Millions across Europe are looking to the skies as the 2026 total solar eclipse creates a spectacular celestial event across parts of the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves directly between Earth and the Sun, completely blocking the Sun’s disc for observers within the narrow path of totality. The Moon’s shadow temporarily darkens the sky, creating an extraordinary daytime spectacle.

At maximum eclipse, totality is expected to last around 2 minutes and 18 seconds. The rare event has attracted huge crowds, with communities across Europe turning into viewing zones.

The eclipse has also sparked a surge in demand for specialised eclipse glasses, with pharmacies, opticians and retailers reporting strong sales and some locations running out of stock.

Total Solar Eclipse 2026: Europe Witnesses Rare Celestial Spectacle After 20 Years

The next era of lunar exploration could see NASA and ISRO working more closely as the United States looks to expand its presence on the Moon.

NASA wants future lunar exploration to become bigger, faster and more cost-efficient, with ambitious plans for a sustained human presence and a potential base on the Moon. India’s space agency ISRO could play an important role in this new phase of lunar exploration.

India has already demonstrated its growing capabilities in lunar missions, making ISRO an increasingly important partner in international space exploration.

From cost-effective technology to successful lunar missions, India’s space programme has attracted global attention. The potential NASA-ISRO partnership could open a new chapter in the race to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon.

Cheap, Fast, Successful: Why NASA Wants Isro on the Moon  | GRAVITAS 

Millions of Europeans are looking to the skies as a rare total solar eclipse sweeps across parts of the continent, briefly turning daylight into darkness.

During totality, the Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun, completely blocking the Sun’s disc and revealing its normally hidden outer atmosphere, known as the corona.

The eclipse’s path begins in Russia’s remote Arctic north before moving across Greenland and Iceland and into Spain. Northern Spain is expected to offer some of the best viewing opportunities, with the Moon’s shadow crossing the country from the Atlantic coast towards the Mediterranean.

The event has also become a major tourism attraction, with hundreds of thousands of visitors travelling towards the path of totality. Hotels and other accommodations in several locations have reportedly filled up, while authorities have increased emergency, transport and security resources to manage the expected crowds.

Europe Witnesses Rare Total Solar Eclipse as Spain Prepares for Historic Sky Show

Scientists have captured the most detailed images ever taken of the Sun's surface, revealing extraordinary patterns and powerful activity hidden from Earth. Using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, researchers observed rare swirling structures linked to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability.

The discovery was made while testing the telescope's advanced capabilities, surprising scientists who described the images as unlike anything they had seen before. These observations could help researchers better understand how the Sun works, its changing activity, and its impact on Earth.

Scientists Capture Unprecedented Images of Sun's Surface | Never-Before-Seen Solar Activity Revealed

Our Sun, the planets, meteorites, and everything else in our solar system formed from the same cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. Which means all of them should also have the same proportion of heavy elements. However, the Sun has been missing its silver, which has puzzled scientists for decades. Meteorites are time capsules, pristine pieces from billions of years ago that act as a benchmark. So everything they have, the Sun should also have.&nbsp;&nbsp;But measurements showed that the Sun is missing a significant proportion of its silver as compared to meteorites. The difference was huge, which has led astronomers to do everything they can to solve this mystery.&nbsp;This dilemma has finally been resolved. Sema Caliskan of Uppsala University has found the reason for the missing silver. Actually, the silver was never missing at all. The problem lay with how humans were measuring it.<h2>How do scientists detect elements in sunlight?</h2> To know which elements are present in a star, scientists check for their fingerprints. The atoms of each element absorb tiny amounts of light at very specific wavelengths when the sunlight passes through the outer layers of the Sun. They leave faint dark lines in the spectrum, and their pattern helps scientists figure out which elements are present along with their quantities. Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasa-warns-humans-have-underestimated-the-strongest-solar-storms-1784528249152">NASA warns humans have underestimated the strongest solar storms - ‘There could be no upper limit’</a><h2>How did Caliskan and his team find the silver in Sun</h2> To get as close as possible to the right number, it is important how the Sun's atmosphere is modelled. Caliskam and his team built a model that was far more realistic compared to the oversimplified versions. It accounted for the turbulent and dynamic nature of the Sun's outer layers. Atomic physics describes precisely how silver atoms interact with light and their surroundings. It also dealt with how that light itself affects the atoms that produce these lines. Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/earthly-microbes-could-turn-deadlier-on-mars-spelling-doom-for-astronauts-1784294014524">Bad News for Musk: Earthly microbes could turn deadlier on Mars, spelling doom for astronauts</a>&nbsp;The model revealed what scientists had been missing all this time. The Sun has a lot of silver, 55 per cent more than previously thought. This finding has finally brought our star more in line with the meteorites. Caliskam's team now plans to study other stars to understand where and when elements like silver were born and what caused them to be scattered in the Milky Way. &nbsp;

The Sun has 55 per cent more silver in it than scientists had calculated in the past. Previous studies showed that a lot of this element was missing from our star. But now, a study has found the missing silver in the Sun.

Our Sun, the planets, meteorites, and everything else in our solar system formed from the same cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. Which means all of them should also have the same proportion of heavy elements. However, the Sun has been missing its silver, which has puzzled scientists for decades. Meteorites are time capsules, pristine pieces from billions of years ago that act as a benchmark. So everything they have, the Sun should also have. But measurements showed that the Sun is missing a significant proportion of its silver as compared to meteorites. The difference was huge, which has led astronomers to do everything they can to solve this mystery. This dilemma has finally been resolved. Sema Caliskan of Uppsala University has found the reason for the missing silver. Actually, the silver was never missing at all. The problem lay with how humans were measuring it. How do scientists detect elements in sunlight? To know which elements are present in a star, scientists check for their fingerprints. The atoms of each element absorb tiny amounts of light at very specific wavelengths when the sunlight passes through the outer layers of the Sun. They leave faint dark lines in the spectrum, and their pattern helps scientists figure out which elements are present along with their quantities. Also Read: NASA warns humans have underestimated the strongest solar storms - ‘There could be no upper limit’ How did Caliskan and his team find the silver in Sun To get as close as possible to the right number, it is important how the Sun's atmosphere is modelled. Caliskam and his team built a model that was far more realistic compared to the oversimplified versions. It accounted for the turbulent and dynamic nature of the Sun's outer layers. Atomic physics describes precisely how silver atoms interact with light and their surroundings. It also dealt with how that light itself affects the atoms that produce these lines. Also Read: Bad News for Musk: Earthly microbes could turn deadlier on Mars, spelling doom for astronauts The model revealed what scientists had been missing all this time. The Sun has a lot of silver, 55 per cent more than previously thought. This finding has finally brought our star more in line with the meteorites. Caliskam's team now plans to study other stars to understand where and when elements like silver were born and what caused them to be scattered in the Milky Way.

The Sun has 55 per cent more silver than scientists had calculated in the past. Previous studies showed that a lot of this element was missing from our star. But now, a study has found the missing silver in the Sun.

Our Sun was missing its silver. Scientists finally know what went wrong


In today's top world news: India creates history as Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1, the country's first privately developed orbital rocket, successfully reaches low Earth orbit. Iran reportedly targets another power facility in Kuwait, while Bahrain claims it intercepted Iranian attacks. Iraq signs 48 agreements with American companies during Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani's US visit. Meanwhile, gold prices remain on track for their biggest weekly decline in six weeks.

India's Vikram-1 launch | Iran attacks | Iraq-US deals | Gold prices fall

A planet with an atmosphere has been detected 48 light-years from Earth, in the first-of-its-kind discovery. "An atmosphere is essential for a planet to support life as we know it," lead author Collin Cherubim said. LHS 1140 b is an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting a red dwarf within the habitable zone. The discovery is evidence that it is possible that other planets outside the solar system could harbour conditions for life. Astronomers have till now, found more than 6000 planets orbiting other stars, but never has one displayed a stable atmosphere.&nbsp;The research was published in Science. "This is the first time anyone has found an atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star," Cherubim said. The study notes that the rocky planet is leaking helium gas into space, which shows it has held on to its atmosphere even billions of years after it was born.&nbsp;&nbsp;"The exciting part about this paper, and why I think it was accepted into Science, was that this is the first time that we're seeing a rocky, Earth-like planet that could still have an atmosphere," University of Florida Assistant Professor of Astronomy Jason Dittmann, who first discovered the planet in 2016, said.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/50mn-tonnes-of-sugar-from-deep-space-delivered-a-sweet-start-to-life-on-earth-1784028014232">50mn tonnes of sugar from deep space delivered a sweet start to life on Earth</a>&nbsp;The Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory detected helium escaping from the planet. Cherubim and the theoretical model created by his team predicted that LHS 1140 b has an upper atmosphere rich in helium. Dittmann says the rocky world should have a temperature similar to Earth's. There is a second planet in the system, LHS 1140c. It is located outside the system's habitable zone and doesn't have an atmosphere.<h2>LHS 1140 b atmosphere is over three billion years old</h2>Several rocky exoplanets have been discovered in the past. However, all of them lost their atmosphere at some point in time. But not LHS 1140 b. It has been around for nearly five billion years, but the helium has persisted. All of it would have been lost had it not been replenishing its own supply, clearly a sign that an atmosphere is present on this world. Cherubim now wants to study the complete composition of this planet and later investigate whether it has surface oceans or other signs that it could support life.&nbsp;

An exoplanet that is over three billion years old has sustained an atmosphere all this time. Astronomers detected helium leaking into space, a clear sign that it has been replenishing itself on its own. This is the first ever exoplanet to reveal an atmosphere.

A planet with an atmosphere has been detected 48 light-years from Earth, in the first-of-its-kind discovery. "An atmosphere is essential for a planet to support life as we know it," lead author Collin Cherubim said. LHS 1140 b is an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting a red dwarf within the habitable zone. The discovery is evidence that it is possible that other planets outside the solar system could harbour conditions for life. Astronomers have till now, found more than 6000 planets orbiting other stars, but never has one displayed a stable atmosphere. The research was published in Science. "This is the first time anyone has found an atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star," Cherubim said. The study notes that the rocky planet is leaking helium gas into space, which shows it has held on to its atmosphere even billions of years after it was born. "The exciting part about this paper, and why I think it was accepted into Science, was that this is the first time that we're seeing a rocky, Earth-like planet that could still have an atmosphere," University of Florida Assistant Professor of Astronomy Jason Dittmann, who first discovered the planet in 2016, said. Also Read: 50mn tonnes of sugar from deep space delivered a sweet start to life on Earth The Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory detected helium escaping from the planet. Cherubim and the theoretical model created by his team predicted that LHS 1140 b has an upper atmosphere rich in helium. Dittmann says the rocky world should have a temperature similar to Earth's. There is a second planet in the system, LHS 1140c. It is located outside the system's habitable zone and doesn't have an atmosphere. LHS 1140 b atmosphere is over three billion years old Several rocky exoplanets have been discovered in the past. However, all of them lost their atmosphere at some point in time. But not LHS 1140 b. It has been around for nearly five billion years, but the helium has persisted. All of it would have been lost had it not been replenishing its own supply, clearly a sign that an atmosphere is present on this world. Cherubim now wants to study the complete composition of this planet and later investigate whether it has surface oceans or other signs that it could support life.

An exoplanet that is nearly five billion years old has sustained an atmosphere all this time. Astronomers detected helium leaking into space, a clear sign that it has been replenishing itself on its own. This is the first ever exoplanet to reveal an atmosphere.

'Eyeball Earth' older than our planet and leaking helium reveals an atmosphere

The forensic laboratory analysis of a two-pound meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home has revealed an unprecedented glimpse into the chemistry of an alien world. The extraordinary cosmic rock, now known as the Hillsborough meteorite, fell to Earth in 2024. Screaming through the atmosphere at 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 km/s) it triggered a massive sonic boom over New York before tearing through the ceiling of a Hillsborough home's master bedroom.&nbsp;Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/neil-armstrong-and-buzz-aldrin-almost-died-on-the-moon-the-plastic-pen-that-saved-them-just-sold-for-857-600-1784175823499">Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin almost died on the Moon. The plastic pen that saved them just sold for $857,600</a><h2>Clues to the origins of life</h2>The forensic breakdown of the Hillsborough meteorite has revealed a highly altered environment rich in liquid water and complex organic matter, offering critical insights into how life may have been sparked on early Earth.Researchers studying the two pound meteorite say it contains signs of an unusual salty water environment that has never before been identified in this class of asteroid. The findings, they say, could reshape scientists' understanding of how the building blocks of life formed billions of years ago."I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom," the homeowner recalled. "I smelled a strong sulphur-like odor and saw many black fragments... covering my bed."<h2>Tracing the rock back to the asteroid belt</h2>Scientists traced the object to the lower asteroid belt, where they believe it originated from a primitive asteroid that experienced an unexpected episode of concentrated salty water activity."A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids, a process not previously known from this type of protoplanet world," said lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/built-to-outlive-us-all-earth-is-getting-an-indestructible-black-box-to-record-the-end-of-human-civilisation-1783747790087">Built to outlive us all: Earth is getting an indestructible ‘black box’ to record the end of human civilisation</a><h2>Meteorite packed with life's building blocks</h2>Laboratory analysis revealed that the meteorite contains a rich mixture of carbon, nitrogen, amino acids and dozens of soluble organic compounds. Researchers found evidence that many of these molecules formed through interactions between minerals and highly concentrated briny water, an environment capable of driving complex chemical reactions.The meteorite contained about 1.8 per cent carbon and 0.07 per cent nitrogen, with isotope signatures matching those seen in primitive CM type carbonaceous chondrites, some of the oldest material in the Solar System.Scientists also identified magnesium based organic compounds whose origin remains uncertain. They may have formed through the asteroid's salty water chemistry or during ancient impact events.<h2>Could asteroids have helped spark life on Earth?</h2>The discovery adds weight to the idea that primitive asteroids delivered key ingredients needed for life to emerge on the young Earth.NASA astrobiologist Danny Glavin and colleagues concluded that amino acids, carboxylic acids and other organic molecules carried by meteorites like Hillsborough may have contributed to the chemical inventory that existed before life began.Because the fragments were recovered within hours of impact and carefully preserved, researchers say they remain among the cleanest meteorite samples ever analysed. Several pieces will now be housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where they will continue to be studied for clues about the origins of the Solar System and, perhaps, life itself. &nbsp;

Scientists have discovered previously unknown salty water chemistry and complex organic molecules inside the Hillsborough meteorite that crashed through a New Jersey home's roof, offering new clues about the origins of life on Earth.

The forensic laboratory analysis of a two-pound meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home has revealed an unprecedented glimpse into the chemistry of an alien world. The extraordinary cosmic rock, now known as the Hillsborough meteorite, fell to Earth in 2024. Screaming through the atmosphere at 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 km/s) it triggered a massive sonic boom over New York before tearing through the ceiling of a Hillsborough home's master bedroom. Also read | Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin almost died on the Moon. The plastic pen that saved them just sold for $857,600 Clues to the origins of life The forensic breakdown of the Hillsborough meteorite has revealed a highly altered environment rich in liquid water and complex organic matter, offering critical insights into how life may have been sparked on early Earth. Researchers studying the two pound meteorite say it contains signs of an unusual salty water environment that has never before been identified in this class of asteroid. The findings, they say, could reshape scientists' understanding of how the building blocks of life formed billions of years ago. "I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom," the homeowner recalled. "I smelled a strong sulphur-like odor and saw many black fragments... covering my bed." Tracing the rock back to the asteroid belt Scientists traced the object to the lower asteroid belt, where they believe it originated from a primitive asteroid that experienced an unexpected episode of concentrated salty water activity. "A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids, a process not previously known from this type of protoplanet world," said lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center. Also read | Built to outlive us all: Earth is getting an indestructible ‘black box’ to record the end of human civilisation Meteorite packed with life's building blocks Laboratory analysis revealed that the meteorite contains a rich mixture of carbon, nitrogen, amino acids and dozens of soluble organic compounds. Researchers found evidence that many of these molecules formed through interactions between minerals and highly concentrated briny water, an environment capable of driving complex chemical reactions. The meteorite contained about 1.8 per cent carbon and 0.07 per cent nitrogen, with isotope signatures matching those seen in primitive CM type carbonaceous chondrites, some of the oldest material in the Solar System. Scientists also identified magnesium based organic compounds whose origin remains uncertain. They may have formed through the asteroid's salty water chemistry or during ancient impact events. Could asteroids have helped spark life on Earth? The discovery adds weight to the idea that primitive asteroids delivered key ingredients needed for life to emerge on the young Earth. NASA astrobiologist Danny Glavin and colleagues concluded that amino acids, carboxylic acids and other organic molecules carried by meteorites like Hillsborough may have contributed to the chemical inventory that existed before life began. Because the fragments were recovered within hours of impact and carefully preserved, researchers say they remain among the cleanest meteorite samples ever analysed. Several pieces will now be housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where they will continue to be studied for clues about the origins of the Solar System and, perhaps, life itself.

Scientists have discovered previously unknown salty water chemistry and complex organic molecules inside the Hillsborough meteorite that crashed through a New Jersey home's roof, offering new clues about the origins of life on Earth.

'Alien chemistry' discovered in meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey bedroom

The United States has taken a major step towards space warfare with a new electromagnetic weapon capable of disrupting enemy satellites. Meadowlands, developed by L3 Harris, does not physically damage them, and simply silences them. The US Space Force has acknowledged that this offensive weapon can block radio waves, rendering them incapable of communicating or sharing data with forces on the ground. The Space Force said in a statement that it provides the military with a "robust toolkit for spectrum dominance."&nbsp;Meadowlands reportedly consists of an antenna dish mounted to a wheeled trailer. It can be moved around on the ground or on a large cargo aircraft and deployed under enemy satellites. Reports suggest that Space Force has requested nearly $460 million in Fiscal Year 2027 to develop Meadowlands, and for related training. The US Space Force has a dedicated unit for systems like the Meadowlands.&nbsp;<h2>Donald Trump has stressed Space Superiority</h2>President Donald Trump has often made it clear that the country needs to strengthen its defences in space. In his second term, he is treating space as an active warfighting domain and wants to achieve undisputed "Space Superiority".&nbsp;US Space Force Col. Angelo Fernandez, commander of Mission Delta 3 – Space Electromagnetic Warfare, said, "Continued U.S. Space Force investment in electromagnetic warfare systems, software, and advanced training is essential to modern warfare." The agency added that such warfare capabilities were at the centre of Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran in June 2025 when the US military attacked the country's nuclear sites.&nbsp;&nbsp;It said in a statement that electromagnetic warfare professionals "created a silence zone to ensure secure bomber ingress and egress, effectively halting adversary communications to provide vital indications and warnings."&nbsp;On day one of Operation Epic Fury, the current war against Iran, the US deployed similar capabilities, Guardians from Mission Delta 3, and launched targeted non-kinetic strikes. It jammed and disrupted Iran's ground-based air defence sensors and military communications networks

US Space Force has acquired a weapon that can be counted as a major step in space warfare. It can deny and disrupt signals on enemy satellites to prevent communication. The agency described it as a "robust toolkit for spectrum dominance."

The United States has taken a major step towards space warfare with a new electromagnetic weapon capable of disrupting enemy satellites. Meadowlands, developed by L3 Harris, does not physically damage them, and simply silences them. The US Space Force has acknowledged that this offensive weapon can block radio waves, rendering them incapable of communicating or sharing data with forces on the ground. The Space Force said in a statement that it provides the military with a "robust toolkit for spectrum dominance." Meadowlands reportedly consists of an antenna dish mounted to a wheeled trailer. It can be moved around on the ground or on a large cargo aircraft and deployed under enemy satellites. Reports suggest that Space Force has requested nearly $460 million in Fiscal Year 2027 to develop Meadowlands, and for related training. The US Space Force has a dedicated unit for systems like the Meadowlands. Donald Trump has stressed Space Superiority President Donald Trump has often made it clear that the country needs to strengthen its defences in space. In his second term, he is treating space as an active warfighting domain and wants to achieve undisputed "Space Superiority". US Space Force Col. Angelo Fernandez, commander of Mission Delta 3 – Space Electromagnetic Warfare, said, "Continued U.S. Space Force investment in electromagnetic warfare systems, software, and advanced training is essential to modern warfare." The agency added that such warfare capabilities were at the centre of Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran in June 2025 when the US military attacked the country's nuclear sites. It said in a statement that electromagnetic warfare professionals "created a silence zone to ensure secure bomber ingress and egress, effectively halting adversary communications to provide vital indications and warnings." On day one of Operation Epic Fury, the current war against Iran, the US deployed similar capabilities, Guardians from Mission Delta 3, and launched targeted non-kinetic strikes. It jammed and disrupted Iran's ground-based air defence sensors and military communications networks

US Space Force has acquired a weapon that can be counted as a major step in space warfare. It can deny and disrupt signals on enemy satellites to prevent communication. The agency described it as a "robust toolkit for spectrum dominance."

Declaration of space wars? America's latest weapon can jam enemy satellites

Astronomers have discovered two extraordinary "super-puff" planets orbiting a distant star. Despite being as large as Jupiter, these planets are among the least dense ever found, with densities so low that scientists compare them to cotton candy. The discovery is challenging existing theories about planet formation and offering new insights into the diversity of worlds beyond our solar system.

Rare planets bigger than Jupiter, lighter than cotton candy found 

A scientist has raised the possibility that humans could have already sent nuclear weapons into space. He has also proposed a method to detect them. Areg Danagoulian, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a study in the journal Nature, talking about a concept where a satellite-based sensor system can pick up signatures of a thermonuclear weapon. He states in the proof-of-concept study that this system can orbit near a spacecraft suspected of carrying a nuclear weapon and detect neutrons generated by high-energy protons colliding with radioactive material.&nbsp;&nbsp;Knowing this is important even though an explosion in space wouldn't cause any deaths or damage to Earth. However, the satellites already in space would take a direct hit, disrupting communications, GPS, weather forecasting and missile warning systems.<h2>Nuclear radiation can damage satellites</h2>This actually happened in 1962 when the United States detonated the Starfish Prime nuclear test about 400 kilometres above the Pacific Ocean. The radiation damaged one-third of the satellites in low-Earth orbit. The charged electrons entered the inner Van Allen belt, a radiation belt that surrounds Earth. Danagoulian says that this led to a sudden and extreme uptick in the number of electrons in the region. When satellites crossed this portion, their electronics and solar panels degraded several notches. Today, there are way more satellites in Earth's orbit, meaning a nuclear explosion could cause considerable damage.&nbsp;Danagoulian says in the study, "Although the OST is almost 60 years old, it has always lacked robust means of verification for space-based nuclear threats." But creating such a system is challenging, since traditional nuclear detection methods would encounter protons and electrons trapped in the inner Van Allen belt, making it confusing. However, he says that the inner Van Allen Belt can help here.<h2>The Van Allen belt can help</h2>Suppose a satellite with a nuclear weapon passes through this zone that is full of protons and electrons, it is going to emit a huge amount of neutrons. This happens because when high-energy protons slam into heavy elements like uranium, they knock loose neutrons and other particles. Danagoulian says that, depending on the amount and size of uranium, a thermonuclear weapon could emit nearly 40 million neutrons per second in the Van Allen belt.&nbsp;But this alone would not detect the nuclear warhead, which would require a device capable of sorting through all the particle noise in low Earth orbit. His proposed satellite would orbit below the suspect satellite. When they both come across the charged particles, a sensor could remove the incoming protons and only pick up neutron signals.&nbsp;However, the albedo neutrons coming from Earth create another problem, he told Gizmodo, produced by cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. But the inspector satellite orbiting under the suspect satellite would use directional detection to determine if a neutron came from the satellite or the Earth. Danagoulian admits that his system might be complicated and hopes someone will develop a simple prototype to solve this problem.

Could there already be a nuclear weapon in space? A scientist thinks it is possible. He says that the Outer Space Treaty has no way to detect whether a satellite could have carried a nuke into space. He has developed a method to detect one.  

A scientist has raised the possibility that humans could have already sent nuclear weapons into space. He has also proposed a method to detect them. Areg Danagoulian, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a study in the journal Nature, talking about a concept where a satellite-based sensor system can pick up signatures of a thermonuclear weapon. He states in the proof-of-concept study that this system can orbit near a spacecraft suspected of carrying a nuclear weapon and detect neutrons generated by high-energy protons colliding with radioactive material. Knowing this is important even though an explosion in space wouldn't cause any deaths or damage to Earth. However, the satellites already in space would take a direct hit, disrupting communications, GPS, weather forecasting and missile warning systems. Nuclear radiation can damage satellites This actually happened in 1962 when the United States detonated the Starfish Prime nuclear test about 400 kilometres above the Pacific Ocean. The radiation damaged one-third of the satellites in low-Earth orbit. The charged electrons entered the inner Van Allen belt, a radiation belt that surrounds Earth. Danagoulian says that this led to a sudden and extreme uptick in the number of electrons in the region. When satellites crossed this portion, their electronics and solar panels degraded several notches. Today, there are way more satellites in Earth's orbit, meaning a nuclear explosion could cause considerable damage. Danagoulian says in the study, "Although the OST is almost 60 years old, it has always lacked robust means of verification for space-based nuclear threats." But creating such a system is challenging, since traditional nuclear detection methods would encounter protons and electrons trapped in the inner Van Allen belt, making it confusing. However, he says that the inner Van Allen Belt can help here. The Van Allen belt can help Suppose a satellite with a nuclear weapon passes through this zone that is full of protons and electrons, it is going to emit a huge amount of neutrons. This happens because when high-energy protons slam into heavy elements like uranium, they knock loose neutrons and other particles. Danagoulian says that, depending on the amount and size of uranium, a thermonuclear weapon could emit nearly 40 million neutrons per second in the Van Allen belt. But this alone would not detect the nuclear warhead, which would require a device capable of sorting through all the particle noise in low Earth orbit. His proposed satellite would orbit below the suspect satellite. When they both come across the charged particles, a sensor could remove the incoming protons and only pick up neutron signals. However, the albedo neutrons coming from Earth create another problem, he told Gizmodo, produced by cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. But the inspector satellite orbiting under the suspect satellite would use directional detection to determine if a neutron came from the satellite or the Earth. Danagoulian admits that his system might be complicated and hopes someone will develop a simple prototype to solve this problem.

Could there already be a nuclear weapon in space? A scientist thinks it is possible. He says that the Outer Space Treaty has no way to detect whether a satellite could have carried a nuke into space. He has developed a method to detect one. &nbsp;

Scientist says nuclear weapons could be lurking in space undetected. An explosion could trigger chaos above Earth

Blue Origin is preparing for one of the biggest fundraising rounds in the history of the private space industry. According to CNBC, Jeff Bezos' rocket company is looking to raise around $10 billion, valuing the company at approximately $130 billion.It will be the first time Blue Origin has accepted large-scale outside investment after years of relying mainly on funding from Bezos himself. The move is significant because it gives investors a rare opportunity to back one of the world's largest private space companies. The fundraising also comes only weeks after SpaceX completed a record-breaking IPO, adding fresh momentum to the commercial space industry.<h2>How is the funding round structured?</h2>According to people familiar with the discussions, Bezos is expected to invest $2 billion of his own money in the round. Investment firm Coatue Management is reportedly set to contribute about $4 billion, while the remaining $4 billion is expected to come from several institutional investors. CNBC reported that demand for the remaining allocation has been strong. If completed, the deal would value Blue Origin among the world's most valuable privately controlled aerospace companies.<h2>Why is Blue Origin raising money now?</h2>For years, Bezos funded Blue Origin largely through personal wealth, including proceeds from selling Amazon shares. However, developing reusable rockets, lunar landers and future space infrastructure requires enormous amounts of capital. Bringing in outside investors gives the company greater financial flexibility while reducing its dependence on Bezos alone.In an interview with CNBC in May, Bezos said it was "a good time" to consider external investment as the company enters its next phase of growth.<h2>What does it mean for the space industry?</h2>The fundraising reflects growing investor confidence in the commercial space sector. Blue Origin is developing launch vehicles such as New Glenn, while also working on lunar exploration projects, satellite launch services and long-term space infrastructure. The timing is notable. SpaceX's recent IPO demonstrated that investors are willing to place massive bets on commercial space companies. Blue Origin's fundraising suggests competition between Bezos and Elon Musk is expanding beyond rockets into financial markets. If the round closes as expected, Blue Origin will have billions of dollars to accelerate development of future launch systems and compete more aggressively in an industry expected to grow rapidly over the coming decade.

Blue Origin is reportedly raising $10 billion in its first outside funding round, valuing the company at $130 billion. Jeff Bezos is expected to invest $2 billion as the space company looks to expand after SpaceX's record-breaking IPO.

Blue Origin is preparing for one of the biggest fundraising rounds in the history of the private space industry. According to CNBC, Jeff Bezos' rocket company is looking to raise around $10 billion, valuing the company at approximately $130 billion. It will be the first time Blue Origin has accepted large-scale outside investment after years of relying mainly on funding from Bezos himself. The move is significant because it gives investors a rare opportunity to back one of the world's largest private space companies. The fundraising also comes only weeks after SpaceX completed a record-breaking IPO, adding fresh momentum to the commercial space industry. How is the funding round structured? According to people familiar with the discussions, Bezos is expected to invest $2 billion of his own money in the round. Investment firm Coatue Management is reportedly set to contribute about $4 billion, while the remaining $4 billion is expected to come from several institutional investors. CNBC reported that demand for the remaining allocation has been strong. If completed, the deal would value Blue Origin among the world's most valuable privately controlled aerospace companies. Why is Blue Origin raising money now? For years, Bezos funded Blue Origin largely through personal wealth, including proceeds from selling Amazon shares. However, developing reusable rockets, lunar landers and future space infrastructure requires enormous amounts of capital. Bringing in outside investors gives the company greater financial flexibility while reducing its dependence on Bezos alone. In an interview with CNBC in May, Bezos said it was "a good time" to consider external investment as the company enters its next phase of growth. What does it mean for the space industry? The fundraising reflects growing investor confidence in the commercial space sector. Blue Origin is developing launch vehicles such as New Glenn, while also working on lunar exploration projects, satellite launch services and long-term space infrastructure. The timing is notable. SpaceX's recent IPO demonstrated that investors are willing to place massive bets on commercial space companies. Blue Origin's fundraising suggests competition between Bezos and Elon Musk is expanding beyond rockets into financial markets. If the round closes as expected, Blue Origin will have billions of dollars to accelerate development of future launch systems and compete more aggressively in an industry expected to grow rapidly over the coming decade.

Blue Origin is reportedly raising $10 billion in its first outside funding round, valuing the company at $130 billion. Jeff Bezos is expected to invest $2 billion as the space company looks to expand after SpaceX's record-breaking IPO.

Blue Origin's first funding round signals a new chapter in the space race

In the search for worlds that could harbour life, proximity matters enormously. A planet that might be habitable but sits hundreds of light-years away may as well be unreachable for practical science — too far for detailed atmospheric studies, too faint for the instruments we have or will have for decades. GJ 3378b is different. At just 25 light-years from Earth, this newly confirmed super-Earth is practically a cosmic neighbour — and it sits in the habitable zone of its host star, where temperatures could theoretically allow liquid water to exist on its surface. ‘This one is exciting,’ said Dr. Paul Robertson of the University of California, Irvine, one of the lead researchers behind the discovery.&nbsp;What We Know About GJ 3378b&nbsp;GJ 3378b orbits a faint red dwarf star in the constellation Camelopardalis — the Giraffe — completing one full orbit every 21.45 days. The planet has a mass approximately 2.3 times that of Earth and a diameter roughly twice as large, placing it firmly in the super-Earth category: bigger and heavier than Earth, but not large enough to be a gas giant. Crucially, GJ 3378b receives about 90 percent of the solar radiation that Earth receives from the Sun — sitting close enough to the habitable zone's inner edge to be warm, but not so close as to be cooked. Its position in the habitable zone is not hypothetical or borderline. It is well within the range where liquid water is physically plausible.&nbsp;How It Was Found&nbsp;The discovery used two of the world's most sensitive spectrographs dedicated to finding planets around red dwarf stars. The Habitable-zone Planet Finder instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas and the NEID spectrometer on the WIYN Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona both contributed data. The research team, led by Dr. Michael Endl of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Paul Robertson of UC Irvine, published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal in 2026 in a paper titled A Revised Mass and Period for the Habitable Zone super-Earth GJ 3378b: A Planet Straddling the Cosmic Shoreline.&nbsp;What The ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ Means&nbsp;The paper's subtitle — A Planet Straddling the Cosmic Shoreline — refers to a concept in planetary science used to distinguish worlds likely to retain an atmosphere from those that have had it stripped away by stellar radiation. On one side of the shoreline are planets with enough gravity and protection from their star's radiation to hold onto an atmosphere. On the other side are bare, airless rocks. GJ 3378b sits right on that boundary — massive enough to potentially hold an atmosphere, but exposed enough to its red dwarf host that the outcome is far from certain. This is precisely what makes it both exciting and uncertain.&nbsp;The Red Dwarf Problem&nbsp;Red dwarf stars are the most common type of star in the Milky Way, and many of the closest potentially habitable planets discovered so far orbit them. But red dwarfs come with a serious hazard: they are far more magnetically active than the Sun, particularly in their early lives. They emit powerful bursts of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation called stellar flares, and they drive intense stellar winds that can erode a planet's atmosphere over geological timescales. For GJ 3378b, the key question is whether its 2.3-Earth-mass bulk provides enough gravitational grip to hold onto an atmosphere despite billions of years of bombardment from its host star. No current instrument can answer that question with certainty.&nbsp;Why 25 Light-Years Matters&nbsp;Most potentially habitable exoplanets discovered so far orbit stars that are hundreds or thousands of light-years away — far enough that detailed atmospheric characterisation is essentially impossible with any telescope currently in operation or under construction. At 25 light-years, GJ 3378b is different. It is close enough to be a genuine near-term target for atmospheric study. The James Webb Space Telescope may be able to obtain some spectroscopic data on the planet's atmosphere, though red dwarf planetary atmospheres are notoriously difficult to study even with Webb. The real opportunity will come with NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, an extremely large space telescope expected to launch sometime in the 2040s, which is specifically designed to directly image rocky planets around nearby stars and analyse their atmospheric chemistry for signs of biological activity.&nbsp;The Nearest Candidates Keep Getting Closer&nbsp;GJ 3378b joins a short but growing list of potentially habitable worlds within striking distance of our solar system. Proxima Centauri b, orbiting the nearest star to the Sun at just 4.2 light-years, is another candidate — though its habitability is equally contested due to its red dwarf host's activity. The consistent finding of habitable-zone planets around nearby red dwarfs suggests that such worlds may be extraordinarily common in our galactic neighbourhood. Whether any of them actually harbour life — or even stable atmospheres — remains the central question that the next generation of telescopes will be built to answer. For now, GJ 3378b is one of the best places to start looking.

GJ 3378b is a super-Earth 25 light-years away orbiting in its red dwarf star's habitable zone. Mass 2.3x Earth, orbit 21.45 days. Researchers call it one of the most exciting nearby exoplanets found.

In the search for worlds that could harbour life, proximity matters enormously. A planet that might be habitable but sits hundreds of light-years away may as well be unreachable for practical science — too far for detailed atmospheric studies, too faint for the instruments we have or will have for decades. GJ 3378b is different. At just 25 light-years from Earth, this newly confirmed super-Earth is practically a cosmic neighbour — and it sits in the habitable zone of its host star, where temperatures could theoretically allow liquid water to exist on its surface. ‘This one is exciting,’ said Dr. Paul Robertson of the University of California, Irvine, one of the lead researchers behind the discovery. What We Know About GJ 3378b GJ 3378b orbits a faint red dwarf star in the constellation Camelopardalis — the Giraffe — completing one full orbit every 21.45 days. The planet has a mass approximately 2.3 times that of Earth and a diameter roughly twice as large, placing it firmly in the super-Earth category: bigger and heavier than Earth, but not large enough to be a gas giant. Crucially, GJ 3378b receives about 90 percent of the solar radiation that Earth receives from the Sun — sitting close enough to the habitable zone's inner edge to be warm, but not so close as to be cooked. Its position in the habitable zone is not hypothetical or borderline. It is well within the range where liquid water is physically plausible. How It Was Found The discovery used two of the world's most sensitive spectrographs dedicated to finding planets around red dwarf stars. The Habitable-zone Planet Finder instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas and the NEID spectrometer on the WIYN Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona both contributed data. The research team, led by Dr. Michael Endl of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Paul Robertson of UC Irvine, published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal in 2026 in a paper titled A Revised Mass and Period for the Habitable Zone super-Earth GJ 3378b: A Planet Straddling the Cosmic Shoreline. What The ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ Means The paper's subtitle — A Planet Straddling the Cosmic Shoreline — refers to a concept in planetary science used to distinguish worlds likely to retain an atmosphere from those that have had it stripped away by stellar radiation. On one side of the shoreline are planets with enough gravity and protection from their star's radiation to hold onto an atmosphere. On the other side are bare, airless rocks. GJ 3378b sits right on that boundary — massive enough to potentially hold an atmosphere, but exposed enough to its red dwarf host that the outcome is far from certain. This is precisely what makes it both exciting and uncertain. The Red Dwarf Problem Red dwarf stars are the most common type of star in the Milky Way, and many of the closest potentially habitable planets discovered so far orbit them. But red dwarfs come with a serious hazard: they are far more magnetically active than the Sun, particularly in their early lives. They emit powerful bursts of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation called stellar flares, and they drive intense stellar winds that can erode a planet's atmosphere over geological timescales. For GJ 3378b, the key question is whether its 2.3-Earth-mass bulk provides enough gravitational grip to hold onto an atmosphere despite billions of years of bombardment from its host star. No current instrument can answer that question with certainty. Why 25 Light-Years Matters Most potentially habitable exoplanets discovered so far orbit stars that are hundreds or thousands of light-years away — far enough that detailed atmospheric characterisation is essentially impossible with any telescope currently in operation or under construction. At 25 light-years, GJ 3378b is different. It is close enough to be a genuine near-term target for atmospheric study. The James Webb Space Telescope may be able to obtain some spectroscopic data on the planet's atmosphere, though red dwarf planetary atmospheres are notoriously difficult to study even with Webb. The real opportunity will come with NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, an extremely large space telescope expected to launch sometime in the 2040s, which is specifically designed to directly image rocky planets around nearby stars and analyse their atmospheric chemistry for signs of biological activity. The Nearest Candidates Keep Getting Closer GJ 3378b joins a short but growing list of potentially habitable worlds within striking distance of our solar system. Proxima Centauri b, orbiting the nearest star to the Sun at just 4.2 light-years, is another candidate — though its habitability is equally contested due to its red dwarf host's activity. The consistent finding of habitable-zone planets around nearby red dwarfs suggests that such worlds may be extraordinarily common in our galactic neighbourhood. Whether any of them actually harbour life — or even stable atmospheres — remains the central question that the next generation of telescopes will be built to answer. For now, GJ 3378b is one of the best places to start looking.

Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star just 25 light-years away — one of the closest potentially habitable worlds ever found. The planet, GJ 3378b, sits squarely in its star's habitable zone, receives about 90 percent of the solar radiation Earth does, and has a mass roughly 2.3 times that of Earth. The catch: its star is a red dwarf, and those are some of the most dangerous hosts in the galaxy.

'25 light-years away': Scientists discover a potentially habitable planet near our solar system

The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has started the revolutionary Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) to be carried out for 10 years. The aim is to create the most comprehensive record of the universe. Rubin will observe the southern sky every few nights over 10 years and create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our universe. Indian scientists are also playing a major role in the project. India has made several critical science collaborations. The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) are the main bodies involved in the LSST program.<h2>Indian scientists in gravitational lensing project&nbsp;</h2>The LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration is one of the most prominent roles being played by Indian scientists. Institutes such as IUCAA, IIA, TIFR, NCRA, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Indore are involved in the project. Dr Anupreeta More (IUCAA) is the co-chair of this international collaboration. Gravitational lensing is a cosmic phenomenon where a bigger object in front of a more distant object bends its light, acting like a magnifying glass.&nbsp;&nbsp;LSST's lensing project will work to discover more than 10,000 gravitational lenses. Indian researchers are at the forefront of the endeavour to find rare events, like supernovae or kilonovae, through these gravitational lenses. The data will help scientists measure the expansion rate and age of the universe.<h2>Managing data</h2> Over its course of 10 years, the LSST project will likely image roughly 20 billion galaxies. The immense data gathered will require expert handling. Indian scientists will be part of this aspect as well. Prof. Yogesh Wadadekar (NCRA-TIFR) is a key member of the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration. Indian scientists are leveraging Rubin’s ultra-deep imaging capabilities to study the structural evolution, formation, and billions of years of history behind these billions of galaxies.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/vera-c-rubin-observatory-800-000-cosmic-alerts-in-one-night-1772184217202">8 lakh cosmic alerts in one night: Too much? Vera will scale this number up to millions</a><h2>Cosmological Mapping</h2> India is also involved in the mapping of the large-scale structure of the universe, particularly looking at dark matter and dark energy. Prof. Surhud More serves as the Rubin IUCAA Program Manager.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Indian cosmologists are actively working on mapping the distribution of dark matter across half the night sky. They are also exploring how dark energy influences cosmic acceleration.&nbsp;India will use it several ground-based telescopes to follow up on Rubin's observations. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) run by NCRA, and various optical/infrared facilities will be ready to take another look at everything Rubin sees. As the Rubin Observatory flags millions of real-time "alerts" every single night for things that move, blink, or explode, Indian telescopes focus in again. This will allow capturing transient phenomena, like the gravitational wave mergers of neutron stars, across multiple spectra of light.&nbsp;https://www.wionews.com/videos/rubin-observatory-launches-10-year-cosmic-survey-to-map-the-universe-1782894408612/embed<h2>What will Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time do?</h2> The LSST will reveal millions of new asteroids and comets in the solar system that are currently undetected. The world's most powerful camera will also study the Milky Way and scan the invisible layers of cosmic dust where new stars are forming. Dark matter and dark energy, which govern the expansion of the universe, will be one of the main subjects. Supernovas, pulsating stars and black holes will be the enigmatic subject matters.&nbsp;

Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) has kickstarted, and Indian scientists are contributing significantly to different projects, such as data collections and mapping dark matter.

The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has started the revolutionary Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) to be carried out for 10 years. The aim is to create the most comprehensive record of the universe. Rubin will observe the southern sky every few nights over 10 years and create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our universe. Indian scientists are also playing a major role in the project. India has made several critical science collaborations. The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) are the main bodies involved in the LSST program. Indian scientists in gravitational lensing project The LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration is one of the most prominent roles being played by Indian scientists. Institutes such as IUCAA, IIA, TIFR, NCRA, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Indore are involved in the project. Dr Anupreeta More (IUCAA) is the co-chair of this international collaboration. Gravitational lensing is a cosmic phenomenon where a bigger object in front of a more distant object bends its light, acting like a magnifying glass. LSST's lensing project will work to discover more than 10,000 gravitational lenses. Indian researchers are at the forefront of the endeavour to find rare events, like supernovae or kilonovae, through these gravitational lenses. The data will help scientists measure the expansion rate and age of the universe. Managing data Over its course of 10 years, the LSST project will likely image roughly 20 billion galaxies. The immense data gathered will require expert handling. Indian scientists will be part of this aspect as well. Prof. Yogesh Wadadekar (NCRA-TIFR) is a key member of the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration. Indian scientists are leveraging Rubin’s ultra-deep imaging capabilities to study the structural evolution, formation, and billions of years of history behind these billions of galaxies. Also Read: 8 lakh cosmic alerts in one night: Too much? Vera will scale this number up to millions Cosmological Mapping India is also involved in the mapping of the large-scale structure of the universe, particularly looking at dark matter and dark energy. Prof. Surhud More serves as the Rubin IUCAA Program Manager. Indian cosmologists are actively working on mapping the distribution of dark matter across half the night sky. They are also exploring how dark energy influences cosmic acceleration. India will use it several ground-based telescopes to follow up on Rubin's observations. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) run by NCRA, and various optical/infrared facilities will be ready to take another look at everything Rubin sees. As the Rubin Observatory flags millions of real-time "alerts" every single night for things that move, blink, or explode, Indian telescopes focus in again. This will allow capturing transient phenomena, like the gravitational wave mergers of neutron stars, across multiple spectra of light. https://www.wionews.com/videos/rubin-observatory-launches-10-year-cosmic-survey-to-map-the-universe-1782894408612/embed What will Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time do? The LSST will reveal millions of new asteroids and comets in the solar system that are currently undetected. The world's most powerful camera will also study the Milky Way and scan the invisible layers of cosmic dust where new stars are forming. Dark matter and dark energy, which govern the expansion of the universe, will be one of the main subjects. Supernovas, pulsating stars and black holes will be the enigmatic subject matters.

Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) has kickstarted, and Indian scientists are contributing significantly to different projects, such as data collections and mapping dark matter.

Indian scientists are part of Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Everything you need to know

When a star dies, it does not go quietly. A Sun-like star in its final phase swells into a red giant, expanding to hundreds of times its original size and incinerating everything in its inner system. Then it sheds its outer layers entirely, leaving behind a white dwarf — a dense, Earth-sized remnant of the original star, cooling slowly over billions of years. Any planet that was close enough to be engulfed by the red giant is gone. The conventional wisdom was that whatever survived a star's death must have been far enough away to escape that expansion. Then astronomers found WD 1856b — a planet as large as Jupiter, orbiting its dead white dwarf host every 34 hours at a distance of less than three million kilometres — and the conventional wisdom needed revising.&nbsp;The Planet That Should Not Be Where It Is&nbsp;WD 1856b was first detected in 2020 using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Even then, the discovery was deeply puzzling. The planet is enormous — between four and eleven times the mass of Jupiter, with a radius roughly eight times that of its white dwarf host, which is only about the size of Earth. When it transits in front of the dead star, it blocks a staggering 56 percent of the star's light — one of the highest transit depths ever recorded. And it is orbiting at an extraordinarily tight distance: less than three million kilometres from the white dwarf, completing a full orbit in just 1.4 days. The immediate question was how a planet that large could be orbiting that close to a star that had, billions of years ago, expanded into a red giant large enough to have destroyed anything in that region.&nbsp;James Webb Telescope Finds The Answer&nbsp;A new study published in the journal Nature on July 1, 2026 has used the James Webb Space Telescope to analyse WD 1856b's atmosphere for the first time, providing the data needed to finally understand the planet's history. The research team, led by Christopher O'Connor of Northwestern University's Centre for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and Ryan J. MacDonald of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, found that WD 1856b's atmospheric chemistry, mass, and thermal properties tell a specific story — one that was not what most astronomers expected.&nbsp;It Did Not Survive The Red Giant. It Arrived Later&nbsp;The key finding of the 2026 study overturns the most intuitive explanation for WD 1856b's presence. The planet did not survive the red giant phase by being close to the star. It was not there during the red giant phase at all. Instead, WD 1856b originally orbited its host star from a much greater distance — far enough to be safe when the star expanded and died. It was only afterwards, between three and five and a half billion years after the white dwarf formed, that the planet gradually migrated inward to its current orbit through gravitational interactions with other objects in the system. The planet did not outlast the star's death. It moved in after the worst was already over.&nbsp;Tidal Heating Explains The Temperature Mystery&nbsp;One of the clues that pointed researchers toward the migration theory is WD 1856b's temperature. The planet registers at around 400 Kelvin — warmer than it should be given its distance from a cooling white dwarf that generates very little heat. The explanation lies in the physics of orbital migration: as the planet spiralled inward over billions of years, tidal forces — the same gravitational stretching that makes Earth's oceans bulge toward the Moon — generated heat inside the planet's interior. That residual tidal heating is still warming WD 1856b today, producing a thermal signature that the James Webb Space Telescope could detect and that matched the migration timeline.&nbsp;What It Means For Our Solar System's Future&nbsp;The Sun will run out of fuel and begin its red giant phase in approximately five billion years. When it does, Mercury, Venus, and Earth will almost certainly be consumed. Jupiter and Saturn, orbiting much farther out, will likely survive the expansion. What WD 1856b demonstrates is what could happen next: after the Sun collapses into a white dwarf, the surviving outer planets may not simply continue orbiting as they do today. Gravitational dynamics could cause them to migrate inward over billions of subsequent years, eventually ending up in orbits far closer to the white dwarf remnant than they occupy today — just as WD 1856b did. The solar system's final chapter, it turns out, may look considerably more eventful than a quiet slow cooling.&nbsp;A New Window Into Dead Star Systems&nbsp;Beyond the fate of our own solar system, WD 1856b matters because it is the first confirmed giant planet orbiting a white dwarf for which a detailed atmospheric and thermal analysis has been possible. White dwarfs are abundant — the vast majority of Sun-like stars in the galaxy will eventually become them — but the planetary systems surrounding them have been difficult to study. WD 1856b, at 80 light-years from Earth and with its dramatic 56-percent transit depth, offers the clearest view yet of what those post-stellar systems look like and how they evolve. The James Webb Space Telescope, with its ability to analyse planetary atmospheres in unprecedented detail, is expected to find more systems like it — giving astronomers a growing catalogue of planets that survived, or arrived after, the deaths of their stars.

A Jupiter-sized planet orbits a dead white dwarf 80 light-years away. A 2026 Nature study using JWST found it didn't survive the red giant — it miated inward billions of years later.

When a star dies, it does not go quietly. A Sun-like star in its final phase swells into a red giant, expanding to hundreds of times its original size and incinerating everything in its inner system. Then it sheds its outer layers entirely, leaving behind a white dwarf — a dense, Earth-sized remnant of the original star, cooling slowly over billions of years. Any planet that was close enough to be engulfed by the red giant is gone. The conventional wisdom was that whatever survived a star's death must have been far enough away to escape that expansion. Then astronomers found WD 1856b — a planet as large as Jupiter, orbiting its dead white dwarf host every 34 hours at a distance of less than three million kilometres — and the conventional wisdom needed revising. The Planet That Should Not Be Where It Is WD 1856b was first detected in 2020 using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Even then, the discovery was deeply puzzling. The planet is enormous — between four and eleven times the mass of Jupiter, with a radius roughly eight times that of its white dwarf host, which is only about the size of Earth. When it transits in front of the dead star, it blocks a staggering 56 percent of the star's light — one of the highest transit depths ever recorded. And it is orbiting at an extraordinarily tight distance: less than three million kilometres from the white dwarf, completing a full orbit in just 1.4 days. The immediate question was how a planet that large could be orbiting that close to a star that had, billions of years ago, expanded into a red giant large enough to have destroyed anything in that region. James Webb Telescope Finds The Answer A new study published in the journal Nature on July 1, 2026 has used the James Webb Space Telescope to analyse WD 1856b's atmosphere for the first time, providing the data needed to finally understand the planet's history. The research team, led by Christopher O'Connor of Northwestern University's Centre for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and Ryan J. MacDonald of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, found that WD 1856b's atmospheric chemistry, mass, and thermal properties tell a specific story — one that was not what most astronomers expected. It Did Not Survive The Red Giant. It Arrived Later The key finding of the 2026 study overturns the most intuitive explanation for WD 1856b's presence. The planet did not survive the red giant phase by being close to the star. It was not there during the red giant phase at all. Instead, WD 1856b originally orbited its host star from a much greater distance — far enough to be safe when the star expanded and died. It was only afterwards, between three and five and a half billion years after the white dwarf formed, that the planet gradually migrated inward to its current orbit through gravitational interactions with other objects in the system. The planet did not outlast the star's death. It moved in after the worst was already over. Tidal Heating Explains The Temperature Mystery One of the clues that pointed researchers toward the migration theory is WD 1856b's temperature. The planet registers at around 400 Kelvin — warmer than it should be given its distance from a cooling white dwarf that generates very little heat. The explanation lies in the physics of orbital migration: as the planet spiralled inward over billions of years, tidal forces — the same gravitational stretching that makes Earth's oceans bulge toward the Moon — generated heat inside the planet's interior. That residual tidal heating is still warming WD 1856b today, producing a thermal signature that the James Webb Space Telescope could detect and that matched the migration timeline. What It Means For Our Solar System's Future The Sun will run out of fuel and begin its red giant phase in approximately five billion years. When it does, Mercury, Venus, and Earth will almost certainly be consumed. Jupiter and Saturn, orbiting much farther out, will likely survive the expansion. What WD 1856b demonstrates is what could happen next: after the Sun collapses into a white dwarf, the surviving outer planets may not simply continue orbiting as they do today. Gravitational dynamics could cause them to migrate inward over billions of subsequent years, eventually ending up in orbits far closer to the white dwarf remnant than they occupy today — just as WD 1856b did. The solar system's final chapter, it turns out, may look considerably more eventful than a quiet slow cooling. A New Window Into Dead Star Systems Beyond the fate of our own solar system, WD 1856b matters because it is the first confirmed giant planet orbiting a white dwarf for which a detailed atmospheric and thermal analysis has been possible. White dwarfs are abundant — the vast majority of Sun-like stars in the galaxy will eventually become them — but the planetary systems surrounding them have been difficult to study. WD 1856b, at 80 light-years from Earth and with its dramatic 56-percent transit depth, offers the clearest view yet of what those post-stellar systems look like and how they evolve. The James Webb Space Telescope, with its ability to analyse planetary atmospheres in unprecedented detail, is expected to find more systems like it — giving astronomers a growing catalogue of planets that survived, or arrived after, the deaths of their stars.

Eighty light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized planet is orbiting the corpse of a dead star — completing a full orbit every 34 hours, blocking more than half the star's light with its enormous bulk, and somehow still intact billions of years after its host star collapsed. A new study published in Nature in 2026 using the James Webb Space Telescope has finally explained how it got there — and the answer is stranger than anyone predicted.

'80 light-years away': This planet watched its star die and yet it survived

When NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in April 2018, the mission's goal was straightforward: scan the sky for planets orbiting nearby stars by detecting the tiny dips in starlight that occur when a planet passes in front of its host. Eight years and billions of data points later, TESS has become something considerably more than its original brief. Its archive holds nearly 8,000 candidate exoplanets, nearly 900 of which have been confirmed. It has found worlds orbiting two stars simultaneously, planets being actively destroyed by their host stars, ultra-hot Jupiters completing full orbits in under a day, and — as of a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 1, 2026 — the first planet ever detected by TESS using gravitational microlensing, a completely different detection method that opens an entirely new class of world to the telescope's gaze.&nbsp;What TESS Does And How It Works&nbsp;TESS surveys the sky in sectors, spending roughly 27 days staring at a patch of the sky before moving on. Its primary method is the transit technique: when a planet passes between its star and TESS's camera, the star appears fractionally dimmer. The depth and timing of those dips reveal the planet's size and orbital period. It is an elegant method, but it has a limitation — it only works for planets whose orbits are aligned just right to pass in front of their star from TESS's perspective. The vast majority of planets are invisible to this approach. The 2026 findings suggest TESS has been detecting them anyway — through methods that were never its primary purpose.&nbsp;The First Microlensing Planet In TESS Data&nbsp;The headline discovery from the July 2026 study is Gaia23bra b — a super-Jupiter approximately 1.63 times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting an orange dwarf star at a distance similar to Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. What makes this planet extraordinary is how it was found. TESS detected it not through a transit, but through gravitational microlensing — the bending of light from a background star by the gravity of the planet's host star and the planet itself. Less than five percent of all known exoplanets have been found this way, and TESS was not designed to do it. Lead author Mallory Harris, a doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico, described the discovery as a case study in what happens when you look carefully at data collected for one purpose and find it is recording something entirely different.&nbsp;AI Is Finding 10,000 Hidden Planets In The Archive&nbsp;The microlensing discovery is not the only secret TESS has been keeping. Researchers applying machine learning to the telescope's eight-year archive have found 10,091 candidate planets that had never been identified through conventional analysis — new worlds hiding in data that had already been processed and set aside. A separate AI study confirmed over 100 exoplanets from the TESS archive, including 31 that had never previously been catalogued. Among these were rare and extreme examples: planets with orbital periods of less than one Earth day, worlds in the habitable zones of their stars where liquid water might exist, and planets with characteristics that do not fit neatly into existing classification systems.&nbsp;Worlds That Should Not Exist — But Do&nbsp;Part of what has made the TESS archive so productive for AI-driven searches is the sheer diversity of what it has captured. The telescope has found planets being torn apart by the tidal forces of their host stars, their atmospheres being stripped away in real time. It has found circumbinary planets — worlds orbiting not one but two stars — a configuration that was once thought too dynamically unstable to host stable orbits. It has found a planet orbiting a star using ripples in space-time as the detection mechanism, and it has found planets with volcanic activity implied by their surface temperatures and orbital geometry. The range of planetary environments in the TESS data has consistently surprised researchers who expected the galaxy to be more uniform than it is.&nbsp;What The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope Will Do Next&nbsp;The TESS microlensing discovery is also significant as a preview of what NASA's next major space telescope will accomplish. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to launch in autumn 2026, is specifically designed for large-scale microlensing surveys and is projected to detect approximately 1,000 microlensing planets — compared to the handful identified in eight years of TESS data. The Roman telescope's discovery of Gaia23bra b in the TESS archive provides a critical methodological template: it demonstrates exactly how microlensing signals look in TESS data, which will help researchers identify and verify similar signals in Roman's far larger dataset.&nbsp;Eight Years Of Data, Decades Of Science To Come&nbsp;TESS is still operating. Every 27 days it moves to a new patch of sky, adding more data to an archive that researchers expect will take decades to fully mine. The confirmation that AI tools can extract thousands of previously unknown planet candidates from data that was thought to have been thoroughly analysed suggests that the most important discoveries from TESS may not have happened yet. As one team of researchers described it, the telescope's archive is not a finished record — it is an ongoing source of surprises. With nearly 8,000 candidates already identified and thousands more potentially buried in processed data, TESS's eight years of sky-watching appear to be just the beginning of what it has to tell us.

NASA's TESS telescope has 8 years of data hiding thousands of undiscovered planets. AI found 10,091 new candidates. A 2026 study found the first microlensing planet in TESS data. Full breakdown.

When NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in April 2018, the mission's goal was straightforward: scan the sky for planets orbiting nearby stars by detecting the tiny dips in starlight that occur when a planet passes in front of its host. Eight years and billions of data points later, TESS has become something considerably more than its original brief. Its archive holds nearly 8,000 candidate exoplanets, nearly 900 of which have been confirmed. It has found worlds orbiting two stars simultaneously, planets being actively destroyed by their host stars, ultra-hot Jupiters completing full orbits in under a day, and — as of a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 1, 2026 — the first planet ever detected by TESS using gravitational microlensing, a completely different detection method that opens an entirely new class of world to the telescope's gaze. What TESS Does And How It Works TESS surveys the sky in sectors, spending roughly 27 days staring at a patch of the sky before moving on. Its primary method is the transit technique: when a planet passes between its star and TESS's camera, the star appears fractionally dimmer. The depth and timing of those dips reveal the planet's size and orbital period. It is an elegant method, but it has a limitation — it only works for planets whose orbits are aligned just right to pass in front of their star from TESS's perspective. The vast majority of planets are invisible to this approach. The 2026 findings suggest TESS has been detecting them anyway — through methods that were never its primary purpose. The First Microlensing Planet In TESS Data The headline discovery from the July 2026 study is Gaia23bra b — a super-Jupiter approximately 1.63 times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting an orange dwarf star at a distance similar to Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. What makes this planet extraordinary is how it was found. TESS detected it not through a transit, but through gravitational microlensing — the bending of light from a background star by the gravity of the planet's host star and the planet itself. Less than five percent of all known exoplanets have been found this way, and TESS was not designed to do it. Lead author Mallory Harris, a doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico, described the discovery as a case study in what happens when you look carefully at data collected for one purpose and find it is recording something entirely different. AI Is Finding 10,000 Hidden Planets In The Archive The microlensing discovery is not the only secret TESS has been keeping. Researchers applying machine learning to the telescope's eight-year archive have found 10,091 candidate planets that had never been identified through conventional analysis — new worlds hiding in data that had already been processed and set aside. A separate AI study confirmed over 100 exoplanets from the TESS archive, including 31 that had never previously been catalogued. Among these were rare and extreme examples: planets with orbital periods of less than one Earth day, worlds in the habitable zones of their stars where liquid water might exist, and planets with characteristics that do not fit neatly into existing classification systems. Worlds That Should Not Exist — But Do Part of what has made the TESS archive so productive for AI-driven searches is the sheer diversity of what it has captured. The telescope has found planets being torn apart by the tidal forces of their host stars, their atmospheres being stripped away in real time. It has found circumbinary planets — worlds orbiting not one but two stars — a configuration that was once thought too dynamically unstable to host stable orbits. It has found a planet orbiting a star using ripples in space-time as the detection mechanism, and it has found planets with volcanic activity implied by their surface temperatures and orbital geometry. The range of planetary environments in the TESS data has consistently surprised researchers who expected the galaxy to be more uniform than it is. What The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope Will Do Next The TESS microlensing discovery is also significant as a preview of what NASA's next major space telescope will accomplish. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to launch in autumn 2026, is specifically designed for large-scale microlensing surveys and is projected to detect approximately 1,000 microlensing planets — compared to the handful identified in eight years of TESS data. The Roman telescope's discovery of Gaia23bra b in the TESS archive provides a critical methodological template: it demonstrates exactly how microlensing signals look in TESS data, which will help researchers identify and verify similar signals in Roman's far larger dataset. Eight Years Of Data, Decades Of Science To Come TESS is still operating. Every 27 days it moves to a new patch of sky, adding more data to an archive that researchers expect will take decades to fully mine. The confirmation that AI tools can extract thousands of previously unknown planet candidates from data that was thought to have been thoroughly analysed suggests that the most important discoveries from TESS may not have happened yet. As one team of researchers described it, the telescope's archive is not a finished record — it is an ongoing source of surprises. With nearly 8,000 candidates already identified and thousands more potentially buried in processed data, TESS's eight years of sky-watching appear to be just the beginning of what it has to tell us.

NASA's TESS telescope has been staring at the sky for eight years, and scientists are only now beginning to understand how much it has recorded. With nearly 8,000 candidate exoplanets found, AI tools uncovering over 10,000 more hidden in its archive, and the first-ever microlensing planet discovered in its data in 2026, TESS has become one of the most productive science machines ever built and researchers say the biggest discoveries may still be buried in its data.

'8,000 candidate exoplanets': NASA's TESS is hiding mind-boggling space secrets in its 8-year data

Every atom of iron in your blood was forged inside a star. Every atom of gold, every atom of uranium, every heavy element heavier than iron in the periodic table was created in the violent death of a massive star — a supernova explosion that scattered stellar material across interstellar space. This is not poetry. It is nuclear astrophysics. And now, for the first time, scientists have found a direct physical sample of that supernova debris — stardust — preserved inside Antarctic ice, providing a record of the solar system's journey through the cosmos that stretches back tens of thousands of years.&nbsp;What Is Stardust?&nbsp;Stardust, in the scientific sense, refers to microscopic solid particles produced by stars and ejected into space — either during the slow stellar winds of older, dying stars or in the catastrophic explosions called supernovas. These particles drift through the interstellar medium, the vast near-empty space between star systems, and can travel enormous distances over millions of years. What makes certain stardust particles particularly valuable to scientists is their radioactive signature: supernovas produce specific isotopes that do not exist naturally on Earth, making them unmistakable markers of an extraterrestrial origin.&nbsp;The Radioactive Fingerprint: Iron-60&nbsp;The specific stardust found in Antarctic ice is identified by a radioactive isotope called iron-60, written as ⁶⁰Fe. This isotope is produced almost exclusively in supernova explosions, when a massive star collapses and detonates, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones and scattering them outward at enormous speeds. Iron-60 has a half-life of about 2.6 million years — meaning it decays slowly enough to survive a long journey through space, but fast enough that any iron-60 found on Earth today must have arrived relatively recently in geological terms. It cannot have been here from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago; it would have long since decayed.&nbsp;Why Antarctica?&nbsp;Antarctica is one of the few places on Earth where interstellar dust can be detected and measured with confidence. The continent's ice sheets have been accumulating material for hundreds of thousands of years, layer by layer, in conditions largely untouched by industrial contamination, human activity, or the geological processes that mix and dilute surface material elsewhere on the planet. By drilling into Antarctic ice cores — cylinders of ice extracted from deep below the surface, each layer corresponding to a different era — scientists can read a continuous record of what has been falling onto Earth from space over vast timescales. It is, in effect, a time capsule written in ice.&nbsp;What The Study Found&nbsp;A research team led by nuclear astrophysicist Dominik Koll of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany analysed Antarctic ice cores and found iron-60 embedded in the layers, confirming that supernova-produced stardust has been reaching Earth's surface. The study, published in Physical Review Letters in 2026, revealed something unexpected about the distribution of the iron-60 through the ice layers: concentrations were lower than predicted between approximately 40,000 and 80,000 years ago. This dip in stardust deposition is a clue about how the local interstellar environment has changed over that period.&nbsp;The Local Interstellar Cloud: The Solar System's Current Neighbourhood&nbsp;Our solar system is not sitting in empty space. It is currently moving through a region called the Local Interstellar Cloud — sometimes informally called the Local Fluff — a diffuse mass of gas, dust, and plasma that is believed to have been seeded with material from ancient supernova explosions in the region. Scientists estimate that the solar system has been travelling through this cloud for somewhere between 40,000 and 124,000 years. The iron-60 found in Antarctic ice is direct physical evidence of that passage: stardust from the cloud has been gradually filtering through the heliosphere — the bubble of solar wind that surrounds the solar system — and settling onto Earth's surface over millennia.&nbsp;What It Tells Us About The Solar System's Past&nbsp;The Antarctic ice record of stardust is, as researchers have described it, a flight recorder for the solar system's journey through the Local Interstellar Cloud. The varying levels of iron-60 through different ice layers reflect changes in the density and structure of the cloud as the solar system has moved through it. The lower concentrations between 40,000 and 80,000 years ago suggest the solar system may have been passing through a less dense region of the cloud during that period. As more ice layers are analysed and the record extends further back, scientists hope to map the full structure of the Local Interstellar Cloud and understand how the solar system's immediate cosmic neighbourhood has changed over time — one layer of ice, one grain of stardust, at a time.

Scientists found iron-60 — radioactive supernova stardust — in Antarctic ice in 2026. Here's what stardust is, why Antarctica is the best place to find it, and what it tells us about the solar system.

Every atom of iron in your blood was forged inside a star. Every atom of gold, every atom of uranium, every heavy element heavier than iron in the periodic table was created in the violent death of a massive star — a supernova explosion that scattered stellar material across interstellar space. This is not poetry. It is nuclear astrophysics. And now, for the first time, scientists have found a direct physical sample of that supernova debris — stardust — preserved inside Antarctic ice, providing a record of the solar system's journey through the cosmos that stretches back tens of thousands of years. What Is Stardust? Stardust, in the scientific sense, refers to microscopic solid particles produced by stars and ejected into space — either during the slow stellar winds of older, dying stars or in the catastrophic explosions called supernovas. These particles drift through the interstellar medium, the vast near-empty space between star systems, and can travel enormous distances over millions of years. What makes certain stardust particles particularly valuable to scientists is their radioactive signature: supernovas produce specific isotopes that do not exist naturally on Earth, making them unmistakable markers of an extraterrestrial origin. The Radioactive Fingerprint: Iron-60 The specific stardust found in Antarctic ice is identified by a radioactive isotope called iron-60, written as ⁶⁰Fe. This isotope is produced almost exclusively in supernova explosions, when a massive star collapses and detonates, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones and scattering them outward at enormous speeds. Iron-60 has a half-life of about 2.6 million years — meaning it decays slowly enough to survive a long journey through space, but fast enough that any iron-60 found on Earth today must have arrived relatively recently in geological terms. It cannot have been here from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago; it would have long since decayed. Why Antarctica? Antarctica is one of the few places on Earth where interstellar dust can be detected and measured with confidence. The continent's ice sheets have been accumulating material for hundreds of thousands of years, layer by layer, in conditions largely untouched by industrial contamination, human activity, or the geological processes that mix and dilute surface material elsewhere on the planet. By drilling into Antarctic ice cores — cylinders of ice extracted from deep below the surface, each layer corresponding to a different era — scientists can read a continuous record of what has been falling onto Earth from space over vast timescales. It is, in effect, a time capsule written in ice. What The Study Found A research team led by nuclear astrophysicist Dominik Koll of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany analysed Antarctic ice cores and found iron-60 embedded in the layers, confirming that supernova-produced stardust has been reaching Earth's surface. The study, published in Physical Review Letters in 2026, revealed something unexpected about the distribution of the iron-60 through the ice layers: concentrations were lower than predicted between approximately 40,000 and 80,000 years ago. This dip in stardust deposition is a clue about how the local interstellar environment has changed over that period. The Local Interstellar Cloud: The Solar System's Current Neighbourhood Our solar system is not sitting in empty space. It is currently moving through a region called the Local Interstellar Cloud — sometimes informally called the Local Fluff — a diffuse mass of gas, dust, and plasma that is believed to have been seeded with material from ancient supernova explosions in the region. Scientists estimate that the solar system has been travelling through this cloud for somewhere between 40,000 and 124,000 years. The iron-60 found in Antarctic ice is direct physical evidence of that passage: stardust from the cloud has been gradually filtering through the heliosphere — the bubble of solar wind that surrounds the solar system — and settling onto Earth's surface over millennia. What It Tells Us About The Solar System's Past The Antarctic ice record of stardust is, as researchers have described it, a flight recorder for the solar system's journey through the Local Interstellar Cloud. The varying levels of iron-60 through different ice layers reflect changes in the density and structure of the cloud as the solar system has moved through it. The lower concentrations between 40,000 and 80,000 years ago suggest the solar system may have been passing through a less dense region of the cloud during that period. As more ice layers are analysed and the record extends further back, scientists hope to map the full structure of the Local Interstellar Cloud and understand how the solar system's immediate cosmic neighbourhood has changed over time — one layer of ice, one grain of stardust, at a time.

Scientists drilling into Antarctic ice have found something extraordinary: radioactive dust produced by ancient supernova explosions, which has been drifting through interstellar space for millions of years and slowly settling onto Earth's surface. The discovery, published in Physical Review Letters in 2026, is helping researchers map the solar system's journey through a vast cloud of stellar debris — and understand how the cosmos is leaving its fingerprints on our planet.

What is Stardust And why was it found in Antarctica?

Light travels at roughly 300,000 kilometres per second. At that speed, it still takes 250 years to cross 250 light-years of space. And that is precisely how far away Spica is — the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, visible as a brilliant blue-white point low in the southwestern sky on summer evenings. The light reaching your eye when you look at Spica tonight departed that star sometime around 1776 — the year thirteen American colonies declared independence from Britain and set in motion the events that would eventually produce the world's most influential democracy. In 2026, as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, that coincidence has taken on a kind of poetic weight.&nbsp;What Spica Actually Is&nbsp;Spica — formally designated Alpha Virginis — is not a single star. It is a binary system: two massive, blue-white stars locked in an extraordinarily tight mutual orbit, separated by only 0.12 astronomical units — about 12 percent of the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. They complete one orbit around each other every four days, so close that no telescope can resolve them as separate objects. The larger of the two is about 7.8 times the diameter of the Sun; the smaller is roughly 4 times as wide. Their surface temperatures reach around 22,000 degrees Celsius for the hotter component — compared to the Sun's 5,500 degrees. Together, the pair shines at over 12,100 times the luminosity of our Sun, making Spica the 16th brightest star in the entire night sky despite being a quarter of a millennium away.&nbsp;The Arc To Arcturus, Then Speed On To Spica&nbsp;Finding Spica without a telescope or star chart is easier than it sounds. Start by locating the Big Dipper — the familiar seven-star asterism in the northern sky. Follow the curve of its handle outward and you will quickly reach Arcturus, the brilliant orange-red star in the constellation Bootes. Keep following that same arc beyond Arcturus and you will arrive at Spica — a cooler blue-white point lower in the southwestern sky. Astronomers and star-gazers have long taught this route with a simple mnemonic: arc to Arcturus, speed on to Spica. At an apparent magnitude of 0.97, Spica is bright enough to see easily from most suburban locations, provided the sky is clear and you give your eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark.&nbsp;A Second Star From 1776 — But Not Tonight&nbsp;Spica is not the only star sitting at roughly the 250-light-year mark. Bellatrix — the star at the left shoulder of the constellation Orion, the celestial hunter — is also located about 250 light-years from Earth, meaning its light carries an equally ancient timestamp. However, Orion is a winter constellation in the northern hemisphere and is lost in the glare of the Sun during summer months in 2026. For the July 4 celebrations, Spica is the star to look for. Bellatrix and Orion will return to the evening sky in late autumn.&nbsp;What 250 Years Of Light Travel Means&nbsp;The thought experiment at the heart of this story is worth sitting with for a moment. When the Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, a pulse of light was leaving Spica at the speed of 300,000 kilometres per second. George Washington was 44 years old. The steam engine had not yet been invented. No one on Earth had any concept of electricity, antibiotics, flight, or nuclear power. That pulse of light has been crossing interstellar space ever since — through the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, the Moon landing, and the invention of the internet — and it is arriving at Earth now, in 2026, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the nation it has been silently racing toward.&nbsp;Why Astronomers Love This Kind Of Story&nbsp;For astronomers, the connection between stellar distance and cosmic time is not a metaphor — it is physics. Every star you see in the night sky is showing you the past, not the present. The Sun's light takes about eight minutes to reach Earth; the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away, meaning we see it as it was four years ago. Spica at 250 light-years shows us what was happening on the surface of that binary system when the quill was being put to parchment in Philadelphia. In a universe 13.8 billion years old, 250 years is a cosmic blink. But it is also the entire lifespan of the American democratic experiment — and on a clear summer night, you can see both of those 250-year journeys meet in the same moment, in the same beam of blue-white light.

Spica in Virgo is 250 light-years away, meaning its light left in 1776 — the year America was born. Here's how to find it and what it tells us about cosmic time.

Light travels at roughly 300,000 kilometres per second. At that speed, it still takes 250 years to cross 250 light-years of space. And that is precisely how far away Spica is — the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, visible as a brilliant blue-white point low in the southwestern sky on summer evenings. The light reaching your eye when you look at Spica tonight departed that star sometime around 1776 — the year thirteen American colonies declared independence from Britain and set in motion the events that would eventually produce the world's most influential democracy. In 2026, as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, that coincidence has taken on a kind of poetic weight. What Spica Actually Is Spica — formally designated Alpha Virginis — is not a single star. It is a binary system: two massive, blue-white stars locked in an extraordinarily tight mutual orbit, separated by only 0.12 astronomical units — about 12 percent of the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. They complete one orbit around each other every four days, so close that no telescope can resolve them as separate objects. The larger of the two is about 7.8 times the diameter of the Sun; the smaller is roughly 4 times as wide. Their surface temperatures reach around 22,000 degrees Celsius for the hotter component — compared to the Sun's 5,500 degrees. Together, the pair shines at over 12,100 times the luminosity of our Sun, making Spica the 16th brightest star in the entire night sky despite being a quarter of a millennium away. The Arc To Arcturus, Then Speed On To Spica Finding Spica without a telescope or star chart is easier than it sounds. Start by locating the Big Dipper — the familiar seven-star asterism in the northern sky. Follow the curve of its handle outward and you will quickly reach Arcturus, the brilliant orange-red star in the constellation Bootes. Keep following that same arc beyond Arcturus and you will arrive at Spica — a cooler blue-white point lower in the southwestern sky. Astronomers and star-gazers have long taught this route with a simple mnemonic: arc to Arcturus, speed on to Spica. At an apparent magnitude of 0.97, Spica is bright enough to see easily from most suburban locations, provided the sky is clear and you give your eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark. A Second Star From 1776 — But Not Tonight Spica is not the only star sitting at roughly the 250-light-year mark. Bellatrix — the star at the left shoulder of the constellation Orion, the celestial hunter — is also located about 250 light-years from Earth, meaning its light carries an equally ancient timestamp. However, Orion is a winter constellation in the northern hemisphere and is lost in the glare of the Sun during summer months in 2026. For the July 4 celebrations, Spica is the star to look for. Bellatrix and Orion will return to the evening sky in late autumn. What 250 Years Of Light Travel Means The thought experiment at the heart of this story is worth sitting with for a moment. When the Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, a pulse of light was leaving Spica at the speed of 300,000 kilometres per second. George Washington was 44 years old. The steam engine had not yet been invented. No one on Earth had any concept of electricity, antibiotics, flight, or nuclear power. That pulse of light has been crossing interstellar space ever since — through the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, the Moon landing, and the invention of the internet — and it is arriving at Earth now, in 2026, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the nation it has been silently racing toward. Why Astronomers Love This Kind Of Story For astronomers, the connection between stellar distance and cosmic time is not a metaphor — it is physics. Every star you see in the night sky is showing you the past, not the present. The Sun's light takes about eight minutes to reach Earth; the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away, meaning we see it as it was four years ago. Spica at 250 light-years shows us what was happening on the surface of that binary system when the quill was being put to parchment in Philadelphia. In a universe 13.8 billion years old, 250 years is a cosmic blink. But it is also the entire lifespan of the American democratic experiment — and on a clear summer night, you can see both of those 250-year journeys meet in the same moment, in the same beam of blue-white light.

On July 4, 2026, America turns 250 years old. To mark the occasion, astronomers are pointing people to a star visible with the naked eye whose light left its surface around the same year the Declaration of Independence was signed. That star is Spica — the brightest point of light in the constellation Virgo — and the photons hitting your eye tonight have been travelling through space for exactly as long as the United States has existed.

When you look at this star tonight, you are seeing light that left space in 1776

In the catalogue of strange worlds beyond our solar system, hot Jupiters occupy a special category of the bizarre. These are gas giants the size of Jupiter or larger that orbit their host stars in a matter of days — so close that their surface temperatures can exceed thousands of degrees. Astronomers thought they had a fairly good handle on how these planets behave. Then they looked more closely at CoRoT-2 b, and the rulebook turned out to be wrong.&nbsp;A Planet That Should Not Exist As It Does&nbsp;CoRoT-2 b sits 696 light-years from Earth. It is a hulking world — 3.5 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.5 times its size — that races around its host star in just 41 hours, completing a full orbit in under two Earth days. By the standards of hot Jupiters, this makes it an extreme but not unusual example of its type. What makes CoRoT-2 b extraordinary is what its atmosphere is doing. On every other hot Jupiter astronomers have studied, the planet's hottest point — its thermal hotspot — is displaced slightly in the direction the planet orbits. Winds in the upper atmosphere carry heat from the blazing dayside in the direction of the planet's motion, and the hotspot follows. On CoRoT-2 b, the hotspot is displaced in the opposite direction entirely. It is, by every model astronomers have, in the wrong place.&nbsp;What A Hot Jupiter Should Look Like&nbsp;To understand why this is so puzzling, it helps to understand what makes hot Jupiters tick. Because they orbit so close to their stars, most hot Jupiters are tidally locked — the same hemisphere always faces the star, just as the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. The dayside bakes under constant stellar radiation while the nightside stays cold. Powerful atmospheric winds, driven by this extreme temperature difference, flow from the hot dayside to the cooler nightside. These winds drag the peak heat — the hotspot — slightly ahead of the subsolar point in the direction of the planet's orbit. This pattern has been observed consistently across dozens of hot Jupiters. CoRoT-2 b was supposed to follow the same pattern. It does not.&nbsp;The Very Large Telescope Reveals The Clue&nbsp;New observations from the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory have given astronomers their best clue yet about what is happening on CoRoT-2 b. The data reveals that this hot Jupiter is rotating unusually slowly — far slower than any other hot Jupiter yet studied. One full rotation of CoRoT-2 b takes approximately three Earth days. But the planet's year — the time it takes to complete one orbit of its star — is just 1.7 days. In other words, CoRoT-2 b orbits its star twice before it has finished spinning once on its own axis. This is the opposite of what most hot Jupiters do, and it appears to be the key to why the hotspot ends up in the wrong place. The findings were presented at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California, in June 2026.&nbsp;Why Slow Rotation Changes Everything&nbsp;In a standard tidally locked hot Jupiter, the winds flowing from the dayside to the nightside are what determine where the hotspot sits. But when a planet is rotating more slowly than it orbits, the atmospheric dynamics change in fundamental ways. The Coriolis forces that shape wind patterns — the same forces that create cyclones and trade winds on Earth — behave differently when the planet's rotation rate is out of step with its orbital speed. Instead of atmospheric winds carrying heat forward in the direction of the orbit, they can be deflected backward, dragging the hotspot in the opposite direction. This is the leading hypothesis that researchers have settled on to explain CoRoT-2 b's backwards atmosphere — and it is unlike anything observed on another planet in or out of our solar system.&nbsp;A Window Into Planetary Diversity&nbsp;The significance of CoRoT-2 b goes beyond one anomalous planet. Hot Jupiters were once considered among the best-understood class of exoplanets precisely because their extreme properties made them easy to observe and their behaviour seemed predictable. CoRoT-2 b suggests that even within this well-studied category, the range of possible atmospheric behaviours is wider than models have accounted for. If slow rotation can produce a backwards hotspot on one hot Jupiter, there may be other worlds with similarly unusual rotation states that have been misinterpreted or overlooked in existing data. The researchers behind this work have described the pleasure of studying planetary exceptions — finding worlds that do not fit the standard picture and working out why. CoRoT-2 b, it turns out, is one of the most instructive exceptions yet found.&nbsp;What Comes Next&nbsp;Follow-up observations of CoRoT-2 b are expected to further probe the planet's atmospheric structure and test the slow-rotation hypothesis against competing explanations. The Very Large Telescope's spectroscopic capabilities allow researchers to map temperature distributions across the planet's visible disc, building a more detailed picture of where heat is concentrated and how it moves. Whether the slow rotation explanation holds up or gives way to something more surprising, CoRoT-2 b has already done what the best scientific anomalies do: it has forced astronomers to look at a class of well-studied objects and ask whether they fully understand them. The answer, at least for now, appears to be no.

CoRoT-2 b is a hot Jupiter 696 light-years away whose thermal hotspot is shifted in the wrong direction. New VLT data suggests the reason is its unusually slow rotation.

In the catalogue of strange worlds beyond our solar system, hot Jupiters occupy a special category of the bizarre. These are gas giants the size of Jupiter or larger that orbit their host stars in a matter of days — so close that their surface temperatures can exceed thousands of degrees. Astronomers thought they had a fairly good handle on how these planets behave. Then they looked more closely at CoRoT-2 b, and the rulebook turned out to be wrong. A Planet That Should Not Exist As It Does CoRoT-2 b sits 696 light-years from Earth. It is a hulking world — 3.5 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.5 times its size — that races around its host star in just 41 hours, completing a full orbit in under two Earth days. By the standards of hot Jupiters, this makes it an extreme but not unusual example of its type. What makes CoRoT-2 b extraordinary is what its atmosphere is doing. On every other hot Jupiter astronomers have studied, the planet's hottest point — its thermal hotspot — is displaced slightly in the direction the planet orbits. Winds in the upper atmosphere carry heat from the blazing dayside in the direction of the planet's motion, and the hotspot follows. On CoRoT-2 b, the hotspot is displaced in the opposite direction entirely. It is, by every model astronomers have, in the wrong place. What A Hot Jupiter Should Look Like To understand why this is so puzzling, it helps to understand what makes hot Jupiters tick. Because they orbit so close to their stars, most hot Jupiters are tidally locked — the same hemisphere always faces the star, just as the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. The dayside bakes under constant stellar radiation while the nightside stays cold. Powerful atmospheric winds, driven by this extreme temperature difference, flow from the hot dayside to the cooler nightside. These winds drag the peak heat — the hotspot — slightly ahead of the subsolar point in the direction of the planet's orbit. This pattern has been observed consistently across dozens of hot Jupiters. CoRoT-2 b was supposed to follow the same pattern. It does not. The Very Large Telescope Reveals The Clue New observations from the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory have given astronomers their best clue yet about what is happening on CoRoT-2 b. The data reveals that this hot Jupiter is rotating unusually slowly — far slower than any other hot Jupiter yet studied. One full rotation of CoRoT-2 b takes approximately three Earth days. But the planet's year — the time it takes to complete one orbit of its star — is just 1.7 days. In other words, CoRoT-2 b orbits its star twice before it has finished spinning once on its own axis. This is the opposite of what most hot Jupiters do, and it appears to be the key to why the hotspot ends up in the wrong place. The findings were presented at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California, in June 2026. Why Slow Rotation Changes Everything In a standard tidally locked hot Jupiter, the winds flowing from the dayside to the nightside are what determine where the hotspot sits. But when a planet is rotating more slowly than it orbits, the atmospheric dynamics change in fundamental ways. The Coriolis forces that shape wind patterns — the same forces that create cyclones and trade winds on Earth — behave differently when the planet's rotation rate is out of step with its orbital speed. Instead of atmospheric winds carrying heat forward in the direction of the orbit, they can be deflected backward, dragging the hotspot in the opposite direction. This is the leading hypothesis that researchers have settled on to explain CoRoT-2 b's backwards atmosphere — and it is unlike anything observed on another planet in or out of our solar system. A Window Into Planetary Diversity The significance of CoRoT-2 b goes beyond one anomalous planet. Hot Jupiters were once considered among the best-understood class of exoplanets precisely because their extreme properties made them easy to observe and their behaviour seemed predictable. CoRoT-2 b suggests that even within this well-studied category, the range of possible atmospheric behaviours is wider than models have accounted for. If slow rotation can produce a backwards hotspot on one hot Jupiter, there may be other worlds with similarly unusual rotation states that have been misinterpreted or overlooked in existing data. The researchers behind this work have described the pleasure of studying planetary exceptions — finding worlds that do not fit the standard picture and working out why. CoRoT-2 b, it turns out, is one of the most instructive exceptions yet found. What Comes Next Follow-up observations of CoRoT-2 b are expected to further probe the planet's atmospheric structure and test the slow-rotation hypothesis against competing explanations. The Very Large Telescope's spectroscopic capabilities allow researchers to map temperature distributions across the planet's visible disc, building a more detailed picture of where heat is concentrated and how it moves. Whether the slow rotation explanation holds up or gives way to something more surprising, CoRoT-2 b has already done what the best scientific anomalies do: it has forced astronomers to look at a class of well-studied objects and ask whether they fully understand them. The answer, at least for now, appears to be no.

CoRoT-2 b is a hot Jupiter exoplanet 696 light-years away that is breaking every rule astronomers have about how these scorching worlds work. On every other known hot Jupiter, the hottest point on the planet is shifted in the direction of its orbit. On CoRoT-2 b, it is shifted the other way entirely — and new data from the Very Large Telescope suggests the reason may be something nobody expected: the planet is rotating far too slowly.

This alien planet's hotspot is in the wrong place and astronomers have no idea why

Scientists from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona and the University of Bordeaux in France have found that millions of comets could be racing towards the inner solar system because of something that happened 2.5 million years ago. The researchers stated that a star similar to our Sun crossed our solar system and, in the process, shook some icy objects in the Oort Cloud. It is a theoretical spherical shell surrounding our solar system, believed to be filled with billions of icy planetesimals.&nbsp;&nbsp;This encounter created long-period comets which could since be travelling towards us, EarthSky reported. The researchers used the Gaia mission to identify this star - HD 7977 - which they found travelled close to our Sun 2.5 million years ago. Since long-period comets can take between 200 and tens of millions of years to orbit the sun once, most of them may still be on their way.&nbsp;Researchers state that HD 7977 was similar to our Sun. It came very close to Earth as well when it passed between 4,000 and 25,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. They ran computer simulations of the orbits of long-period comets and narrowed the distance to 6,000-10,000 AU. They compared the simulations to the passage of 112 known long-period comets. Their calculations showed that the star's gravity disturbed the Oort Cloud, changing the motions of many of the icy objects in the region and sending them on a journey towards the inner solar system.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/world-asteroid-day-hazardous-asteroids-flagged-to-hit-earth-and-current-status-1782828620702">World Asteroid Day: Hazardous asteroids flagged to hit Earth and current status</a><h2>Rare comet shower is coming</h2>Study author Nathan Kaib said, "The distribution of comet orbits suggests we are living through an unusual time where HD 7977 has dominated the generation of new comets and not the larger gravitational field of the Milky Way." He added, "This would also mean we’re living through the late stages of a pretty rare and powerful comet shower."Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/a-first-since-pluto-did-a-comet-explosion-create-atmosphere-on-this-object-beyond-neptune-1782135566992">A first since Pluto: Did a comet explosion create atmosphere on this object beyond Neptune?</a>&nbsp;The icy objects in the Oort Cloud are leftovers from the time of our solar system's birth. They were formed near giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, and were gradually flung towards the ends of the solar system. The gravity of the Milky Way has been tugging on the outer reaches of our system, creating a sphere which scientists have named the Oort Cloud.<h2>New comets could be from the travelling star</h2>The older comets that we know of exist in the solar system are likely the result of the galactic pull, while the newer comets racing towards the inner region were sent on this trip by HD 7977. The team admitted that their results are not precise and more research is needed to confirm them. "Gaia is still publishing new data on the motions of stars, and in 6-12 months, it should be able to improve our understanding of HD 7977’s motion and tell us if we are right or wrong," Kaib said.

A star passed near Earth and the Sun and jostled objects in the Oort Cloud 2.5 million years ago, sending them on a journey towards us. They are all long-period comets, meaning most of them would still be on their first trip. 

Scientists from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona and the University of Bordeaux in France have found that millions of comets could be racing towards the inner solar system because of something that happened 2.5 million years ago. The researchers stated that a star similar to our Sun crossed our solar system and, in the process, shook some icy objects in the Oort Cloud. It is a theoretical spherical shell surrounding our solar system, believed to be filled with billions of icy planetesimals. This encounter created long-period comets which could since be travelling towards us, EarthSky reported. The researchers used the Gaia mission to identify this star - HD 7977 - which they found travelled close to our Sun 2.5 million years ago. Since long-period comets can take between 200 and tens of millions of years to orbit the sun once, most of them may still be on their way. Researchers state that HD 7977 was similar to our Sun. It came very close to Earth as well when it passed between 4,000 and 25,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. They ran computer simulations of the orbits of long-period comets and narrowed the distance to 6,000-10,000 AU. They compared the simulations to the passage of 112 known long-period comets. Their calculations showed that the star's gravity disturbed the Oort Cloud, changing the motions of many of the icy objects in the region and sending them on a journey towards the inner solar system. Also Read: World Asteroid Day: Hazardous asteroids flagged to hit Earth and current status Rare comet shower is coming Study author Nathan Kaib said, "The distribution of comet orbits suggests we are living through an unusual time where HD 7977 has dominated the generation of new comets and not the larger gravitational field of the Milky Way." He added, "This would also mean we’re living through the late stages of a pretty rare and powerful comet shower." Also Read: A first since Pluto: Did a comet explosion create atmosphere on this object beyond Neptune? The icy objects in the Oort Cloud are leftovers from the time of our solar system's birth. They were formed near giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, and were gradually flung towards the ends of the solar system. The gravity of the Milky Way has been tugging on the outer reaches of our system, creating a sphere which scientists have named the Oort Cloud. New comets could be from the travelling star The older comets that we know of exist in the solar system are likely the result of the galactic pull, while the newer comets racing towards the inner region were sent on this trip by HD 7977. The team admitted that their results are not precise and more research is needed to confirm them. "Gaia is still publishing new data on the motions of stars, and in 6-12 months, it should be able to improve our understanding of HD 7977’s motion and tell us if we are right or wrong," Kaib said.

A star passed near Earth and the Sun and jostled objects in the Oort Cloud 2.5 million years ago, sending them on a journey towards us. They are all long-period comets, meaning most of them would still be on their first trip.&nbsp;

Powerful comet shower from Oort Cloud racing towards Earth, study finds

In 1989, Earth crossed paths with an asteroid that missed us by only a few hours. It is one of the closest and most terrifying "near misses" in modern astronomical history. NASA has an Asteroid Watch program managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), to monitor potential space rocks that could threaten Earth. Multiple asteroids cross near our planet daily; however, none pose a danger. The asteroid watch program officially began in 1998, and so nine years earlier, when a space rock came into Earth's orbit, scientists only got to learn about it after nine days had passed.&nbsp;Asteroid 4581 Asclepius was estimated to be about 1,000 feet in diameter. “An impact would have released a devastating amount of energy equivalent to about a gigaton of TNT, which is 67,000 times the energy output of the Hiroshima atomic bomb,” Harvard professor Avi Loeb told WION. A massive shock wave would have levelled cities, experts said.<h2>So what exactly happened in 1989?&nbsp;</h2> The asteroid flew past Earth on March 22, 1989, at a comfortable distance of 684,000 km, nearly twice the distance between our planet and the Moon. But this was not a hazardous event, even though in cosmic terms, this is still quite near. The orbits of Earth and asteroid 4581 Asclepius led them to travel through a common point in space, but at different times. The asteroid was at the same point in our orbit where Earth was just six hours ago.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/apocalypse-an-inevitable-reality-for-humans-today-whether-caused-by-human-stupidity-or-divinity-1773227301958">Apocalypse an inevitable reality for humans today, whether caused by human stupidity or divinity</a>&nbsp;Basically, the asteroid crossed a point in Earth's orbit, and our planet was in that spot just six hours earlier. Just a little bad timing would have been enough to send the asteroid flinging into our planet. The surprising thing is that nobody knew that the asteroid was there. Astronomers Henry Holt and Norman Thomas only discovered the close call at the Palomar Observatory on March 31, 1989. Humanity dodged a bullet, literally.<h2>Effect of asteroid impact on Earth</h2> Asteroid 4581 Asclepius was 1,000 feet in diameter, about the size of three football fields. It was travelling at a speed of 74,000 km/hr, which means an impact would have been catastrophic. It would have released energy equivalent to roughly 600 megatons of TNT. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, or the RDS-220, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made by man, yielded energy equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT. The asteroid would have gouged a crater nearly 10 kilometres wide, vapourised the immediate impact zone and generated a massive shock wave. If it had slammed into the ocean, tsunami waves hundreds of feet high would have been generated, wiping out coastlines.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/move-over-rapture-another-prophecy-claims-comet-will-end-the-world-in-2026-1758790270916">Rapture did not happen, but another world-ending event has been prophesied for 2026</a><h2>How does Asclepius compare to the dinosaur-killing asteroid?</h2> The asteroid that struck the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, creating the massive Chicxulub crater, was roughly 10 kilometres in diameter, or nearly 50,000 feet. In comparison, Asclepius was only 1,000 feet, and so was a city-killer asteroid, while the Chicxulub Impactor was a "Planet-Rebooter."Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/asteroid-bound-mission-caught-mars-in-a-completely-new-light-1779458912239">Asteroid-bound mission caught Mars in a completely new light</a><h2>How Asclepius changed asteroid watch</h2> Asclepius miss served as a wake-up call, as before the Asteroid Watch program, only a handful of people observed near-Earth objects as an academic interest. Asclepius's movement past Earth led to a push for automated, computerised sky surveys and dedicated planetary defence initiatives. Today, we not only have a mission dedicated to looking out for the asteroids, but we also have plans to deflect potentially dangerous space rocks. The DART mission was one such test that slammed into the moonlet of an asteroid.

Earth crossed paths with an asteroid and missed an impact by a tiny margin of six hours. No one knew it was about to happen, and scientists detected it only nine days later. This scare led to the push for programs to watch for hazardous asteroids.

In 1989, Earth crossed paths with an asteroid that missed us by only a few hours. It is one of the closest and most terrifying "near misses" in modern astronomical history. NASA has an Asteroid Watch program managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), to monitor potential space rocks that could threaten Earth. Multiple asteroids cross near our planet daily; however, none pose a danger. The asteroid watch program officially began in 1998, and so nine years earlier, when a space rock came into Earth's orbit, scientists only got to learn about it after nine days had passed. Asteroid 4581 Asclepius was estimated to be about 1,000 feet in diameter. “An impact would have released a devastating amount of energy equivalent to about a gigaton of TNT, which is 67,000 times the energy output of the Hiroshima atomic bomb,” Harvard professor Avi Loeb told WION. A massive shock wave would have levelled cities, experts said. So what exactly happened in 1989? The asteroid flew past Earth on March 22, 1989, at a comfortable distance of 684,000 km, nearly twice the distance between our planet and the Moon. But this was not a hazardous event, even though in cosmic terms, this is still quite near. The orbits of Earth and asteroid 4581 Asclepius led them to travel through a common point in space, but at different times. The asteroid was at the same point in our orbit where Earth was just six hours ago. Also Read: Apocalypse an inevitable reality for humans today, whether caused by human stupidity or divinity Basically, the asteroid crossed a point in Earth's orbit, and our planet was in that spot just six hours earlier. Just a little bad timing would have been enough to send the asteroid flinging into our planet. The surprising thing is that nobody knew that the asteroid was there. Astronomers Henry Holt and Norman Thomas only discovered the close call at the Palomar Observatory on March 31, 1989. Humanity dodged a bullet, literally. Effect of asteroid impact on Earth Asteroid 4581 Asclepius was 1,000 feet in diameter, about the size of three football fields. It was travelling at a speed of 74,000 km/hr, which means an impact would have been catastrophic. It would have released energy equivalent to roughly 600 megatons of TNT. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, or the RDS-220, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made by man, yielded energy equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT. The asteroid would have gouged a crater nearly 10 kilometres wide, vapourised the immediate impact zone and generated a massive shock wave. If it had slammed into the ocean, tsunami waves hundreds of feet high would have been generated, wiping out coastlines. Also Read: Rapture did not happen, but another world-ending event has been prophesied for 2026 How does Asclepius compare to the dinosaur-killing asteroid? The asteroid that struck the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, creating the massive Chicxulub crater, was roughly 10 kilometres in diameter, or nearly 50,000 feet. In comparison, Asclepius was only 1,000 feet, and so was a city-killer asteroid, while the Chicxulub Impactor was a "Planet-Rebooter." Also Read: Asteroid-bound mission caught Mars in a completely new light How Asclepius changed asteroid watch Asclepius miss served as a wake-up call, as before the Asteroid Watch program, only a handful of people observed near-Earth objects as an academic interest. Asclepius's movement past Earth led to a push for automated, computerised sky surveys and dedicated planetary defence initiatives. Today, we not only have a mission dedicated to looking out for the asteroids, but we also have plans to deflect potentially dangerous space rocks. The DART mission was one such test that slammed into the moonlet of an asteroid.

Earth crossed paths with an asteroid and missed an impact by a tiny margin of six hours. No one knew it was about to happen, and scientists detected it only nine days later. This scare led to the push for programs to watch for hazardous asteroids.

Earth dodged an asteroid by just 6 hours, crossing paths with a potential city-killer

A mission named Curveball by Rocket Lab saw a rocket that was not meant to reach low-Earth orbit, somehow end up right there. The US Space Force was left puzzled when it spotted HASTE, short for Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron, in orbit. The company launched a mysterious payload on its suborbital rocket on June 11. It took off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on a government mission with a secret payload. HASTE is a modified version of the company’s Electron rocket that can fly at five times the speed of sound. It has taken seven flights till now. But its latest launch has stumped everyone.&nbsp;According to Rocket Lab, the rocket offers “reliable, high-cadence flight test opportunities needed to advance hypersonic and suborbital system technology development." It took its first flight on June 17, 2023, and is used as a testing tech by the US Department of Defense and others developing hypersonic technology. Before this, HASTE was contracted by the Department of Defense to deploy a scramjet-powered aircraft developed by Australian aerospace engineering firm Hypersonix.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/griffin-1-lander-will-carry-time-capsule-and-messages-from-japanese-children-to-the-moon-1781602219559">Griffin-1 lander will carry time capsule and messages from Japanese children to the Moon</a><h2>Was the suborbital rocket sent to orbit intentionally?&nbsp;</h2>Curveball was on a government mission, as per the details available, and there is no information on the kind of payload it was carrying. How a suborbital rocket ended up in low-Earth orbit remains a mystery. It is unclear whether Rocket Lab intentionally set it for orbit or if it ended up there by mistake. Gizmodo quoted astronomer Jonathan McDowell as saying that the orbital parameters for Curveball indicate that the rocket’s stages are being tracked in a 200-kilometre orbit with a 40-degree inclination. However, where the payload is now is not known.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/new-theory-suggests-billions-of-mini-universes-could-be-scattered-in-our-own-cosmos-1781512244963">New theory suggests billions of 'mini universes' could be scattered in our own cosmos</a>&nbsp;McDowell wrote on X, "Does this mean CURVEBALL reached orbit and then the payload was deorbited on first orbit?" There is also the possibility that the payload completed its orbit and crashed down on Earth, after which it was recovered over the western US.&nbsp;

HASTE flew on the Curveball mission with a secret payload. Now the payload is missing and the rocket is in low-Earth orbit. It is a sub-orbital rocket and was never meant to reach that high. So, what happened?

A mission named Curveball by Rocket Lab saw a rocket that was not meant to reach low-Earth orbit, somehow end up right there. The US Space Force was left puzzled when it spotted HASTE, short for Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron, in orbit. The company launched a mysterious payload on its suborbital rocket on June 11. It took off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on a government mission with a secret payload. HASTE is a modified version of the company’s Electron rocket that can fly at five times the speed of sound. It has taken seven flights till now. But its latest launch has stumped everyone. According to Rocket Lab, the rocket offers “reliable, high-cadence flight test opportunities needed to advance hypersonic and suborbital system technology development." It took its first flight on June 17, 2023, and is used as a testing tech by the US Department of Defense and others developing hypersonic technology. Before this, HASTE was contracted by the Department of Defense to deploy a scramjet-powered aircraft developed by Australian aerospace engineering firm Hypersonix. Also Read: Griffin-1 lander will carry time capsule and messages from Japanese children to the Moon Was the suborbital rocket sent to orbit intentionally? Curveball was on a government mission, as per the details available, and there is no information on the kind of payload it was carrying. How a suborbital rocket ended up in low-Earth orbit remains a mystery. It is unclear whether Rocket Lab intentionally set it for orbit or if it ended up there by mistake. Gizmodo quoted astronomer Jonathan McDowell as saying that the orbital parameters for Curveball indicate that the rocket’s stages are being tracked in a 200-kilometre orbit with a 40-degree inclination. However, where the payload is now is not known. Also Read: New theory suggests billions of 'mini universes' could be scattered in our own cosmos McDowell wrote on X, "Does this mean CURVEBALL reached orbit and then the payload was deorbited on first orbit?" There is also the possibility that the payload completed its orbit and crashed down on Earth, after which it was recovered over the western US.

HASTE flew on the Curveball mission with a secret payload. Now the payload is missing and the rocket is in low-Earth orbit. It is a sub-orbital rocket and was never meant to reach that high. So, what happened?

A real 'Curveball': This rocket shouldn't have reached low-Earth orbit, but it somehow did

Scientists have discovered a planet where rock clouds form in the day and vanish by night. WASP-94A b is a distant Hot Jupiter which was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope. The weather shifts from one extreme to another within a matter of a few hours from our perspective, something that would typically take days or weeks on Earth. Rock-forming minerals gather early morning to form clouds, start dissipating as the atmosphere heats up and completely vanish by evening. This giant planet orbits extremely close to its star and is located nearly 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Microscopium. It is too far for regular, clear observations, and so astronomers turned the JWST towards it. The telescope captured the subtle changes in starlight as the planet crossed in front of its star. The findings were published in the journal Science.&nbsp;JWST noticed that WASP-94A b has a daily cloud cycle, something which is believed to be common among hot Jupiter planets. This is the clearest detection yet of this activity on such a body. The team separated cloudy regions from clearer parts of the atmosphere to get data on the planet’s chemistry.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/unexplainable-activity-in-w-constellation-cassiopeia-finally-has-an-answer-160-years-later-1779719224496">Unexplainable 'ghost' activity in Cassiopeia finally has an answer 160 years later</a>&nbsp;"We’ve known for quite a while that clouds are pervasive on Hot Jupiter planets, which is annoying because it’s like trying to look at the planet through a foggy window,” said co-author and program PI, David Sing. The Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins said that not only is it a clear view, "but we can finally pin down what the clouds are made out of and how they’re condensing and evaporating as they move around the planet."Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/antarctic-cosmic-dust-proves-earth-has-been-traversing-through-supernova-debris-for-80-000-years-1778588358806">Antarctic cosmic dust proves Earth has been traversing through supernova debris for 80,000 years</a><h2>How JWST studied the Hot Jupiter</h2>As the planet passed in front of its star, JWST measured its leading edge at the start of the transit and its trailing edge as it moved away. Both edges represented different times of day on the planet. In the first instance, the air was observed moving from the nightside into the dayside - morning conditions. At the trailing edge, air moves from day to night, representing evening. WASP-94A b’s mornings contain clouds made of magnesium silicate, a rock-forming mineral, but these clouds are not seen during the evening. The team proposed two possible explanations. One is that strong winds may push clouds high into the atmosphere on the cooler side of the planet. They are then driven downward on the hotter dayside, hiding them deep inside the planet before evening.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/aliens-looking-to-meet-us-would-be-intelligent-enough-to-scream-not-whisper-1778072334596">Aliens looking to meet us would be intelligent enough to scream, not whisper</a>&nbsp;Another possibility is that it could be similar to how morning fog vanished from Earth, except that the conditions are a bit more extreme. Clouds may form in the darkness of the nightside and then vaporise as they enter the dayside, with temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius. “It was a huge surprise...what we saw was a real dichotomy between the weather on both sides of the planet, and huge differences in cloud coverage, and that changes our whole picture of the planet," Sing said.&nbsp;Hot Jupiters are intensely heated and exposed to strong radiation. The team examined eight other hot gas giants and found the same type of cloud cycle on two more planets, WASP-39 b and WASP-17 b. &nbsp;

WASP-94A b is a Hot Jupiter that resides 700 light-years from Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope found strange clouds forming in the morning and vanishing by evening. They state that these clouds are made of rocks.  

Scientists have discovered a planet where rock clouds form in the day and vanish by night. WASP-94A b is a distant Hot Jupiter which was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope. The weather shifts from one extreme to another within a matter of a few hours from our perspective, something that would typically take days or weeks on Earth. Rock-forming minerals gather early morning to form clouds, start dissipating as the atmosphere heats up and completely vanish by evening. This giant planet orbits extremely close to its star and is located nearly 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Microscopium. It is too far for regular, clear observations, and so astronomers turned the JWST towards it. The telescope captured the subtle changes in starlight as the planet crossed in front of its star. The findings were published in the journal Science. JWST noticed that WASP-94A b has a daily cloud cycle, something which is believed to be common among hot Jupiter planets. This is the clearest detection yet of this activity on such a body. The team separated cloudy regions from clearer parts of the atmosphere to get data on the planet’s chemistry. Also Read: Unexplainable 'ghost' activity in Cassiopeia finally has an answer 160 years later "We’ve known for quite a while that clouds are pervasive on Hot Jupiter planets, which is annoying because it’s like trying to look at the planet through a foggy window,” said co-author and program PI, David Sing. The Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins said that not only is it a clear view, "but we can finally pin down what the clouds are made out of and how they’re condensing and evaporating as they move around the planet." Also Read: Antarctic cosmic dust proves Earth has been traversing through supernova debris for 80,000 years How JWST studied the Hot Jupiter As the planet passed in front of its star, JWST measured its leading edge at the start of the transit and its trailing edge as it moved away. Both edges represented different times of day on the planet. In the first instance, the air was observed moving from the nightside into the dayside - morning conditions. At the trailing edge, air moves from day to night, representing evening. WASP-94A b’s mornings contain clouds made of magnesium silicate, a rock-forming mineral, but these clouds are not seen during the evening. The team proposed two possible explanations. One is that strong winds may push clouds high into the atmosphere on the cooler side of the planet. They are then driven downward on the hotter dayside, hiding them deep inside the planet before evening. Also Read: Aliens looking to meet us would be intelligent enough to scream, not whisper Another possibility is that it could be similar to how morning fog vanished from Earth, except that the conditions are a bit more extreme. Clouds may form in the darkness of the nightside and then vaporise as they enter the dayside, with temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius. “It was a huge surprise...what we saw was a real dichotomy between the weather on both sides of the planet, and huge differences in cloud coverage, and that changes our whole picture of the planet," Sing said. Hot Jupiters are intensely heated and exposed to strong radiation. The team examined eight other hot gas giants and found the same type of cloud cycle on two more planets, WASP-39 b and WASP-17 b.

WASP-94A b is a Hot Jupiter that resides 700 light-years from Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope found strange clouds forming in the morning and vanishing by evening. They state that these clouds are made of rocks. &nbsp;

Rock clouds on Hot Jupiter 700 light-years from Earth form in the morning and disappear by evening

The hunt for aliens has mainly focused on detecting weak signals that could be hidden in a huge spectrum of cosmic noise. However, a recent study has suggested that if an advanced extraterrestrial was interested in reaching out, it would send a signal that is easily detectable. In fact, they would even target specific areas if they wished to be noticed. Benjamin Zuckerman, study author and an astrophysicist from the University of California, said, “Our principal assumption is that a purposely communicative technological civilisation will do its technological best to establish communication with other extraterrestrial technological intelligences (ETIs).” The reason why SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has focused on looking for weaker signals till now is that a civilisation with limited power would send signals in all directions. By the time any of them reach a habitable world, it would have weakened considerably.&nbsp;These signals could land on any frequency, and there is no way to know which one is a promising candidate. So humans end up scouring only a tiny fraction of them. However, the researchers of the new study believe that any civilisation capable of interstellar communication would not waste its technology by transmitting everywhere. In fact, it would shoot a sharp signal like a laser using highly directional transmission systems.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/rogue-rocket-zooming-around-earth-set-to-crash-into-the-moon-know-exact-date-and-time-1777638385330">Rogue rocket zooming around Earth set to crash into Moon at Mach 7. Know exact date and time</a><h2>Wavelength of transmission matters more than the strength</h2> The study further states that power isn't the problem in this case, but whether Earth lies within that beam area is what matters. A system drawing on the order of 60 megawatts could also generate a signal that strong, they argue. “The most uncertain factor in our communication with a nearby ETI will not be power starvation, but rather the wavelength of transmission; this may be radio, infrared, or optical,” Zuckerman said. This means that if an alien civilisation were to send a well-aimed transmission, it would easily show up in routine astronomical data.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/hostile-twin-star-systems-birth-more-planets-and-then-kick-them-out-1777886293312">Hostile twin star systems birth more planets, and then kick them out</a><h2>Changes needed in way we search for alien life</h2>Zuckerman has even presented the right kind of candidates to focus on while checking for such signals. It has to come from a place where communicative civilisations might exist, which can only be on water worlds. So attention should be on planets in the habitable zones of their stars. Further, &nbsp;technological intelligence takes billions of years to emerge. In the case of Earth, it was 4.5 billion years. So the stars of such planets should be similar to our Sun in age and stability. Within a sphere of about 200 parsecs, roughly 500,000 such stars can be found. Only about 200,000 are old enough to host advanced life. The study shows that the way we search for alien life needs to change, and broader wavelength ranges across nearby Sun-like stars should be the focus.&nbsp;

A study has suggested that the way we search for alien life needs to change. Instead of scanning for weak signals, the wavelength should be considered. Any civilisation interested and capable of contacting another would be powerful enough to send a strong, focused signal. 

The hunt for aliens has mainly focused on detecting weak signals that could be hidden in a huge spectrum of cosmic noise. However, a recent study has suggested that if an advanced extraterrestrial was interested in reaching out, it would send a signal that is easily detectable. In fact, they would even target specific areas if they wished to be noticed. Benjamin Zuckerman, study author and an astrophysicist from the University of California, said, “Our principal assumption is that a purposely communicative technological civilisation will do its technological best to establish communication with other extraterrestrial technological intelligences (ETIs).” The reason why SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has focused on looking for weaker signals till now is that a civilisation with limited power would send signals in all directions. By the time any of them reach a habitable world, it would have weakened considerably. These signals could land on any frequency, and there is no way to know which one is a promising candidate. So humans end up scouring only a tiny fraction of them. However, the researchers of the new study believe that any civilisation capable of interstellar communication would not waste its technology by transmitting everywhere. In fact, it would shoot a sharp signal like a laser using highly directional transmission systems. Also Read: Rogue rocket zooming around Earth set to crash into Moon at Mach 7. Know exact date and time Wavelength of transmission matters more than the strength The study further states that power isn't the problem in this case, but whether Earth lies within that beam area is what matters. A system drawing on the order of 60 megawatts could also generate a signal that strong, they argue. “The most uncertain factor in our communication with a nearby ETI will not be power starvation, but rather the wavelength of transmission; this may be radio, infrared, or optical,” Zuckerman said. This means that if an alien civilisation were to send a well-aimed transmission, it would easily show up in routine astronomical data. Also Read: Hostile twin star systems birth more planets, and then kick them out Changes needed in way we search for alien life Zuckerman has even presented the right kind of candidates to focus on while checking for such signals. It has to come from a place where communicative civilisations might exist, which can only be on water worlds. So attention should be on planets in the habitable zones of their stars. Further, technological intelligence takes billions of years to emerge. In the case of Earth, it was 4.5 billion years. So the stars of such planets should be similar to our Sun in age and stability. Within a sphere of about 200 parsecs, roughly 500,000 such stars can be found. Only about 200,000 are old enough to host advanced life. The study shows that the way we search for alien life needs to change, and broader wavelength ranges across nearby Sun-like stars should be the focus.

A study has suggested that the way we search for alien life needs to change. Instead of scanning for weak signals, the wavelength should be considered. Any civilisation interested and capable of contacting another would be powerful enough to send a strong, focused signal.&nbsp;

Aliens looking to meet us would be intelligent enough to scream, not whisper

Binary star systems might scientifically appear to be hostile to planet formation, but a new study shows that they have an ideal environment for these bodies to be born. Their conditions are, in fact, better than single star systems. They are also the reason for rogue planets, the research has found. Dual star systems are quite common in the Milky Way. Even our Sun is believed to have a twin that left its side. But the problem arises as their gravitational forces tug at each other, creating a chaotic environment for the material around them. But this isn't the full picture. Beyond the inner regions lies a place where things settle down and where planets might have a better chance of taking shape than even single-star systems. Lead author of the study, Matthew Teasdale of the University of Lancashire, said in a statement, "Close to a binary star, it's simply too violent for planets to form. But move farther out, and the disk becomes an ideal environment for planet formation." The study was published on April 27 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/mars-will-deliver-a-violent-death-to-its-own-moon-sooner-than-expected-1777879100784">Mars will deliver a violent death to its own Moon sooner than expected</a><h2>Binary stars have an extremely productive region where planets form</h2>Computer simulations showed that the swirling disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, surrounding young binary stars create a "forbidden zone" where the environment is too tumultuous and violent. The intense gravitational forces lead to an inconducive region where planets cannot form. However, once you pass this point, the disk can break apart under its own gravity, and this gravitational instability can rapidly produce multiple young planets, in particular Jupiter. "What we're finding is that they can actually be extremely productive," co-author of the study, Dimitris Stamatellos, said. "Once you get past the danger zone, planets can form quickly and in large numbers." However, this gravitational complexity also has a downside. Some of the planets that form in such systems might get kicked out and left to fend for themselves in interstellar space, leading to what we call rogue planets.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/rogue-rocket-zooming-around-earth-set-to-crash-into-the-moon-know-exact-date-and-time-1777638385330">Rogue rocket zooming around Earth set to crash into Moon at Mach 7. Know exact date and time</a><h2>Tatooine worlds are more common than previously believed&nbsp;</h2>One of the most famous worlds moving around twin stars is Tatooine, the fictional desert planet in the Star Wars galaxy. The study states that such planets "may be far less rare than we once imagined." Scientists have already found over 50 such worlds that revolved around two stars. Most of them are located at extreme distances from their host stars, backing the theory put forward by the latest study. Experts believe that ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), the James Webb Space Telescope, and the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope can soon locate such disks of gas and dust and even see these planets being born.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Star Wars-type Tatooine worlds are more common in the Milky Way and are actually better suited for planet formation. There is a hostile region near binary stars, but once it is crossed, the chaos ebbs and young planets can be born.

Binary star systems might scientifically appear to be hostile to planet formation, but a new study shows that they have an ideal environment for these bodies to be born. Their conditions are, in fact, better than single star systems. They are also the reason for rogue planets, the research has found. Dual star systems are quite common in the Milky Way. Even our Sun is believed to have a twin that left its side. But the problem arises as their gravitational forces tug at each other, creating a chaotic environment for the material around them. But this isn't the full picture. Beyond the inner regions lies a place where things settle down and where planets might have a better chance of taking shape than even single-star systems. Lead author of the study, Matthew Teasdale of the University of Lancashire, said in a statement, "Close to a binary star, it's simply too violent for planets to form. But move farther out, and the disk becomes an ideal environment for planet formation." The study was published on April 27 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Also Read: Mars will deliver a violent death to its own Moon sooner than expected Binary stars have an extremely productive region where planets form Computer simulations showed that the swirling disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, surrounding young binary stars create a "forbidden zone" where the environment is too tumultuous and violent. The intense gravitational forces lead to an inconducive region where planets cannot form. However, once you pass this point, the disk can break apart under its own gravity, and this gravitational instability can rapidly produce multiple young planets, in particular Jupiter. "What we're finding is that they can actually be extremely productive," co-author of the study, Dimitris Stamatellos, said. "Once you get past the danger zone, planets can form quickly and in large numbers." However, this gravitational complexity also has a downside. Some of the planets that form in such systems might get kicked out and left to fend for themselves in interstellar space, leading to what we call rogue planets. Also Read: Rogue rocket zooming around Earth set to crash into Moon at Mach 7. Know exact date and time Tatooine worlds are more common than previously believed One of the most famous worlds moving around twin stars is Tatooine, the fictional desert planet in the Star Wars galaxy. The study states that such planets "may be far less rare than we once imagined." Scientists have already found over 50 such worlds that revolved around two stars. Most of them are located at extreme distances from their host stars, backing the theory put forward by the latest study. Experts believe that ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), the James Webb Space Telescope, and the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope can soon locate such disks of gas and dust and even see these planets being born.

Star Wars-type Tatooine worlds are more common in the Milky Way and are actually better suited for planet formation. There is a hostile region near binary stars, but once it is crossed, the chaos ebbs and young planets can be born.

Hostile twin star systems birth more planets, and then kick them out

Scientists have long known that Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, will eventually die as the tidal effects of the planet suck its orbital energy, leading it to turn into a debris disk. This is expected to happen when it passes inside the Roche Limit - the minimum distance to which a moon, comet, or asteroid can approach a larger primary body. In the case of Mars and Phobos, this limit is around 1.6 times the radius of the Red Planet (RM), or approximately 3,600 to 5,500 km. However, a new analysis has shown that Phobos will start to shred and break apart long before it reaches this limit. Harrison Agrusa and Patrick Michel, researchers at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, France, say that Phobos' shape and the fact that it is merely a pile of rubble will play a role in this event.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/no-mars-no-moolah-musk-s-appraisal-directly-tied-to-settling-1-million-people-on-red-planet-1777634594502">No Mars, no moolah: Musk's appraisal directly tied to settling 1 million people on Red Planet</a>&nbsp;Scientists determined the fate of Phobos using two approaches. One was the simple mathematics behind the tidal strain at decreasing distance from Mars, and its shape, along with the cohesive strength of Phobos. The second was a computer simulation looking at the moon as a rubble pile, tracking how each separate particle will react as Phobos spirals inward. Both of them threw up similar results - that death awaits Phobos sooner than expected.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasa-just-saved-a-precious-drill-on-mars-from-212-million-kilometres-away-1767174556834">NASA just saved a precious drill stuck on Mars since 8 months from 212 million kilometres away</a><h2>How and when will Phobos die?</h2>Phobos will start undergoing mass shedding from two points - one closest to Mars and the other farthest from the planet. The gravitational pull is strongest at the part nearest to it, while the outwards-flinging centrifugal force is greatest on the far side. The shedding will start when Phobos is at an orbital distance of about 2.25RM. It will greatly increase at around 2.15RM and 2.13RM. Material from Phobos will start flowing in two huge streams at around 2.09RM, destabilising it and ultimately spelling doom. However, the end could come much before it even reaches this last limit. The material pulled from Phobos will enter Mars' orbit and then smash again into the Moon at high speeds. This would lead to a "sesquinary catastrophe", finishing off Phobos.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/half-of-mars-was-covered-with-an-ocean-as-big-as-the-arctic-3-billion-years-ago-1768566494909">3 billion years ago, Mars had a huge ocean that covered half the planet</a>&nbsp;Phobos is not going to die for another 20 to 50 million years. Meanwhile, humans are working to quench their curiosity as Japan gets ready to launch the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission this year. It is designed to study the interior structure and material strength of Phobos, giving a closer estimate of its demise.

Phobos, the closer of the two Martian Moons, is being pulled towards the planet and is one day expected to be completely obliterated by the tidal forces. However, this will happen much sooner and will be extremely brutal.  

Scientists have long known that Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, will eventually die as the tidal effects of the planet suck its orbital energy, leading it to turn into a debris disk. This is expected to happen when it passes inside the Roche Limit - the minimum distance to which a moon, comet, or asteroid can approach a larger primary body. In the case of Mars and Phobos, this limit is around 1.6 times the radius of the Red Planet (RM), or approximately 3,600 to 5,500 km. However, a new analysis has shown that Phobos will start to shred and break apart long before it reaches this limit. Harrison Agrusa and Patrick Michel, researchers at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, France, say that Phobos' shape and the fact that it is merely a pile of rubble will play a role in this event. Also Read: No Mars, no moolah: Musk's appraisal directly tied to settling 1 million people on Red Planet Scientists determined the fate of Phobos using two approaches. One was the simple mathematics behind the tidal strain at decreasing distance from Mars, and its shape, along with the cohesive strength of Phobos. The second was a computer simulation looking at the moon as a rubble pile, tracking how each separate particle will react as Phobos spirals inward. Both of them threw up similar results - that death awaits Phobos sooner than expected. Also Read: NASA just saved a precious drill stuck on Mars since 8 months from 212 million kilometres away How and when will Phobos die? Phobos will start undergoing mass shedding from two points - one closest to Mars and the other farthest from the planet. The gravitational pull is strongest at the part nearest to it, while the outwards-flinging centrifugal force is greatest on the far side. The shedding will start when Phobos is at an orbital distance of about 2.25RM. It will greatly increase at around 2.15RM and 2.13RM. Material from Phobos will start flowing in two huge streams at around 2.09RM, destabilising it and ultimately spelling doom. However, the end could come much before it even reaches this last limit. The material pulled from Phobos will enter Mars' orbit and then smash again into the Moon at high speeds. This would lead to a "sesquinary catastrophe", finishing off Phobos. Also Read: 3 billion years ago, Mars had a huge ocean that covered half the planet Phobos is not going to die for another 20 to 50 million years. Meanwhile, humans are working to quench their curiosity as Japan gets ready to launch the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission this year. It is designed to study the interior structure and material strength of Phobos, giving a closer estimate of its demise.

Phobos, the closer of the two Martian Moons, is being pulled towards the planet and is one day expected to be completely obliterated by the tidal forces. However, this will happen much sooner and will be extremely brutal. &nbsp;

Mars will deliver a violent death to its own Moon sooner than expected

Astronomers have discovered TOI-5205 b, a massive 'forbidden' alien planet orbiting a tiny star. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers revealed its bizarre, heavy-element-depleted atmosphere that is challenging our understanding of planetary formation.

tronomers have discovered TOI-5205 b, a massive ‘forbidden’ alien planet orbiting a tiny star. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers revealed its bizarre, heavy-element-depleted atmosphere that is challenging our understanding of planetary formation.Untitled Summary

'100 times richer': NASA's James Webb Telescope reveals 'forbidden' alien planet that shouldn't exist

Are we looking for extraterrestrial life the wrong way? A groundbreaking new study suggests astrobiologists should stop looking for specific biosignatures on single planets, and instead hunt for statistical 'patterns' of life spreading across entire star systems.

Are we looking for extraterrestrial life the wrong way? A groundbreaking new study suggests astrobiologists should stop looking for specific biosignatures on single planets, and instead hunt for statistical ‘patterns’ of life spreading across entire star systems.

Alien life might be hiding in 'patterns', not just planets? Here's what it means

Strange red dots spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope might actually be 'black hole stars'—massive gas clouds hiding growing supermassive black holes within. Uncover the new X-ray data that could rewrite our understanding of the early universe.

Strange red dots spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope might actually be ‘black hole stars’—massive gas clouds hiding growing supermassive black holes within. Uncover the new X-ray data that could rewrite our understanding of the early universe.

'Black hole stars': NASA's James Webb Telescope discovers red dots that might re-write galaxy origin theory

NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft not from the ground but from a plane after it is carried to space on a Pegasus XL rocket. The mission is intended to prevent a telescope from falling to Earth, something that will happen by June this year if nothing is done about it. The space agency has only about two months to avert this danger and so has come up with this offbeat plan. The telescope in question is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. It was launched on November 20, 2004, and has been observing the universe for 22 years. However, its orbit is now thinning and increasing the drag on it, putting the telescope in danger of falling to Earth. This happens because of the Earth's atmosphere, which doesn't just vanish when we cross into space. It is present, albeit it is much thinner. This exerts a slight but steady drag, slowly pulling orbiting spacecraft closer to Earth. Solar storms can worsen the conditions, increasing the drag. Our Sun is in a period of solar maximum, which has led to several flares and geomagnetic storms, and Neil Gehrels is apparently paying the price.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/-space-will-define-future-wars-drdo-chief-calls-for-urgent-national-push-sounds-alarm-on-defence-gap-1776954533825">‘Space will define future wars’: DRDO chief calls for urgent national push, sounds alarm on defence gap</a>&nbsp;According to NASA, the chances of the telescope crashing by June 2026 stood at 50 per cent in November 2025, and there is a 90 per cent chance of that happening before 2027. So it had to come up with a plan fast. It entrusted the responsibility of ensuring it does not happen to Katalyst, a company that has built a $30 million robotic spacecraft, which will carry Swift and place it in a more stable orbit. Named LINK, it has been undergoing testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since April 14. S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard, said in a statement that "NASA awarded Katalyst a contract to attempt to boost Swift with the company’s LINK satellite", and "the teams are creating the best opportunity possible to extend Swift’s lifetime."Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/why-are-some-galaxies-invisible-astronomers-identify-70-dark-galaxy-candidates-with-no-visible-stars-using-fast-1777446541189">Why are some galaxies invisible? Astronomers identify 70 dark galaxy candidates with no visible stars using FAST</a><h2>LINK will be launched from space into space</h2>In the meantime, the Swift team turned off instruments on the observatory to reduce power consumption. They repositioned its solar panels to reduce drag, handing scientists more time to fix the problem. There is no official word on when LINK will launch, although engineers have come up with an interesting plan. Instead of shooting from the ground to space, the spacecraft will be carried on a Pegasus XL rocket developed by Northrop Grumman and will be launched from a plane. This is because the set-up at the US spaceports does not allow for a simple trajectory to reach Swift. Scientists are hoping to extend the lifespan of the space observatory and create a blueprint in the process for how humans operate in space.&nbsp;“Swift is still producing valuable scientific data," &nbsp;Ghonhee Lee, Katalyst’s chief executive officer, said, adding, "NASA is leading the shift toward more flexible ways of operating in space by working with companies like Katalyst to get more out of its missions and deliver the best return for taxpayers." &nbsp;

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is crashing: The space telescope could fall because its orbit no longer supports it. NASA has a plan to save it and extend its life. It involves a spacecraft that will fly towards it and carry it into a safer orbit. 

NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft not from the ground but from a plane after it is carried to space on a Pegasus XL rocket. The mission is intended to prevent a telescope from falling to Earth, something that will happen by June this year if nothing is done about it. The space agency has only about two months to avert this danger and so has come up with this offbeat plan. The telescope in question is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. It was launched on November 20, 2004, and has been observing the universe for 22 years. However, its orbit is now thinning and increasing the drag on it, putting the telescope in danger of falling to Earth. This happens because of the Earth's atmosphere, which doesn't just vanish when we cross into space. It is present, albeit it is much thinner. This exerts a slight but steady drag, slowly pulling orbiting spacecraft closer to Earth. Solar storms can worsen the conditions, increasing the drag. Our Sun is in a period of solar maximum, which has led to several flares and geomagnetic storms, and Neil Gehrels is apparently paying the price. Also Read: ‘Space will define future wars’: DRDO chief calls for urgent national push, sounds alarm on defence gap According to NASA, the chances of the telescope crashing by June 2026 stood at 50 per cent in November 2025, and there is a 90 per cent chance of that happening before 2027. So it had to come up with a plan fast. It entrusted the responsibility of ensuring it does not happen to Katalyst, a company that has built a $30 million robotic spacecraft, which will carry Swift and place it in a more stable orbit. Named LINK, it has been undergoing testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since April 14. S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard, said in a statement that "NASA awarded Katalyst a contract to attempt to boost Swift with the company’s LINK satellite", and "the teams are creating the best opportunity possible to extend Swift’s lifetime." Also Read: Why are some galaxies invisible? Astronomers identify 70 dark galaxy candidates with no visible stars using FAST LINK will be launched from space into space In the meantime, the Swift team turned off instruments on the observatory to reduce power consumption. They repositioned its solar panels to reduce drag, handing scientists more time to fix the problem. There is no official word on when LINK will launch, although engineers have come up with an interesting plan. Instead of shooting from the ground to space, the spacecraft will be carried on a Pegasus XL rocket developed by Northrop Grumman and will be launched from a plane. This is because the set-up at the US spaceports does not allow for a simple trajectory to reach Swift. Scientists are hoping to extend the lifespan of the space observatory and create a blueprint in the process for how humans operate in space. “Swift is still producing valuable scientific data," Ghonhee Lee, Katalyst’s chief executive officer, said, adding, "NASA is leading the shift toward more flexible ways of operating in space by working with companies like Katalyst to get more out of its missions and deliver the best return for taxpayers."

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is crashing: The space telescope could fall because its orbit no longer supports it. NASA has a plan to save it and extend its life. It involves a spacecraft that will fly towards it and carry it into a safer orbit.&nbsp;

THIS space telescope could crash any time. NASA will launch a spacecraft from plane to save it

Scientists have pieced together the largest CT scan of the universe, with a whopping 47 million galaxies and 20 million additional stars present in one picture. This was part of a project that ran for over five years to create the largest and most detailed 3D map of our cosmic outdoors. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)'s 5,000 eyes have been locking in on tiny portions of the sky since 2021, and we finally have the much-awaited picture. Now all of those images have been combined to create this unimaginable spectacle. The observations made by the DESI survey are a massive leap forward, combining observations from over six times as many galaxies and quasars—the brilliant signals emitted by black holes—than all previous surveys put together. The stunning image shows light from galaxies as old as 11 billion years, merely two billion years after the universe was born.<h2>Map of galaxies</h2>Dr Seshadri Nadathur, a Portsmouth University researcher, who serves as co–chair of the DESI galaxy and quasar clustering working group, said, "We've barely scratched the surface so far" and termed "this DESI map of galaxies" extremely important for cosmology. The fibre–optic lens with an accuracy of 10 microns, or less than the width of a hair, moved and observed a new spot every 20 minutes. By splitting the collected light into a spectrum of colours, ten spectrographs allowed researchers to determine the chemical composition, velocity, and spatial position of each target. &nbsp;This led to the creation of the most detailed and precise 3D map of the universe. Each dot in the photo is a galaxy, while the dark spots are areas where the thick edge of the Milky Way blocked out light from distant stars. Initially, DESI projected a view of 34 million galaxies and quasars, but it exceeded that number.Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-create-galaxies-in-lab-watch-and-hear-them-evolve-in-video-1776424893000">Scientists create galaxies in laboratory - Watch and hear them born and evolve | VIDEO</a><h2>Dark energy project</h2>The project involved over 900 scientists from 70 institutions who started off with the aim of studying dark energy, the force believed to be responsible for the expansion of the universe. How and when the universe will end depends on the balance between matter and dark energy. The first three years of the program collected data, which showed that dark energy could be changing. &nbsp;Scientists are hoping that the full map will offer a view into whether this evolution is bigger or smaller than estimated. The first dark energy results from the five–year survey are expected in 2027.

Scientists have created the largest map of the universe showing 47 million galaxies. The images were captured over five years by the 5,000 eyes of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. The project will soon reveal additional data on dark energy.

Scientists have pieced together the largest CT scan of the universe, with a whopping 47 million galaxies and 20 million additional stars present in one picture. This was part of a project that ran for over five years to create the largest and most detailed 3D map of our cosmic outdoors. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)'s 5,000 eyes have been locking in on tiny portions of the sky since 2021, and we finally have the much-awaited picture. Now all of those images have been combined to create this unimaginable spectacle. The observations made by the DESI survey are a massive leap forward, combining observations from over six times as many galaxies and quasars—the brilliant signals emitted by black holes—than all previous surveys put together. The stunning image shows light from galaxies as old as 11 billion years, merely two billion years after the universe was born. Map of galaxies Dr Seshadri Nadathur, a Portsmouth University researcher, who serves as co–chair of the DESI galaxy and quasar clustering working group, said, "We've barely scratched the surface so far" and termed "this DESI map of galaxies" extremely important for cosmology. The fibre–optic lens with an accuracy of 10 microns, or less than the width of a hair, moved and observed a new spot every 20 minutes. By splitting the collected light into a spectrum of colours, ten spectrographs allowed researchers to determine the chemical composition, velocity, and spatial position of each target. This led to the creation of the most detailed and precise 3D map of the universe. Each dot in the photo is a galaxy, while the dark spots are areas where the thick edge of the Milky Way blocked out light from distant stars. Initially, DESI projected a view of 34 million galaxies and quasars, but it exceeded that number. Also Read: Scientists create galaxies in laboratory - Watch and hear them born and evolve | VIDEO Dark energy project The project involved over 900 scientists from 70 institutions who started off with the aim of studying dark energy, the force believed to be responsible for the expansion of the universe. How and when the universe will end depends on the balance between matter and dark energy. The first three years of the program collected data, which showed that dark energy could be changing. Scientists are hoping that the full map will offer a view into whether this evolution is bigger or smaller than estimated. The first dark energy results from the five–year survey are expected in 2027.

Scientists have created the largest map of the universe showing 47 million galaxies. The images were captured over five years by the 5,000 eyes of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. The project will soon reveal additional data on dark energy.

MIND BLOWN! See 47 million galaxies in the largest 3D map of the universe. Each dot in this photo is a galaxy

space-news

Space News, News on Space News, stories on Space News, articles on Space News, Space News stories at Wion, Space News news, Space News latest news

space news

Total Solar Eclipse 2026: Europe Witnesses Rare Celestial Spectacle After 20 Years

Cheap, Fast, Successful: Why NASA Wants Isro on the Moon | GRAVITAS

Europe Witnesses Rare Total Solar Eclipse as Spain Prepares for Historic Sky Show

Scientists Capture Unprecedented Images of Sun's Surface | Never-Before-Seen Solar Activity Revealed

Our Sun was missing its silver. Scientists finally know what went wrong

India's Vikram-1 launch | Iran attacks | Iraq-US deals | Gold prices fall

'Eyeball Earth' older than our planet and leaking helium reveals an atmosphere

'Alien chemistry' discovered in meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey bedroom

Declaration of space wars? America's latest weapon can jam enemy satellites

Rare planets bigger than Jupiter, lighter than cotton candy found

Scientists say nuclear weapons could be lurking in space undetected

Blue Origin's first funding round signals a new chapter in the space race

Potentially Habitable Planet Found Just 25 Light-Years Away

Indian scientists are part of Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Everything you need to know

'80 light-years away': This planet watched its star die and yet it survived

NASA's TESS Is Hiding Mind-Boggling Secrets In 8-Year Data

What is Stardust And why was it found in Antarctica?

See 1776 Light: The Star Whose Glow Left When America Was Born

Alien Planet's Hotspot Is In The Wrong Place And No One Knows Why

Powerful comet deluge from Oort Cloud racing towards Earth, study finds

Earth dodged an asteroid by 6 hours, crossing paths with a potential city-killer

This rocket shouldn't have reached low-Earth orbit, but it somehow did

Rock clouds on Hot Jupiter form in the morning and disappear by evening

Aliens looking to meet us would be intelligent enough to scream, not whisper

Hostile twin star systems birth more planets, and then kick them out

Mars will deliver a violent death to its own Moon sooner than expected