4+ hour, 45+ min ago   (504+ words) New simulations suggest the moon may have formed almost instantly after a giant impact, not slowly from a debris disk....

1+ day, 14+ hour ago   (934+ words) Scientists found that Mercury's roughest terrain may conceal ancient cliffs, suggesting the planet shrank substantially more than estimates showed. Mercury’s surface is crossed by long cliffs and ridges. They formed as the crust buckled to fit a planet that got…...

2+ day, 7+ hour ago   (1029+ words) A frozen object beyond Jupiter is venting carbon dioxide gas into space, revealing what can drive activity so far from the sun. A centaur, one of the icy bodies that orbit beyond Jupiter, has started venting gas into space, even…...

3+ day, 10+ hour ago   (900+ words) Little red dots should shine in X-rays if black holes power them. None did, until Chandra found one 11.8 billion light-years away that does. Astronomers have found a single object in the constellation Ursa Major that behaves like nothing else in…...

5+ day, 7+ hour ago   (654+ words) California’s Vasquez Rocks have stood in for alien worlds for decades. A NASA satellite image reveals the famous landscape from space. Southern California is home to a landscape so unusual that Hollywood has spent decades pretending it belongs on other…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (1175+ words) Physicists including Roger Penrose observed gravity’s effect on a falling quantum object for the first time, confirming Einstein’s theory holds up in the quantum world. Jump off a diving board and you feel weightless on the way down. Einstein made…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (1041+ words) Three peptides stayed whole for weeks in 98% sulfuric acid, the stuff of Venus's clouds, and all three folded into the same omega loop. Concentrated sulfuric acid takes apart almost anything biological it touches. For that reason astronomers looking for life…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (1231+ words) Physicists have spent six decades believing that high-energy particles trapped around Earth spread out through random scattering. A new paper just flipped that assumption on its head. For over 60 years, scientists believed high-energy particles in Earth’s radiation belts were scattering…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (929+ words) AI detects faint signals from sunspots forming beneath the Sun’s surface, offering hours of advance warning before they become visible. Satellite operators and power companies want more notice before a solar storm, but the earliest notice comes from a part…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (1007+ words) Future moon bases could use smarter space habitat design to reduce anxiety, boredom and homesickness. A shelter in a dangerous place is ultimately judged on whether everyone comes out alive. Submarines, polar stations and emergency housing are designed around health…...