Ultra-thin new material shields spacecraft from electromagnetic waves and radiation
A shielding layer can do a lot of jobs badly if you ask too much of it. It…
Mars has air, but almost none of it can keep you alive
For all the drama around getting to Mars, the harder question starts after landing. A person can step…
Black hole GW190521 may be a wormhole from another universe
For just one-tenth of a second in May 2019, the universe delivered a signal that did not fit…
Massive binary star system may be feeding the Milky Way’s central black hole
A string of small gas clouds near the Milky Way’s central black hole has puzzled astronomers for years.…
NASA cleanroom fungus could survive a trip to Mars, raising contamination concerns
A fungus pulled from NASA cleanrooms kept surviving tests that were meant to mimic nearly every stage of…
Laser-powered, ‘metajets’ could be the future of interstellar flight
Alpha Centauri sits more than four light-years away, close enough to fascinate generations of dreamers and far enough…
For the first time ever, scientists create particles out of empty space
The universe looks like it is mostly empty space. Remove the stars, planets, dust, and gas, and what…
For the first time, astronomers identify the edge of the Milky Way’s disc
The Milky Way does not come with a clean outer line. Its disc does not stop the way…
‘Bathtub Ring’ points to vast ancient ocean on Mars
Mars may have once held a vast ocean across its northern lowlands, and the clearest clue may not…
Mississippi State physicist creates neutron star reaction in the lab
For years, physicists have wondered whether one unstable form of copper might act like a traffic jam inside…
‘Dancing jets’ from black hole reveal their immense power
The jets do not move in a straight, obedient line. Around Cygnus X-1, a black hole and a…
Undergraduate students built a cavity detector to search for axion dark matter
Dark matter is supposed to be everywhere, threaded through the Milky Way and outnumbering ordinary matter by a…