Bizarre Things: Space & Time

January 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Physicists Pioneer Entanglement Microscopy Algorithm to Explore How Matter Entangles in Quantum Many-Body Systems

Jan. 23, 2025 — A research team has recently developed a novel algorithm in quantum physics known as 'entanglement microscopy' that enables visualization and mapping of this extraordinary phenomenon at a microscopic ...

Astronomers Thought They Understood Fast Radio Bursts: A Recent One Calls That Into Question

Jan. 21, 2025 — Fast radio bursts are mysterious and brief flashes of radio emissions that were thought to be produced by magnetars, highly magnetized rotating neutron stars. Yet magnetars appear primarily in young ...

Extreme Supersonic Winds Measured on Planet Outside Our Solar System

Jan. 21, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33,000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jet-stream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery provides ...

First Fast Radio Burst Traced to Old, Dead, Elliptical Galaxy

Jan. 21, 2025 — Astronomers previously thought all FRBs were generated by magnetars formed through the explosions of very young, massive stars. But new FRB is pinpointed to the outskirts of 11.3-billion-year-old galaxy without young, active stars -- calling those ...

Latest Headlines

updated 3:29pm EST

The Universe Is Expanding Too Fast to Fit Theories: Hubble Tension in Crisis

Jan. 17, 2025 — The Universe really seems to be expanding fast. Too fast, even. A new measurement confirms what previous -- and highly debated -- results had shown: ...

NASA's Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

Jan. 17, 2025 — In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby ...

Large and Small Galaxies May Grow in Ways More Similar Than Expected

Jan. 16, 2025 — Galaxies like the Milky Way grow by merging with smaller galaxies over billions of years, unlike dwarf galaxies, which have long been thought to lack the heft to attract mass and grow in the same ...

Astrophysicists Reveal Structure of 74 Exocomet Belts Orbiting Nearby Stars in Landmark Survey

Jan. 17, 2025 — Astrophysicists have imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. The crystal-clear images show ...

This Tiny Galaxy Is Answering Some Big Questions

Jan. 16, 2025 — Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows. Scientists have reported finding that ...

NASA's Pandora Mission One Step Closer to Probing Alien Atmospheres

Jan. 16, 2025 — Pandora, a small satellite mission poised to provide in-depth study of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars to determine the composition of their atmospheres cleared an important ...

Astronomers Observe Real-Time Formation of Black Hole Jets for the First Time

Jan. 16, 2025 — In 2018, a galaxy about 270 million light-years away from Earth exhibited a major increase in activity. It quieted down again by 2020 -- only to ...

The Moon: A Chunk Ejected from Earth?

Jan. 16, 2025 — A research team has discovered another piece in the puzzle of the formation of the Moon and water on Earth. The prevailing theory was that the Moon was the result of a collision between the early ...

Fresh, Direct Evidence for Tiny Drops of Quark-Gluon Plasma

Jan. 15, 2025 — A new analysis of data from the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) reveals fresh evidence that collisions of even very small nuclei with large ones might create tiny ...

Three Tiny 'Stellar-Ghost-Town' Galaxies Discovered

Jan. 15, 2025 — By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from ...

NASA Celebrates Edwin Hubble's Discovery of a New Universe

Jan. 15, 2025 — For humans, the most important star in the universe is our Sun. The second-most important star is nestled inside the Andromeda galaxy. Don't go looking for it -- the flickering star is 2.2 ...

This Quasar May Have Helped Turn the Lights on for the Universe

Jan. 15, 2025 — Astronomers have detected an intensely brightening and dimming quasar that may help explain how some objects in the early universe grew at a highly accelerated rate. The discovery is the most distant ...

Super-Earth Vs. Sub-Neptune? The Winner Is Super-Venus!

Jan. 15, 2025 — New observational data and simulation models have confirmed a new type of planet unlike anything found in the Solar System. This provides another piece of the puzzle to understand how planets and ...

Not All Hot Jupiters Orbit Solo

Jan. 15, 2025 — Hot Jupiters are giant planets initially known to orbit alone close to their star. During their migration towards their star, these planets were thought to accrete or eject any other planets present. ...

Hubble Reveals Surprising Spiral Shape of Galaxy Hosting Young Jet

Jan. 13, 2025 — The night sky has always played a crucial role in navigation, from early ocean crossings to modern GPS. Besides stars, the United States Navy uses quasars as beacons. Quasars are distant galaxies ...

NASA's Hubble Tracks Down a 'Blue Lurker' Among Stars

Jan. 13, 2025 — The name 'blue lurker' might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into ...

New Study Unveils Breakthrough in Understanding Cosmic Particle Accelerators

Jan. 13, 2025 — Scientists have come a step closer to understanding how collisionless shock waves -- found throughout the universe -- are able to accelerate particles to extreme ...

X-Ray Flashes from a Nearby Supermassive Black Hole Accelerate Mysteriously

Jan. 13, 2025 — Astronomers observed flashes of X-rays coming from a supermassive black hole at a steadily increasing clip. The source could be the core of a dead star that's teetering at the black hole's ...

'What Is That?' Scientists Explain White Patch That Appears Near Northern Lights

Jan. 10, 2025 — A whitish, grey patch that sometimes appears in the night sky alongside the northern lights has now been ...

Citizen Science Reveals That Jupiter's Colorful Clouds Are Not Made of Ammonia Ice

Jan. 6, 2025 — Collaborative work by amateur and professional astronomers has helped to resolve a long-standing misunderstanding about the composition of Jupiter's clouds. Instead of being formed of ammonia ...

The Carbon in Our Bodies Probably Left the Galaxy and Came Back on Cosmic 'Conveyer Belt'

Jan. 3, 2025 — Scientists recently discovered that the giant 'conveyer belt' currents that push star-forged material out of our galaxy and pull it back in can also transport carbon atoms. That means that ...

Scientists Pin Down the Origins of a Fast Radio Burst

Jan. 1, 2025 — Astronomers pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brief and brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team's novel technique might also ...

Dark Energy 'Doesn't Exist' So Can't Be Pushing 'Lumpy' Universe Apart

Dec. 20, 2024 — One of the biggest mysteries in science -- dark energy -- doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the Universe is expanding. For the past 100 years, ...

Clever Trick to Cook Stars Like Christmas Pudding Detected for First Time

Dec. 20, 2024 — Researchers have found evidence of magnetic fields associated with a disc of gas and dust a few hundred light-years across deep inside a system of two merging galaxies known as Arp220. They say these ...

Large Hadron Collider Regularly Makes Magic

Dec. 19, 2024 — A brotherly research duo has discovered that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces top quarks -- the heaviest known fundamental particles -- it regularly creates a property known as ...

Best Glimpse Ever Into Icy Planetesimals of the Early Solar System

Dec. 19, 2024 — New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in ...

New Evidence Exists for Hidden Water Reservoirs and Rare Magmas on Ancient Mars

Dec. 19, 2024 — A new study explores how variations in Mars' crustal thickness during its ancient history may have influenced the planet's magmatic evolution and hydrological systems. The research suggests ...

Young Exoplanet's Atmosphere Unexpectedly Differs from Its Birthplace

Dec. 18, 2024 — Conventional wisdom assumes the ratio of gases in a planet's atmosphere should match the ratio of gases in the natal disk that birthed it. For the first time, researchers compared gases in a ...

Supermassive Black Holes Halt Rapid Construction in an Ancient Celestial City

Dec. 18, 2024 — Galaxy clusters -- the big cities of the universe -- are home to many giant elliptical galaxies that have completed their growth and are not forming stars. However, it is still unclear what has shut ...

Uncovering a Centaur's Tracks: Scientists Examine Unique Asteroid-Comet Hybrid

Dec. 18, 2024 — Scientists recently led a team that found, for the first time, that Chiron has surface chemistry unlike other centaurs. Its surface it has both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ice along with ...