A fluffy cluster of stars spilling across the sky may have a secret hidden in its heart: a swarm of over 100 stellar-mass black holes. The star cluster in question is called Palomar 5. It’s a stellar stream that stretches out across 30,000 light-years, and is located around 80,000 light-years away. Such globular clusters are
In Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian, foul-mouthed protagonist Mark Watney “sciences the shit” out of his circumstances to survive being stranded on Mars. The result is an engrossing work of science fiction, particularly captivating for its apparent realism. Watney ekes out an existence by eating potatoes sowed in Martian soil fertilized by his own
On 14 February 2026, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, Kelly Fast presented data on a persistent gap in planetary defense capabilities. Fast, NASA’s acting planetary defense officer, detailed the discrepancy between estimated and detected populations of near Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters. The figures indicate
Nasa targets early March to send humans back around the Moon BBC NASA conducts second rocket fueling test that will decide when Artemis astronauts head to the moon AP News NASA eyes March 6 to launch 4 astronauts to the moon on Artemis II mission NPR NASA Eyes Next Wet Dress Rehearsal for Artemis II NASA (.gov) Moon mission
Many people imagine Earth’s interior mantle as separate layers stacked on top of each other, like a layered cake, with each layer representing a plate. In reality, those internal zones are complex and often full of surprises. Seismologists have relied on specific types of earthquake waves to learn about Earth’s subsurface, but now a different
Welcome to Edition 8.30 of the Rocket Report! As I write this week’s edition, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the test will determine whether NASA has a shot at launching the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, or if
The research, presented in two papers in Physical Review A, describes adjustable exchange statistics and a method to map them. It extends a concept once confined to two-dimensional materials into an even more constrained quantum setting. In the three-dimensional world, elementary particles are sorted into two categories defined by quantum spin and exchange behavior. Bosons,
NASA astronaut Chris Williams has shared an enchanting view of fireworks exploding in the sky over Beijing from the International Space Station (ISS), as millions gathered on the world below to celebrate Lunar New Year on the night of Feb. 17. A celebration witnessed from orbit Williams captured spectacular detail in the complex network of
Under the central Saharan sun, paleontologist Daniel Vidal spotted a mysterious bone poking out of the ground during an excavation in Niger. It looked like a dinosaur vertebra at first. But upon further inspection, researchers realized the bone was a curved, sword-like crest that would have been attached to the skull of one of paleontology’s
A comet whizzing through the Solar System has astonished scientists by doing something they had never seen before. In early 2017, comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák made its 5.4-year close approach to the Sun, or perihelion. As it did so, its spin appeared to slow down to a complete halt, before likely starting up again in the opposite