From Comet Leonard bid farewell to Earth and flew past Venus, sun-studying spacecraft flew through the comet’s long tail, giving humans a new perspective on the icy wanderer. Discovered last January and also known as Comet C / 2021 A1, Comet Leonard was probably the most spectacular visitor for skywatchers in 2021. sun, especially in … Read more
We may finally have the explanation for mysterious shadows of falling material in the atmosphere of the Sun, observed during solar flares. First spotted in 1999, these mysterious streaks of shadow – referred to as “downward-traveling dark voids” – were thought related to the magnetic field interactions that triggered solar eruptions. Now, solar physicists have … Read more
Still an image of several supra-arcade downflows, also described as “dark, finger-like features,” occurring in a solar flare. The downflows appear directly above the bright flare arcade. This solar flare appears on June 18, 2015. Credit: NASA SDO In January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare. Unlike solar flares, this solar flare … Read more
Earth is far from a solid mass of rock. The outer layer of our planet – known as the lithosphere – is made up of more than 20 tectonic plates; as these gargantuan slates glide about the face of the planet, we get the movement of continents, and interaction at the boundaries, not least of … Read more
A rare treasure that could shed light on the evolution of black holes has been discovered in the Milky Way’s closest large galactic neighbor. In a cluster of stars in the Andromeda galaxy, aka M31, astronomers studied changes in light to identify black hole clocking at almost 100,000 times the mass of the Sun. That … Read more
A red giant is a dying star in the final stages of stellar evolution. In about five billion years, our own sun will turn into a red giant, expanding and ingesting the inner planets – possibly even the Earth. What does the future hold for our solar system light and others like it? Star facts: … Read more
Planetary-scale engineering plans designed to cool the Earth’s surface and reduce the impact of global warming are potentially dangerous and should be blocked by governments, more than 60 policy experts and scientists said Monday. Even if injecting billions of sulfur particles into the middle atmosphere – the most discussed plan for what is known as … Read more
The Solar System floats in the middle of an amazing empty area. This region of low-density, high-temperature plasma, about 1,000 light years across, is surrounded by a cooler, denser, dust-neutral shell of gas. It’s called the Local Bubble, and exactly how and why it came into being, with the Solar System floating in the middle, … Read more
For most of life on Earth, oxygen is essential, and it usually requires sunlight to produce that oxygen. But in an exciting twist, researchers have caught an ordinary microbe living in the ocean breaking all the rules. Scientists have discovered that there is a microbe called Nitrosopumilus maritimus and many of its cousins, known as … Read more