https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. A team of researchers led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan discovered unexpectedly intricate magnetic structures above quiet-sun regions by observing the sun with the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise-III during its 2024 flight in Earth's stratosphere. The work is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-stratospheric-observatory-sunrise-iii-reveals.html Astronomy Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:00:01 EDT news709987081 For decades, astronomers have identified collisions between two neutron stars through bursts of gamma rays that can disappear in less than two seconds. But some of these violent encounters may also reveal themselves through X-ray flashes lasting several minutes. A new study published in Science Bulletin provides evidence for this connection, suggesting that merging neutron stars could be hiding among cosmic flashes whose origins have remained uncertain. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astronomers-link-mysterious-cosmic-collisions.html Astronomy Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:40:15 EDT news709986721 Astronomers have discovered a stellar cluster hidden in the crowded disk of the Milky Way. The object, named Garro 04, was first identified as an unusual collection of stars in observations from the VVVX survey and was later confirmed using infrared spectroscopy. A paper outlining the properties of this seemingly mysterious stellar system was posted to the arXiv preprint server on September 21. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hidden-star-cluster-milky-crowded.html Astronomy Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:40:25 EDT news709981237 Is there life elsewhere, or is Earth unique in the universe? This is one of humanity's great unanswered questions. One way to approach this mystery is to investigate how life began here on Earth. Our research explores the conditions in which a mixture of molecules somehow transformed from chemistry into biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-sugar-meteorites-survival-early-earth.html Astrobiology Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:20:06 EDT news709980361 Four and a half billion years ago, Earth and Mars were born in the rotating cloud of gas and dust that would eventually become our solar system. Yet exactly how the planets formed remains one of the most disputed questions in planetary science. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-earth-mars-built-cosmic-recipes.html Astrobiology Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:01 EDT news709980001 Although Mars may have once resembled Earth, the rocky red planet now appears far from hospitable. Still, certain details—such as ice-bound water—pique researchers' curiosity. As on Earth, ice on Mars contains valuable records of past climate that could reveal whether the planet hosts, or has ever hosted, life. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-north-pole-mars-dusty-scientists.html Astrobiology Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:22 EDT news709975621 Researchers have used some of the most detailed simulations yet of the early universe to investigate how the first stars and galaxies formed. Led by researchers at the University of Bath in the U.K., alongside collaborators at the University of Chicago in the U.S. and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris in France, the MEGATRON project uses advanced simulations to explore how the first stars and galaxies lit up the previously dark cosmos and enriched it with the chemical elements that would later become the building blocks of everything around us. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-simulations-stars-cosmic-fingerprints-visible.html Astronomy Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:00:06 EDT news709899721 New research led by the University of Michigan is helping set the stage for future observatories to characterize rocky planets outside our solar system, planets that could prove life isn't confined to Earth. The new research represents the most sensitive modern search for giant planets in a nearby binary system—a system with two stars orbiting each other—known as 70 Ophiuchi AB, or 70 Oph AB. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-suns-giant-planets-nearby-binary.html Astrobiology Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:20:06 EDT news709903801 Scientists have helped solve a longstanding mystery about how Earth remained habitable after oxygen first accumulated in its atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago, providing evidence that ancient ocean chemistry sustained life-friendly conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ocean-chemistry-life.html Astrobiology Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:40:11 EDT news709903621 The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) has shown for the first time that it can detect the faint glow of hydrogen gas from deep in the universe's past using only its own data. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hydrogen-distant-dark-energy.html Astronomy Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:00:04 EDT news709825988 Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have rewritten a small part of Oklahoma's geologic history with global implications for ancient life. Below the surface of the small town of Ames, Oklahoma, a meteor impact site spans miles. The crater is buried by sedimentary strata in the subsurface, but it remains an important marker of Oklahoma's ancient past and present-day economy; the Ames impact structure is a major oil and gas producer. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-meteor-oklahoma-million-years-previously.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:50:01 EDT news709834441 Astronomers have cataloged billions of stars and hundreds of billions of galaxies. We have found thousands of planets orbiting stars. We can also map where galaxies sit and trace how the universe changes over time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-telescope-robots-reveals-galaxy.html Astronomy Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:20:02 EDT news709820886 The moon no longer has a global magnetic field, but lunar rocks and soils still contain records of ancient magnetism. Studying the magnetic minerals in these samples can help scientists understand how the moon's magnetic field evolved over time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-lunar-magnetic-fossil-samples.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:40:10 EDT news709814101 Astronomers using data from the Euclid space telescope have discovered an exceptionally faint stellar system near the Fornax dwarf galaxy. Called Fornax-7, it appears to contain only about 170 times the mass of the sun in stars. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 13. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-stellar-satellite.html Astronomy Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:50:01 EDT news709805363 Astronomers have identified what may be the first example of a new class of radio galaxy, one whose central black hole appears to have launched powerful jets on four separate occasions. High-resolution observations with the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), combined with data from MeerKAT and the Very Large Array, reveal four pairs of radio structures arranged symmetrically around the central galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astronomers-radio-galaxy-evidence-jet.html Astronomy Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:20:05 EDT news709290029 Galaxies are enormous and hold hundreds of billions of stars. These stars form from cold, dense gas. Every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, is wrapped in a huge envelope of gas called the circumgalactic medium, or CGM. This reservoir of raw material stretches 10–20 times the size of the visible portion of the galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-black-hole-jets-galaxies-visible.html Astronomy Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news709472146 Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing—pinging your friends and associates—that we all brought them back into our lives, or adopted them for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-overlooked-era-cosmology-quest-cosmos.html Astronomy Fri, 25 Sep 2026 15:20:01 EDT news709554001 What are the chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system? Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary science at Freie Universität Berlin, has published a study in Science Advances with an international team of researchers. They present new evidence that it is easier to determine the constituents of the ocean hidden beneath Enceladus's icy surface than previously assumed. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-great-news-saturn-moon-enceladus.html Astrobiology Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:00:21 EDT news709396040 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers led by the University of Maryland identified water, methane and ammonia in the atmosphere of HATS-6 b, a giant planet 500 light-years from Earth. The observations also revealed that HATS-6 b may be significantly cooler than standard calculations predict—suggesting that the planet's relationship with its star may be far more complicated than previously thought. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-webb-ammonia-unexpected-chill-distant.html Astronomy Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:40:05 EDT news709549202 The robotic spacecraft that failed to rescue an aging NASA telescope plunged back to Earth on Friday less than three months after launching on the bold mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-private-spacecraft-falls-earth-aging.html Space Exploration Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:30:01 EDT news709556168 Like tendrils on a vine, lava spreads out from the northern crater of Krasheninnikov, a volcano pair on the Pacific coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. On July 30, 2025, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck in the nearby ocean, apparently jolting one of the two volcanoes awake. A few days later, for the first time in nearly five centuries, Krasheninnikov started erupting. Since then, the northern volcano has been spilling a steady, eastward-flowing field of molten rock and debris, and the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission has been tracking the changes in the landscape. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-india-satellite-captures-lapse-video.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:40:05 EDT news709473121 In the search for extraterrestrial life, it makes sense to first look for rocky planets with an atmosphere, like Earth. Without an atmosphere, a planet can't have surface water. But of the more than 6,300 exoplanets cataloged thus far, the vast majority are not rocky, and only a handful of the rocky worlds appear to have an atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-coolest-lava-world-atmosphere-clues.html Astrobiology Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:20:06 EDT news709469461 The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the universe's oldest light, leftover thermal radiation from about 380,000 years after the big bang. Maps of the CMB offer a picture of the "baby universe" as it was 13.8 billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-universe-oldest.html Astronomy Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:30:01 EDT news709473241 As a star nears the end of its life, it faces two very different fates: It can explode as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star, or collapse and become a black hole. What determines the outcome remains one of astrophysics' great unanswered questions. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-supernova-black-hole-neutrino-flavor.html Astronomy Thu, 24 Sep 2026 12:20:08 EDT news709461185 In recent decades, astronomers have reconstructed a fairly complete scenario for planet formation, from minute dust motes clumping together to the emergence of rocky spheres thousands of kilometers across, like Earth, or larger gas giants like Jupiter. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astronomers-capture-unprecedented-view-gas.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:20:10 EDT news709460400 Astronomers have discovered a faint population of young stars extending far beyond the known edge of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 74. The finding suggests the galaxy is nearly twice as large as previously measured. The new study was published Sept. 4 in Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-faint-young-stars-reveal-spiral.html Astronomy Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:00:01 EDT news709383247 When the universe was still in its infancy—only 500 million years after the Big Bang, or about 3% of its current age—some of the universe's earliest stars and galaxies had already formed. Astronomers have long predicted that much of the gas surrounding these young galaxies must have remained relatively pristine, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, the primordial ingredients available in the newborn cosmos. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-jwst-early-galaxies-seeding-universe.html Astrobiology Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:00:04 EDT news709373161 Astrophysicists from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), working with a research team led by Beijing Normal University (BNU), have developed a more physically realistic approach to testing how ultralight, or "fuzzy," dark matter could influence gravitationally lensed images. The study is the first to make gravitational-lensing predictions directly from three-dimensional wave simulations of fuzzy dark matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astrophysicists-simulations-window-dark.html Astronomy Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:40:05 EDT news709402442 The asteroid Bennu orbits the sun once every 1.2 years and approaches Earth every six years, passing within around 300,000 kilometers. NASA took advantage of this to collect material from the celestial body. In a spectacular operation in 2023, the US space agency collected samples from the surface of the asteroid Bennu by its OSIRIS-REx probe. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-bennu-asteroid-samples-involving-jupiter.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:40:01 EDT news709399861 Unlike Earth, the moon no longer has a core-generated magnetic field. On our planet, the movement of liquid iron in the outer core generates a global magnetic field. This so-called geodynamo works on a similar principle to a bicycle dynamo, which converts mechanical motion into electrical energy. "Today, there is an ongoing heated debate as to whether the moon also operated a dynamo in the past," says Xi Yang, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at ETH Zurich. This is because analyses of rock samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts are contradictory. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-side-moon-clues-magnetic-field.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:00:23 EDT news709229941