Science

Every exoplanet discovery is an opportunity to refine models of planet formation, solar system architecture, habitable zones, and habitability itself. Each new planet injects more data into the scientific endeavour to understand what’s going on and how things got this way. However, some planets have such unusual characteristics that they invite a deeper focus and intense follow-up observations. That’s the case for one new exoplanet. It’s a super-Earth on an unusual orbit that’s giving astronomers an opportunity to test the ideas of habitability and optimistic and pessimistic habitable zones. The planet is named HD 20794 d, and it orbits a Sun-like star about 20 light-years away. Its eccentric orbit takes it from 0.7 to 1.5 AU from its host star. It spends half of its time beyond the putative habitable zone before travelling back into the zone and slightly inside of it. Could life somehow survive on a planet like this? In stellar terms, the exoplanet is right next door, and since t...

According to the Giant Impact Hypothesis , the Moon formed from a massive impact between a primordial Earth and a Mars-sized object (Theia) roughly 4.5 billion years ago. This is largely based on the study of sample rocks retrieved by the Apollo missions and seismic studies, which revealed that the Earth and Moon are similar in composition and structure. Further studies of the surface have revealed features that suggest the planet was once volcanically active, including lunar maria (dark, flat areas filled with solidified lava). In the past, researchers suspected that these maria were formed by contractions in the interior that occurred billions of years ago and that the Moon has remained dormant ever since. However, a new study conducted by researchers from the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and the University of Maryland (UMD) revealed small ridges on the Moon’s far side that are younger than those on the near side. Their findings constitute another line of evidence that the...

The odds of a sizable asteroid striking Earth are small, but they’re never zero. Large asteroids have struck Earth in the past, causing regional devastation. A really large asteroid strike likely contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs. So we shouldn’t be too surprised that astronomers have discovered an asteroid with a better than 1% chance of striking our world. Those odds are large enough we should keep an eye on them, but not large enough that we should start packing bags and fleeing to the hills. The rock, named 2024 YR4, is somewhere between 40 – 100 meters wide, which would make it a “city killer” asteroid. If it does strike Earth, it wouldn’t decimate human civilization and cause mass extinctions, but it could destroy a heavily populated area if it struck a city, or trigger a tsunami if it struck the ocean. It would back a punch similar to the 1908 Tunguska event in Northern Siberia. So what is the overall risk of 2024 YR4? The scale most commonly used for asteroid i...

By Ashley Strickland | CNN Space agencies are keeping a close eye on a recently discovered asteroid that has a small chance of impacting Earth. Named 2024 YR4, the asteroid has a 1.2% chance of hitting our planet on December 22, 2032, the European Space Agency and NASA have found. But that also means the space rock has a nearly 99% chance of safely passing by Earth in 2032, according to the ESA and NASA. Future observations of the asteroid will help scientists determine the likelihood of an impact. RELATED:  Are we all aliens? NASA’s returned asteroid samples hold the ingredients of life from a watery world ]The asteroid is estimated to be between 131 and 328 feet (40 and 100 meters) wide. Asteroids of this size impact Earth every few thousand years, and they can cause severe damage to local regions, according to the ESA. The space rock has a “size range comparable to that of a large building,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, director for the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, or ...

By MARCIA DUNN CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Asteroid samples fetched by NASA hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world, scientists reported Wednesday. Related Articles Science | ‘Bright and relatively easy to see’: The planets align for this astronomical event Science | First US case of new bird flu strain found on California duck farm Science | Who funds the World Health Organization? A list of its biggest donors Science | Trump, Project 2025 previewed federal grant freeze Science | Elusive Californian mammal captured on camera for first time ever The findings provide the strongest evidence yet that asteroids may have planted the seeds of life on Earth and that these ingredients were mingling with water almost right from the start. “That’s the kind of environment that could have been essential to the steps that lead from elements to life,” said the Smithsonian Institution’s Tim McCoy, one of the lead...

New images from NASA’s Juno spacecraft make Io’s nature clear. It’s the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, with more than 400 active volcanoes. Juno has performed multiple flybys of Io, and images from its latest one show an enormous hotspot near the moon’s south pole. Juno was sent to Jupiter to study the giant planet, but that primary mission ended, and NASA extended the mission. Currently, it is performing flybys of three of the Galilean moons: Ganymede, Europa, and Io. We’ve reported on Juno’s Io flybys previously. In its latest flyby, the orbiter imaged a volcanic hotspot on the moon’s south pole larger than Lake Superior. The images are from Juno’s JIRAM (Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper) instrument. According to NASA, the hot spot’s eruptions are six times more energetic than all of Earth’s power plants and its radiance measured well above 80 trillion watts. “The data supports that this is the most intense volcanic eruption ever recorded on Io.” Alessandro ...

By Bill Barrow | Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — A White House order to freeze federal grants reflects a theory of presidential power that Donald Trump clearly endorsed during his 2024 campaign . The approach was further outlined in the Project 2025 governing treatise that candidate Trump furiously denied was a blueprint for his second administration. At face value, the Monday evening memo from Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, is meant to bring federal spending in line with Trump’s executive actions, notably on LGBTQ+ issues, civil rights, energy and environmental policy. Vaeth’s memo invoked nakedly ideological terms: “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.” The memo could affect operations that go well beyond policy areas Vaeth singled out. It is a potential bl...

Star formation in the early Universe was a vigorous process that created gigantic stars. Called Population 3 stars, these giants were massive, extremely luminous stars, that lived short lives, many of which were ended when they exploded as primordial supernovae. But even these early stars faced growth limitations. Stellar feedback plays a role in modern star formation. As young stars grow, they emit powerful radiation that can disperse nearby gas they need to keep growing. This is called protostellar radiative feedback, and it takes place in addition to the restrictive effect their magnetic fields have on their growth. However, new research shows that the growth of Pop 3 stars was limited by their magnetic fields. The research is titled “ Magnetic fields limit the mass of Population III stars even before the onset of protostellar radiation feedback. ” The lead author is Piyush Sharda, an astrophysicist at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. It’s available on the pre-print s...

Ever since Isaac Newton famously talked about gravity, its dominance as a force in our Solar System has been well known. It’s responsible for the orbits of the planets and their satellites but there are other forces that have shaped our planetary neighbourhood. A new paper has been released where an astronomer discusses how recoiling ice from comets can push them around and how the radiation pressure from the Sun drives material outwards. There are also relativistic effects too that can cause particles to spiral inward toward the Sun.  Gravity is the force that governs the structure and motion of the solar system, keeping celestial bodies together in a cosmic dance. The Sun, with its immense mass, generates the strongest gravitational pull, anchoring planets, asteroids, comets, and other objects in orbit around it. Each planet’s orbit results from the balance between its velocity and the Sun’s gravitational force, creating elliptical paths described by Kepler’s laws of motion. Si...

Don’t know about you but when I think of Earth my mind is filled with the diversity of life and the rich flora and fauna. In reality, about 99% of Earth is uninhabitable; deep underground places with high pressure and temperature where even the toughest bacteria cannot survive. There are places though where life thrives from tiniest toughest bacteria to the largest elephant. Then there are places that are habitable but devoid of life; lava flows are a great example and the space between microbes. A paper recently released looks at these uninhabited, habitable areas and wonders what we may learn as we search for life in the Universe. Life on Earth has taken millions of years to evolve to the state we see today and has invaded nearly every corner of the planet. That is, except those places where the environment is so extreme that even the toughest extremophile cannot survive. These regions include places like the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, where rainfal...

The Einstein Probe was launched in January 2024 to look at X-ray transients, among other things. Its power comes from its Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT), which can capture 3600 square degrees of the sky in a single go. That’s an area 18,000 times the apparent area of the Moon. That is a huge patch of astronomical sky, so it’s not surprising that just two months later the probe saw a 17-minute burst of soft X-rays. Given the name EP240315a, it is an example of a fast X-ray transient (FXRT). Because the WXT can pinpoint transients so quickly, other telescopes could make follow-up observations in real time. Within an hour after its first detection, the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) captured the event in visible light. Other observations from the Gemini-North telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile were able to measure the redshift of the event. They found that the light of EP240315a traveled for 12.5 billion years to reach us. Radio light from...

PLEASANTON — The search for clean water wells in Pleasanton is in full swing, with significant progress expected to be made by this summer, according to city officials. The city this month began drilling at Del Prado Park, the first of several sites being explored to find safe, potable water underground. During a Pleasanton City Council meeting on Tuesday, officials said that workers are wrapping up drilling at Del Prado and will soon be moving on to drill at the Tennis and Community Park, and then Hansen Park. Mayor Jack Balch called a discussion of the city’s water system Tuesday a “sobering” moment, as officials discussed the health and effectiveness of Pleasanton’s water system. He expressed surprise when officials explained that an audit shows Pleasanton loses about 679,000 gallons of water per day, or an average of 30.9 gallons a day for each of the city’s 22,0000 water customers. Officials said that amount of water loss is what the state allows, however Pleasanton is expec...

There might be a type of exoplanet without dry land. They’re called “Hycean” worlds, a portmanteau of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘ocean.’ They’re mostly or entirely covered in oceans and have thick hydrogen atmospheres. They’re intriguing because their atmospheres keep them warm enough to have liquid water outside of the traditional habitable zones. If they do exist, scientists think they’re good candidates to support microbial life. Hycean worlds are hypothetical, but there is some evidence that they exist. The Kepler mission detected many candidates and provided foundational evidence for their existence. However, it didn’t detect any with certainty. More recently, JWST observations also supported the idea. The space telescope detected carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of a candidate Hycean world called K2-18b . Both of those molecules can be biosignatures of microbial life under similar conditions as Earth’s oceans. This infographic shows the chemicals the JWST detected in the a...