https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, orbiting the black hole at its center. The star, named S301, was detected with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO's VLTI) and reaches speeds of 25,000 km/s (15,500 miles per second) as it travels around the four-million-solar-mass black hole. It comes closer to it than any other star observed before, so close that it feels the effects of the black hole's rotation. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-fastest-milky-star-supermassive-black.html Astronomy Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:00:01 EDT news706201660 Astronomers have detected an enormous cloud of gas tens of millions of degrees hot surrounding one of the most extreme structures known in the early universe. The study offers one of the clearest views yet of a galaxy cluster in the making. Using more than 600,000 seconds of observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team found diffuse, extended X-ray emission around a quasar embedded in a dense concentration of galaxies more than 11 billion light-years away. The paper describing the results was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on July 24. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-astronomers-hot-birth-galaxy-cluster.html Astronomy Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:02 EDT news706188817 Astronomers have uncovered a previously underexplored population of faint, rapidly fading remnant radio galaxies, offering new insights into what happens after supermassive black holes stop powering their enormous radio jets. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dying-radio-galaxies-shorter-dynamic.html Astronomy Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:50:02 EDT news706292401 Between Aug. 11–12, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the moon. The crater formed Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its Jan. 2025 launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-nasa-lro-images-falcon-crater.html Space Exploration Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:50:01 EDT news706289341 Deimos, the smaller and outermost of Mars' two moons, is roughly oval in shape and has a deep depression at its south pole. Unlike its heavily scarred sister moon, Phobos, Deimos is covered by a loose layer of dust and rubble—a so-called regolith layer—which gives it a smoother, dustier appearance. Although numerous space probes have provided increasingly detailed images of its surface over the past decades, the origins of the debris layer and the depression at the south pole remain unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-asteroid-impact-mars-moon-deimos.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:20:06 EDT news706273561 Astronomers have discovered that the most massive galaxies in the early universe contain far more small stars than expected. As a result, these early galaxies were likely much more massive than initial measurements suggested. This discovery challenges current understanding about how the first galaxies formed. The results are published today in Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hidden-stars-distant-galaxies-massive.html Astronomy Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:00:04 EDT news706273141 So far, most of the minerals found on Mars tell a story of lava poured out by ancient volcanoes, followed by long stretches in which water trickled through and slowly reshaped the rock. However, some rocks scattered across the Martian surface seem to hint at a different geological history—carrying the same material that forms rubies and sapphires. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ruby-mineral-mars-rover-hints.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:30:01 EDT news706193441 Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy's history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before. The results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hubble-merger-mystery-milky-early.html Astronomy Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:20:01 EDT news706191061 Our sun is capable of storms far bigger than we've ever recorded. Studying the world's oldest trees suggests we could soon be due one of these gargantuan events. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ancient-trees-enormous-solar-storm.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:00:06 EDT news706186321 In two separate papers published in Physical Review Letters, researchers investigated the nuclear reactions that take place inside supernovae and X-ray bursts—two of the universe's most powerful explosions. Together, the findings will help scientists build more accurate models of how stars explode and how newly formed elements are produced. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-stellar-explosions-focus-nuclear-reaction.html Astronomy Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:00:03 EDT news706183921 It's nearly 170 million years old. It's more than 2.5 times the size of Earth. And it's the first exoplanet discovered and cataloged by researchers with the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR). https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mega-earth-gj-523b-massive.html Astronomy Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:40:04 EDT news706181881 Astronomers have discovered the first confirmed dual active galactic nucleus in a Green Pea galaxy, revealing two supermassive black holes growing at the same time inside a compact, intensely star-forming system. X-ray observations with Chandra resolved two actively accreting black holes, while Keck spectroscopy confirmed that both belong to the same merging galaxy. The paper outlining the research was submitted to the arXiv preprint server on July 20. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-pair-supermassive-black-holes-green.html Astronomy Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:10:01 EDT news706178042 Astronomers have discovered that the jet of a distant blazar has been gravitationally lensed by an unseen source of dark matter. Led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, the team's results could prove especially important for observations of cosmic neutrinos, which are likely produced in abundance alongside a broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves in blazar jets. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dark-gravitationally-lensing-source-cosmic.html Astronomy Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:40:08 EDT news705924819 Japanese scientists are readying a mission to Mars' moons to retrieve samples that may unlock the origins of the solar system and life on Earth, although a rival Chinese mission aims to make it back first. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-japan-aims-moons-mars.html Planetary Sciences Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:05:17 EDT news706111469 Astronomers have linked an X-ray flash discovered by the Einstein Probe to a known type of supernova with unusual features that point to the birth of an ultra-dense, rapidly spinning magnetar. The paper outlining this finding was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 22. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-einstein-probe-rare-ray-star.html Astronomy Sun, 16 Aug 2026 10:00:02 EDT news705922882 Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have spotted an extremely bright red spot in the early universe. The object resembles an enormous star, roughly the size of our solar system. But it also is putting out 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce. In fact, such energies are closer to what a black hole might generate. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-black-hole-star-astronomers-brand.html Astronomy Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:00:01 EDT news705724274 A new paper published in Physical Review Letters reveals that a leading dark matter candidate—the hypothetical "dark photon"—would not have heated the early universe as previously thought. The finding opens a vast region for experimental searches and could change the hunt for dark matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-early-universe-plasma-dark-photons.html Astronomy Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news705910291 Neptune's moon and ring system stand out among the giant planets because of the strange imbalance between its one very large moon and its many tiny moons. Its largest moon, Triton, makes up more than 99% of the mass of all satellites orbiting the planet while orbiting retrograde compared with Neptune's rotation. The predominant theory is that Triton is a captured Kuiper Belt object that caused a major disruption in Neptune's early moon system. Now, a new study published in Science Advances provides spectroscopic evidence to support this theory. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-neptune-tiny-moons-story-triton.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:20:01 EDT news704628891 Using unique equipment installed on NASA's WB-57 aircraft flying above heavy clouds off the coast of Iceland, a Southwest Research Institute-led team successfully observed a total solar eclipse on Wednesday. The high-altitude jet followed the moon's shadow at 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) to take measurements of the solar corona in nine different wavelengths, ranging from visible to infrared light. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-airborne-observatory-views-solar-corona.html Space Exploration Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:40:03 EDT news705938400 For astronauts in space, constipation is a well-known problem. But why this happens has long been unclear. Now, a new study from the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with NASA provides an idea of what happens in the stomach without the influence of gravity. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-constipation-common-astronauts-blood.html Space Exploration Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:20:03 EDT news705932401 Astronomers have proposed a new explanation for the mysterious Cygnus Bubble, a vast cloud of ultra-high-energy gamma rays stretching thousands of light-years across the sky. While the bubble has generally been linked to the Cygnus X star-forming region, the new study argues that a microquasar more naturally explains its highest-energy emission. The results were published in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 21. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mysterious-cygnus-microquasar-astronomers.html Astronomy Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:20:07 EDT news705921760 A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: What happened during the roughly 150 million years of the cosmic dark ages, before the universe's first stars appeared? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tiny-satellite-dark-side-moon.html Astronomy Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:00:01 EDT news705749643 Long before dark sunspots appear on the sun's surface, a new active region—where powerful solar eruptions can originate—begins showing subtle signs of its formation. Now, researchers say a new artificial intelligence model can detect those early signals and forecast the emergence of solar active regions nearly nine hours in advance on average. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-hidden-solar-eruptions-hours.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:00:01 EDT news705840421 Researchers have helped unravel the mystery of why certain pairs of stars pulse with regular, long-period bursts of radio waves. The particular class of objects observed comes in pairs that always include a compact dead star, called a white dwarf, locked in orbit with an M dwarf, a red star smaller than our sun. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-synchronized-star-pairs-unleash-radio.html Astronomy Thu, 13 Aug 2026 18:00:04 EDT news705846361 For decades, astronomers lumped brown dwarfs into a single category defined by mass alone—too big to be classified as planets but too small to become stars. However, this definition ignores the two very different mechanisms that can form them: the direct collapse of gas clouds and formation within the accretion disks of massive stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tess-rare-brown-dwarf-orbiting.html Astronomy Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:00:06 EDT news705841178 Detecting water where none remains today: Neutron and X-ray tomography make it possible. In an international study conducted with the participation of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, researchers have brought to light macroscopic hydrogen-rich regions inside a Martian meteorite. The findings provide evidence for early water-rock interactions on Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dry-meteorite-mars.html Astrobiology Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:00:01 EDT news705841861 A popular myth about black holes is that they act like giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything around them. But Wladimir Lyra's research found a new mechanism around supermassive black holes that is more like a cosmic nursery, giving birth to planets more massive than Jupiter. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-supermassive-black-holes-massive-planets.html Astronomy Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:11:08 EDT news705831033 It's common to see images of astronauts on the International Space Station exercising, running on special treadmills and pedaling cycles designed for tight quarters. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-space-doesnt-affect-strength-heart.html Space Exploration Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:20:03 EDT news705759301 Astronomers have captured an unprecedented image of a cosmic recycling project in progress—fragments of a dying star being busted up, stripped and absorbed into interstellar space. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dying-star-rare-glimpse-universe.html Astronomy Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:00:07 EDT news705759061 The building blocks of rocky planets may have begun forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang—long before the first galaxies even existed—according to new research from the University of Portsmouth. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-supernovae-seeded-rocky-planet-blocks.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:20:03 EDT news705757021