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Planets are far dimmer than the stars they orbit, so taking a normal photograph of an Earth-sized world next to a Sun-like star is extraordinarily difficult. Astronomers usually find exoplanets…
What happens to Webb’s mysterious little red dots as the universe ages? The Saguaro galaxy’s red nucleus offers a way to explore their hidden surroundings.
The Moon does have an atmosphere, but calling it air would be misleading. Its outer envelope is an exosphere: a scatter of atoms so thin that particles can travel long…
Spiral galaxies are often drawn as graceful pinwheels, with arms that curl around a bright centre in something close to balance. NGC 4654 is a one-sided spiral galaxy that does…
What is MoM-BH*-1? Webb’s spectrum suggests a possible black hole star wrapped in dense gas at cosmic dawn. Here is what the evidence shows—and what remains uncertain.
When you look at the Moon, you see it as it was about 1.3 seconds ago. The delay is too short to notice, but the principle is the same for…
Researchers are using high-definition X-ray CT and virtual unwrapping to read cuneiform letters that remain sealed inside their ancient clay envelopes.
Betelgeuse has been watched for thousands of years, but the red star still had one secret that refused to give itself up. Astronomers had long suspected that a fainter companion…
The centre of the Milky Way is a difficult place for fragile molecules. Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, is surrounded by intense radiation,…
Most comets and asteroids that pass through the Solar System are permanent residents. The Sun’s gravity keeps them on closed orbits, even when those orbits take thousands of years to…
The Milky Way is not the center of the universe. No observation has placed Earth or our galaxy in a privileged position, and the large-scale universe looks broadly the same…
A new report about alleged UAP recoveries near White Sands is circulating because it makes a testable promise. If fragments or intact objects were actually recovered, researchers could study the…
The fifth U.S. UAP release adds witness testimony to the public record. The documents do not identify what produced the sightings, but they show what was reported, what details can…
Euclid has found 31 quasars from the universe’s first 700 million years, giving astronomers a new way to study how early supermassive black holes grew.
Archaeologists do not always find a monument in the form people imagine. A stone circle may survive as a scatter of sockets. A burial mound may be flattened into a…
The outline of a Neolithic monument can disappear long before the site stops carrying information. At Sizewell on the Suffolk coast, archaeologists found a large rectangular enclosure whose ditches had…
Avi Loeb’s latest UAP essay asks whether some unresolved objects might be classified aircraft—or technology no government has publicly acknowledged. The distinction matters because the same sighting can look like…
Sending a spacecraft between stars is difficult for a reason that is easy to underestimate: the spacecraft has to leave one planetary system and arrive at another with enough speed,…
A new study at Hierakonpolis used high-resolution ground-penetrating radar to map a large wooden palisade beside a Predynastic ceremonial center.
Look up on a clear night and the sky between the stars is mostly black. That seems obvious until you ask a deceptively simple question: if the universe contains an…
Göbekli Tepe excavations have uncovered rectangular buildings that may have been homes. The find adds an everyday setting to a place long known for its monumental pillars and enclosures, giving…
The Kuiper Belt is a broad, cold region beyond Neptune where millions of icy bodies orbit the Sun. Pluto is the best-known member, but it is only one of many…
Vacuum birefringence sounds like a contradiction. A vacuum is supposed to be empty, while birefringence is a property associated with materials such as crystals. In quantum physics, however, empty space…
Most UAP videos show brightness and apparent motion, but very few establish how far the object was from the camera. That missing measurement is why a dramatic clip can suggest…