Astronomy

Finding alien life won’t be a flying saucer landing at the White House – NASA scientists will hold a press conference to excitedly show off a chart that’s incomprehensible to most people. Now we’re a step closer to that boring but groundbreaking day.

Astronomers have detected mysterious X-ray signals coming from a nearby white dwarf star for more than 40 years. We may now know where they’re coming from – the death throes of a planet being torn to shreds and raining down on the star.

Astrophysicists have done a bit of crime scene investigation. They’ve traced radioactive elements on the seafloor back to the cosmic explosions they might have come from – and potentially linked the event to evolutionary changes in viruses in Africa.

After a couple of successful Kickstarters for versions of its book-sized smart telescope, DwarfLab opted to jump straight into production for the Dwarf III. We've recently been out stargazing and wildlife watching with this budget-friendly sky watcher.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has grabbed headlines lately, after NASA briefly gave it had the highest ever chance of an impact for an asteroid of hazardous size. Thankfully, new observations have dropped that probability to almost zero – for Earth, anyway.

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with a tail, like a gigantic comet. The planet, known as WASP-69b, is slowly evaporating in the radiation of its host star.

To find black holes we usually have to look thousands of light-years away. But a new study suggests we could find evidence of them right here on Earth, as tiny tunnels they’ve carved out in rocks or old buildings.

Astrophysicists have detected the most energetic electrons ever recorded raining down on Earth. With trillions of times the energy of visible light, these cosmic rays seem to be coming from a powerful source relatively close to our solar system.

Astronomers have clocked a cosmic collision at 3.2 million km/h (2 million mph). A new instrument has spotted a galaxy crashing through a group of others at incredible speeds, creating a shock wave that’s changing the region completely.

Aliens might be able to detect us from the radio signals we beam to Mars to control our rovers there. Astronomers have now listened in on the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system to check whether aliens are chattering between their own neighboring planets.

Earth can only hold so many photography subjects – but the universe is basically infinite, and so is its beauty. The Astrophotography Prize is a relatively new international competition that celebrates this art, and this year’s winners have been unveiled.

Astronomers have spotted an absolutely colossal cosmic chimney that stretches as far as 140 Milky Ways lined up side by side. These jumbo jets are being blasted from a supermassive black hole.