Stars

Astronomers have discovered a new exoplanet that belongs in a brand new class – an “ultrahot Neptune.” Known as LTT 9779b, the planet orbits extremely close to its star, and raises questions about how such a system came to be.

NASA has discovered a strange star system where a gas giant planet is tightly orbiting a tiny white dwarf. This the first sighting of such an arrangement, raising questions about how the planet survived the star’s expansive death in the first place.

NASA and NOAA have confirmed that the Sun has entered a new solar cycle, with activity beginning to ramp back up from its minimum in December 2019. This next cycle is forecast to be rather quiet, continuing a long-term trend of reduced activity.

Astronomers have detected the strongest magnetic field ever observed in the universe. Studying X-ray signals from a neutron star, the team calculated that its magnetic field is tens of millions of times stronger than any created in a lab on Earth.

The way things are in our solar system aren't always how they work elsewhere in the universe. Now, astronomers have observed a triple star system that’s warping and splitting its planetary disc into strange new shapes and multiple rings.

Exactly why and how the expansion of the universe is accelerating remains unknown. One hypothesis blames strange black-hole-like objects made of dark energy, and now astrophysicists have theorized how these objects work and where they all went.

The LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaboration has detected gravitational waves coming from the most massive black hole collision that it's ever recorded. The end result created a gargantuan black hole that belongs to a new class.

NASA has announced the selection of five Medium Class Explorer concept mission proposals that could one day revolutionize our understanding of the space environment, and see pictures taken of the Sun's polar regions.

Harvard scientists have suggested that the Sun had a long-lost twin. An ancient binary solar system helps explain the strange structure of the Oort cloud, and possibly the hypothetical Planet Nine. Best of all, the team outlines how we could check.

The universe will most likely end by slowly fading to black over trillions of years. Now a theoretical physicist has calculated the last interesting event that will ever happen: the explosions of stars called black dwarfs, which don’t even exist yet.

Phosphorus is a key ingredient for life as we know it, but it’s strangely uncommon in the cosmos. Now astronomers have discovered a new type of star that’s very rich in phosphorus, which could imply that alien life is more common than we thought.

We may be a step closer to understanding the mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs), as astronomers have now detected the first such signal from within our own galaxy. It was traced to a magnetar, which could be key to unlocking the origins of FRBs.