Dark energy, a mysterious substance thought to be speeding up the expansion of the Universe is really there, according to a team of astronomers at the University of Portsmouth and LMU University Munich. After a two-year study led by Tommaso Giannantonio and Robert Crittenden, the scientists conclude that the likelihood of its existence stands at…
In 1967, the United States joined the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in signing the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The agreement, more casually known as the “Outer Space Treaty,” remains the closest thing the world…
In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought. A region of French Polynesia…
Astrophysicists have explored a discrepancy between the amount of lithium predicted by the standard models of elemental production during the Big Bang and the amount of lithium observed in the gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy near to our own. J. Christopher Howk, Nicolas Lehner and Grant Mathews of the Center for Astrophysics…
A pair of mathematicians have proposed a unified theory of dark matter and dark energy that alters Einstein’s equations describing the fundamentals of gravity. The researchers suggest the law of energy and momentum conservation in spacetime is valid only when normal matter, dark matter and dark energy are all taken into account. For normal matter…
An unusual pair of galaxies travel through the interstellar cosmos in this striking image obtained by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The unusual pair are jointly called Arp 116, but are composed of a large elliptical galaxy known as M60 and a smaller spiral galaxy called NGC 4647. Although the two galaxies appear to overlap in…
The discovery of the first alien planet with two suns — like the “Star Wars” world Tatooine — residing in its parent star’s habitable zone is good news for the search for life beyond Earth, scientists say. The planet, known as Kepler-47c, is a gas giant and therefore probably not suitable for life as we…
To build a planet you need lots of rubble and that means lots of heavy elements – stuff more massive than atoms of hydrogen and helium. The elemental composition of the collapsing nebula that gave birth to the Sun and the planets of the Solar System included things like iron, silicon and magnesium that form…
The Voyager 1 spacecraft’s 35th anniversary is proving to be unexpectedly exciting, as scientists gathered to examine new hints that the spacecraft is on the verge of leaving our solar system. Voyager 1 is now more than 11 billion miles away from Earth. It blasted off in September 1977, on a mission to Jupiter and…
With the successful landing and deployment of the Mars Curiosity Rover, humanity has been treated to a sneak peek at the Red Planet for the first time. The possibility of establishing space colonies has been a scientists’ dream for decades, but working out a way to keep humans alive on the outside Earth’s protective shell…