Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby of the seventh planet from the Sun, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have found that Uranus is leaking gas, and a lot of it. The discovery of this odd outgassing may offer important clues as to how other planets,read more
After more than a decade of research, scientists have discovered what may be the first known complete protein molecule in a meteorite, the first discovery of its kind confirmed to be from an extraterrestrial source. Although simpler amino acid molecules, such as glycine, have been found in meteorites before, compoundsread more
Data collected from the New Horizons space probe’s 2019 flyby of a snowman-shaped object at the edge of the solar system has settled a debate about how the early solar system formed. Previously, there had been two prevailing theories regarding how this happened: either the matter in the proto-planetary disk smashed together violently—eventually forming the Sun, planets and other bodiesread more
For the past month the star Betelgeuse has been acting strangely, having dimmed to a luminosity lower than at any point in history, prompting speculation that the supergiant star might be about to explode into a supernova. Although astronomers point out that this is an unlikely event, a strange gravityread more