Space & Time News

August 2, 2025

Top Headlines

Trapped by Moon Dust: The Physics Error That Fooled NASA for Years

July 27, 2025 — Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison uncovered a critical flaw in how lunar and Martian rovers are tested on Earth. Simulations revealed that test results have been misleading for decades because researchers only adjusted rover weight to ...

UF Students Are Bending Metal With Lasers to Build Massive Structures in Orbit

July 2, 2025 — UF engineers, backed by DARPA and NASA, are perfecting laser-forming techniques that let metal sheets fold themselves into giant solar arrays, antennas, and even space-station parts right in ...

World’s Largest Camera Just Snapped the Universe in 3,200 Megapixels

June 27, 2025 — The LSST camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its jaw-dropping first images, each capturing 45 times the area of the full moon in one shot. Over the next ten years, this cosmic giant will scan the southern sky in ultra-HD, helping ...

Martian Dust to Dream Homes: How Microbes Can Build on the Red Planet

June 25, 2025 — Imagine printing your Martian home from dust, sunlight, and a bit of biology. A new synthetic lichen system uses fungi and bacteria to grow building materials directly from Martian soil, completely autonomously and without human ...

Mojave Lichen Defies Death Rays—could Life Thrive on Distant Exoplanets?

June 24, 2025 — Lichen from the Mojave Desert has stunned scientists by surviving months of lethal UVC radiation, suggesting life could exist on distant planets orbiting volatile stars. The secret? A microscopic “sunscreen” layer that protects their vital ...

AI Reveals Milky Way’s Black Hole Spins Near Top Speed

June 15, 2025 — AI has helped astronomers crack open some of the universe s best-kept secrets by analyzing massive datasets about black holes. Using over 12 million simulations powered by high-throughput computing, scientists discovered that the Milky Way's central ...

This Mind-Bending Physics Breakthrough Could Redefine Timekeeping

June 11, 2025 — By using a clever quantum approach that involves two "hands" on a clock one moving quickly and invisibly in the quantum world, the other more traditionally scientists have found a way to boost timekeeping precision dramatically. Even better, this ...

Black Holes Could Act as Natural Supercolliders -- And Help Uncover Dark Matter

June 5, 2025 — Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would ...

Millions of New Solar System Objects to Be Found and 'Filmed in Technicolor' -- Studies Predict

June 3, 2025 — Astronomers have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects are likely to be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this ...

Particles Energized by Magnetic Reconnection in the Nascent Solar Wind

June 3, 2025 — Scientists have identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the ...

Webb Reveals the Surprising Origin of Ultra-Hot Exoplanet WASP-121b

June 2, 2025 — WASP-121b may have been born in a frozen zone and later migrated into its current inferno-like orbit. A surprise discovery of methane in the wrong place suggests intense vertical winds are reshaping how we understand planetary ...

New Laser Smaller Than a Penny Can Measure Objects at Ultrafast Rates

June 2, 2025 — Researchers have engineered a laser device smaller than a penny that they say could power everything from the LiDAR systems used in self-driving vehicles to gravitational wave detection, one of the most delicate experiments in existence to observe ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:28pm EDT

Black Holes Don’t Just Swallow Light, They Sing. And We Just Learned the Tune

Aug. 1, 2025 — Using a powerful mathematical tool, scientists have unveiled the intricate "ringing" of black holes, unlocking patterns missed for decades and laying ...

Forget the Big Bang: Gravitational Waves May Have Really Created the Universe

July 31, 2025 — A team of scientists has proposed a groundbreaking new theory on the Universe's origins, offering a fresh, radical take on the Big Bang's early ...

Clockwork from Scratch: How Scientists Made Timekeeping Cells

July 29, 2025 — Scientists at UC Merced have engineered artificial cells that can keep perfect time—mimicking the 24-hour biological clocks found in living organisms. By reconstructing circadian machinery inside ...

Ghost Particles May Secretly Decide the Fate of Collapsing Stars

July 28, 2025 — Neutrinos, ghostly particles barely interacting with matter, may secretly be reshaping the fates of massive stars. New research suggests that as stars collapse, they form natural "neutrino ...

Hubble Caught a Star Exploding — and It’s Helping Map the Cosmos

July 25, 2025 — In the sprawling Hydra constellation, 137 million light-years away, lies NGC 3285B—a dazzling spiral galaxy recently spotlighted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This cosmic beauty orbits the ...

Astronomers Capture Giant Planet Forming 440 Light-Years from Earth

July 23, 2025 — Astronomers have likely witnessed a planet forming in real time, seen inside a spiral arm of the HD 135344B protoplanetary disc—exactly where theory predicted. The direct light detection is what ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Catch 100,000 Explosions — and Rewrite the Universe’s Story

July 22, 2025 — NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is set to embark on a deep-sky survey that could capture nearly 100,000 cosmic explosions, shedding light on ...

A Strange Fossil at the Edge of the Solar System Just Shook Up Planet Nine Theories

July 20, 2025 — A tiny object far beyond Pluto, newly discovered by the Subaru Telescope, could reshape our understanding of the early Solar System. Named 2023 KQ14, ...

Mysterious Object Found Dancing With Neptune

July 20, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered a bizarre object in the outer solar system, 2020 VN40, that dances to Neptune’s gravitational beat in a never-before-seen rhythm. It’s the first of its kind, orbiting ...

NASA’s IXPE Tracked a Rare Pulsar—and Found an Unexpected Power Source

July 20, 2025 — Astronomers studying a rare neutron star system have uncovered a surprising source of powerful X-rays. Using NASA s IXPE telescope and data from other observatories, an international team found that ...

Astronomers Just Witnessed Planets Being Born Around a Baby Star 1300 Light-Years Away

July 20, 2025 — Astronomers have, for the first time, observed the very beginning of planet formation around a star beyond our Solar System. Using the James Webb Space Telescope and ALMA, researchers detected hot ...

Hubble Cracks Open a Glittering Cosmic Time Capsule, Revealing Multi-Generational Stars 160,000 Light-Years Away

July 14, 2025 — Hubble’s crystal-clear look at NGC 1786—an ancient globular cluster tucked inside the Large Magellanic Cloud—pulls us 160,000 light-years from Earth and straight into a cosmic time machine. ...

It Looked Like Nothing—then Scientists Found a World 10x the Size of Jupiter

July 14, 2025 — Astronomers have uncovered a massive, hidden exoplanet nestled in the dusty disc of a young star—MP Mus—by combining cutting-edge data from the ALMA observatory and ESA’s Gaia mission. ...

Two Monster Black Holes Just Collided — It’s So Massive, It Shouldn’t Exist

July 14, 2025 — Two colossal black holes among the most massive ever seen collided in deep space, creating gravitational waves that rippled across the cosmos and shook the foundations of astrophysical theory. ...

Gravitational Shockwave: LIGO Catches a 225-Solar-Mass Black-Hole Smash-Up

July 14, 2025 — Gravitational-wave detectors have captured their biggest spectacle yet: two gargantuan, rapidly spinning black holes likely forged by earlier smash-ups fused into a 225-solar-mass titan, GW231123. ...

This Interstellar Comet May Be a Frozen Relic from Before the Sun

July 11, 2025 — A newly discovered comet, 3I/ATLAS, may be the most ancient visitor ever detected, potentially older than our solar system itself. Unlike previous interstellar objects, this ice-rich comet seems to ...

100 Ghost Galaxies May Be Orbiting the Milky Way—and We’re Just Now Uncovering Them

July 13, 2025 — New supercomputer simulations suggest the Milky Way could be surrounded by dozens more faint, undetected satellite galaxies—up to 100 more than we currently know. These elusive "orphan" ...

NASA’s Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle Will Search for Lunar Ice and Subsurface Structures

July 11, 2025 — NASA is gearing up for an exciting chapter in lunar exploration by sending a trio of high-tech instruments to the Moon. Two of the devices will be attached to a new lunar rover capable of carrying ...

These Mysterious Stars Could Glow Forever Using Dark Matter

July 13, 2025 — Imagine a star powered not by nuclear fusion, but by one of the universe’s greatest mysteries—dark matter. Scientists have proposed the existence of “dark dwarfs,” strange glowing objects ...

Scientists Uncover 15,000 Kilometers of Lost Rivers on Mars

July 11, 2025 — Mars may not have always been the dry and dusty world we imagine. A staggering network of ancient riverbeds, spanning over 15,000 kilometers, has been discovered in the planet’s Noachis Terra ...

NASA Probe Flies Into the Sun and Captures the Origins of Solar Storms

July 11, 2025 — In its closest-ever dive into the Sun’s atmosphere, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has returned stunning new images and data that bring scientists closer to solving one of the Sun’s biggest ...

This Tiny Rice Plant Could Feed the First Lunar Colony

July 11, 2025 — In a bold step toward sustainable space travel, scientists are engineering a radically small, protein-rich rice that can grow in space. The Moon-Rice project, led by the Italian Space Agency in ...

Chang’e-6 Unearths Volcanic and Magnetic Mysteries on the Moon’s Farside

July 11, 2025 — China's Chang’e-6 mission has delivered the first-ever samples from the Moon’s far side, shedding light on one of planetary science’s greatest mysteries: why the near and far sides are so ...

Big-Bang Echoes Unmask a Billion-Light-Year Hole Around Earth—and It’s Stretching Space Faster

July 15, 2025 — Our galaxy may reside in a billion-light-year-wide cosmic bubble that accelerates local expansion, potentially settling the long-running Hubble tension. Galaxy counts reveal a sparsely populated ...

2.35-Billion-Year-Old Moon Rock Found in Africa Rewrites Lunar History

July 13, 2025 — A 2.35-billion-year-old Moon rock that fell to Earth in Africa is rewriting what we know about lunar volcanism. This rare meteorite, studied by UK scientists and unveiled at a major geochemistry ...

Astronomers Catch Planets in the Act of Being Born

July 9, 2025 — Astronomers have spotted centimeter-sized “pebbles” swirling around two infant stars 450 light-years away, revealing the raw ingredients of planets already stretching to Neptune-like orbits. ...

Ice in a Million-Degree Fermi Bubble Reveals the Milky Way’s Recent Eruption

July 9, 2025 — Astronomers using the Green Bank Telescope spotted surprisingly cold, dense hydrogen clouds embedded inside the Milky Way’s vast, super-hot Fermi bubbles—structures thought to be created by a ...

Hidden DNA-Sized Crystals in Cosmic Ice Could Rewrite Water—and Life Itself

July 9, 2025 — Scientists from UCL and the University of Cambridge have revealed that "space ice"—long thought to be completely disordered—is actually sprinkled with tiny crystals, changing our ...

Can One Vanishing Particle Shatter String Theory — and Explain Dark Matter?

July 5, 2025 — Scientists are on the trail of a mysterious five-particle structure that could challenge one of the biggest theories in physics: string theory. This rare particle—never seen before and predicted ...

A Star Exploded Twice — First-Ever Image Reveals Its Cosmic Fingerprint

July 3, 2025 — Astronomers studying the remnant SNR 0509-67.5 have finally caught a white dwarf in the act of a rare “double-detonation” supernova, where an initial helium blast on the star’s surface triggers ...