https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. US President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that he wants to send astronauts back to the moon as soon as possible, putting eventual Mars missions on the back burner. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-trump-shifts-priority-moon-mission.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Dec 2025 04:14:05 EST news685339969 A crew of tiny worms will be heading on a mission to the International Space Station in 2026 that will help scientists understand how humans can travel through space safely, using a Leicester-built space pod. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-worms-space-aims-biological-effects.html Space Exploration Thu, 20 Nov 2025 12:17:04 EST news682863421 Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced Sunday to postpone the anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bezos-blue-postpones-rocket-weather.html Space Exploration Mon, 10 Nov 2025 04:19:27 EST news681970759 President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to head NASA, again tapping the close associate of Elon Musk to lead the US space agency. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-trump-musk-ally-jared-isaacman.html Space Exploration Wed, 05 Nov 2025 04:47:00 EST news681540416 Green spaces are a virtue to their surroundings; they improve air quality, reduce extreme temperatures and can mitigate hazards like flooding. Just living near a park is beneficial; nearby residents tend to have lower health care bills, reduced stress and depression levels and lead more active lifestyles. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-greenspaces-unevenly-communities-residents-walkable.html Social Sciences Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:48:05 EDT news680975282 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have performed infrared observations of a planetary debris disk around a nearby white dwarf known as GD 362. Results of the new observations, presented October 8 on the arXiv preprint server, yield important insights into the chemical composition of this disk. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-webb-composition-planetary-debris-nearby.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:00:02 EDT news679808033 SpaceX is set to attempt the next test flight of its massive Starship rocket on Monday, as concerns grow that Elon Musk has overpromised his company's ability to deliver NASA's lunar projects and fulfill his own Mars ambitions. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-spacex-starship-flight-monday.html Space Exploration Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:30:01 EDT news679580858 In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, we usually look for planets orbiting sun-like stars and icy moons. But there is another possible candidate—planets circling white dwarfs, the hot, dense remnants of dead stars. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-general-life-planets-orbiting-white.html Astrobiology Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:30:01 EDT news679047972 University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered the chemical fingerprint of a frozen, water-rich planetary fragment being consumed by a white dwarf star outside our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-icy-planetesimal-high-nitrogen-content.html Astrobiology Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:30:01 EDT news677752155 NASA on Tuesday said it was on track to send astronauts to orbit the moon in early 2026, as the United States races China to return to the lunar surface. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-nasa-track-astronauts-moon.html Space Exploration Tue, 23 Sep 2025 16:03:04 EDT news677862181 University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered compelling evidence that a nearby white dwarf is in fact the remnant of two stars merging—a rare stellar discovery revealed through Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet observations of carbon in the star's hot atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ultraviolet-uncovers-evidence-rare-white.html Astronomy Wed, 06 Aug 2025 05:00:11 EDT news673598430 July will see the launch of the groundbreaking Solar EruptioN Integral Field Spectrograph mission, or SNIFS. Delivered to space via a Black Brant IX sounding rocket, SNIFS will explore the energy and dynamics of the chromosphere, one of the most complex regions of the sun's atmosphere. The SNIFS mission's launch window at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico opens on Friday, July 18. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-nasa-snifs-sun-trailblazing-spectator.html Astronomy Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:30:01 EDT news671984359 US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was withdrawing his nomination of tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Elon Musk, to lead space agency NASA. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-trump-musk-ally-nominee-nasa.html Space Exploration Sun, 01 Jun 2025 06:27:37 EDT news667978053 Florida Tech's Caldon Whyte is two years into a lengthy universe exploration to earn his Ph.D. in space sciences. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in astrobiology in 2023, he's fascinated by white dwarf stars—the cooling remnants of low-mass stars (e.g., our sun) that have exhausted their nuclear fuel source—and the likelihood of life surviving in their orbits. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-exploring-likelihood-life-white-dwarf.html Astrobiology Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:58:04 EDT news661510681 Using various X-ray space observatories, astronomers from Columbia University in New York and elsewhere have investigated CTCV J2056–3014—an intermediate polar containing one of the fastest-spinning white dwarfs. Results of the study, published September 26 on the pre-print server arXiv, shed more light on the nature of this object. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-astronomers-nature-fast-intermediate-polar.html Astronomy Mon, 07 Oct 2024 09:12:13 EDT news647511127 There is little doubt that historical racism has influenced the content and composition of several famous figurative paintings. In March 2024, this could be seen in the debate around the exhibition of the Rex Whistler mural, The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats (1927), at the Tate Britain. Critics asked whether such artworks should remain on public display. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-historical-racism-negatively-affects-black.html Social Sciences Wed, 25 Sep 2024 13:13:05 EDT news646488783 Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have performed spectrophotometric observations of an eclipsing white dwarf–brown dwarf binary known as WD1032+011. Results of their observational campaign, published September 10 on the preprint server arXiv, yield important information regarding the nature of this system. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-crucial-insights-nature-white-dwarfbrown.html Astronomy Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:50:01 EDT news645803335 Evidence of debris stemming from return trips of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has prompted the company to shift future landing operations from Florida to California. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-debris-spacex-shift-dragon-capsule.html Space Exploration Wed, 31 Jul 2024 16:41:10 EDT news641662865 Two astronauts who should have been back on Earth weeks ago said Wednesday that they're confident that Boeing's space capsule can return them safely, despite a string of vexing breakdowns. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-astronauts-confident-boeing-space-capsule.html Space Exploration Wed, 10 Jul 2024 12:38:37 EDT news639833913 NASA wants to come up with an out-of-this-world way to keep track of time, putting the moon on its own souped-up clock. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-nasa-clock-moon-seconds-faster.html Space Exploration Wed, 03 Apr 2024 04:18:20 EDT news631336693 Massive cost overruns. Key deadlines slipping out of reach. Problems of unprecedented complexity, and a generation's worth of scientific progress contingent upon solving them. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-nasa-home-mars-unprecedented-mission.html Astronomy Thu, 28 Mar 2024 12:00:02 EDT news630844712 In a week where national security has taken center stage in Washington, the White House confirmed on Thursday that it had evidence that Russia was developing a space-based nuclear anti satellite weapon. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-russia-space-weapon-anti-satellite.html Space Exploration Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:30:02 EST news627661268 Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt took control of a series of robots in Germany while on board the International Space Station, zipping around the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 mph.) Researchers want to understand how time delays can affect the remote control of robots from an orbiting platform. Future astronauts could control rovers on the moon or Mars from a spacecraft in orbit. Until now, only wheeled rovers have been part of the tests, but now they have added a dog-like robot called Bert. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-astronaut-robotic-dog-orbit.html Space Exploration Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:59:26 EST news626360364 An international astronaut will join U.S. astronauts on the moon by decade's end under an agreement announced Wednesday by NASA and the White House. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-international-astronaut-future-nasa-moon.html Space Exploration Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:12:34 EST news622307552 The four astronauts assigned to fly around the moon for the first time in 50 years met with President Joe Biden on Thursday at the White House, where he showed off an moon rock on display in the Oval Office that was collected in the Apollo era. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-biden-hosts-nasa-astronauts-crew.html Space Exploration Fri, 15 Dec 2023 04:15:45 EST news621836141 Astronomers using simulated data have produced a glimpse of the sky as it would appear in gravitational waves, cosmic ripples in space-time generated by orbiting objects. The image shows how space-based gravitational wave observatories expected to launch in the next decade will enhance our understanding of our galactic home. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-nasa-team-simulates-glimpse-galaxy.html Astronomy Wed, 20 Sep 2023 17:11:52 EDT news614448703 A group of space scientists from the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Victoria, the University of Warwick and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research discovered a white dwarf star that appears to be in the beginning stages of crystallizing into a celestial diamond. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-white-dwarf-journey-crystallizing-celestial.html Astronomy Mon, 12 Jun 2023 10:19:04 EDT news605783938 Astronomers have directly measured the mass of a dead star using an effect known as gravitational microlensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity, and first observed by two Cambridge astronomers 100 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-astronomers-isolated-white-dwarf.html Astronomy Thu, 02 Feb 2023 09:08:41 EST news594551318 It was one of the first famous images revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope earlier this year: a stunning shroud of gas and dust illuminated by a dying star at its heart. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-webb-telescope-spies-hidden-stars.html Astronomy Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:40:01 EST news589739919 It's been over 35 years since a spacecraft visited Uranus and Neptune. That was Voyager 2, and it only did flybys. Will we ever go back? There are discoveries waiting to be made on these fascinating ice giants and their moons. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-explore-ice-giants-missions-simple.html Space Exploration Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:33:05 EST news589642381