Space and astrophysical plasma as a physical system refers to ionized gases permeating cosmic environments such as the interstellar and intergalactic medium, stellar winds, accretion disks, and magnetospheres. These plasmas are typically low-collisionality, often magnetized, and governed by collective electromagnetic interactions described by magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), kinetic theory, or hybrid models. Key properties include Debye shielding, anisotropic pressure, and nonthermal particle distributions, with dynamics dominated by magnetic reconnection, turbulence, waves, and instabilities. Space and astrophysical plasmas are central to energy and momentum transport, cosmic ray acceleration, and radiation processes across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales.
Since July 2025, the European Space Agency's pair of Proba-3 satellites has already created 57 artificial solar eclipses. So far, the mission has collected more than 250 hours of high-resolution videos of the sun's atmosphere, ...
Astronomy
Apr 13, 2026
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After successfully completing their mission to the moon, the Artemis II crew are about to return to Earth.
Space Exploration
Apr 9, 2026
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The early universe is absolutely so far outside our understanding of how the world works it's hard to describe in words. Back then, the cosmos wasn't filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, ...
Astronomy
Apr 5, 2026
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Saturn's magnetic shield is asymmetrical compared to Earth's, suggests a new study involving University College London (UCL) researchers, and this is likely a result of its fast rotation coupled with the heavy material it ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 1, 2026
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A Southwest Research Institute-led study found that protons and heavy ions react differently to solar magnetic reconnection events, revealing a more complex magnetic engine powering the solar wind. Magnetic reconnection converts ...
Astronomy
Mar 31, 2026
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The sun, our nearest star, never stops breathing. Every second of every day, it exhales a vast stream of charged particles that sweeps outward through the solar system at hundreds of kilometers per second. We call it the ...
Astronomy
Mar 30, 2026
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How does a star affect the makeup of its planets? And what does this mean for the habitability of distant worlds? Carnegie's Luke Bouma is exploring a new way to probe this critical question—using naturally occurring space ...
Astrobiology
Mar 30, 2026
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Researchers at Northumbria University have used the most powerful space telescope ever built to answer one of the longest-standing puzzles in planetary science—why does Saturn appear to spin at a different speed depending ...
Astronomy
Mar 27, 2026
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High-energy particles called galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) bombard unprotected objects in space, often causing damage. Earth, however, is protected by its magnetic field, which creates a protective shell around the planet that ...
Our Milky Way's halo of hot gas is warmer to the "south" than the "north" because of an internal combustion engine-like effect that is compressing the gas like a piston, a new study has found. Computer simulations reveal ...
Astronomy
Mar 26, 2026
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