https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. Stars like our sun are formed from the collapse of stellar objects called prestellar cores, cold and dense concentrations of gas and dust held together by gravity. While many questions remain about the exact mechanisms of star formation, advanced radio telescopes have given researchers new insights into the inner workings of infant stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-capturing-cosmic-drift-star-born.html Astronomy Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:00:02 EDT news702801778 For six and a half days in July 2024, the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise III kept its gaze fixed on the sun. The stratospheric flight, which stretched from the northernmost tip of Sweden to Canada's Northwest Territories, yielded a treasure trove of data exceeding 200 terabytes. These observations are unique. They provide insights—unprecedented in detail—into a layer of the sun approximately 2,000 kilometers thick and can continuously track its immense dynamics over several hours. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-oscillations-flares-tornados-sun.html Astronomy Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:20:07 EDT news702822153 This close-up view shows fragments of sulfur crystals, the first ever seen on the Red Planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-image-curiosity-rover-martian-sulfur.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:32:20 EDT news702826315 An international team led by Juan Diego Soler at the University of Vienna used two of the world's most powerful radio telescopes to uncover previously hidden structures within the Orion Nebula. The project produced the sharpest maps ever made of neutral hydrogen in that region of massive star formation. The findings expose the complex relationship of star-forming regions with their environment and suggest that the Orion Nebula has been shaped by multiple episodes of stellar feedback rather than a single expanding bubble. The study has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ghost-orion-shell-hydrogen-stellar.html Astronomy Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:20:01 EDT news702808927 For the first time, astronomers have discovered stellar cocoons rich in complex organic molecules within a supernova remnant. A research team from Niigata University, Gifu University, RIKEN and Kyoto University in Japan used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the remnant of a massive star that exploded about 1,600 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-newborn-stars-rich-gas-ancient.html Astronomy Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:50:01 EDT news702814502 The young planetary system of the 23-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris (short: Beta Pic) is regarded as an iconic circumstellar dust disk, which hosts at least three giant gas planets. Discovered in 2008 by direct imaging, Beta Pic b is the most massive of those planets, measuring approximately 11 Jupiter masses. It orbits its host star on a wide trajectory, taking about 23 years for one revolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-young-giant-gas-planet-beta.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:02 EDT news702700691 A new Southwest Research Institute-led study proposes a solution to a longstanding puzzle in planetary science: What caused the concentration, assembly, and preservation of millimeter-sized, spherical mineral grains within the parent bodies of the most common meteorites? The work is published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-primordial-mini-moons-meteorite-composition.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:20:01 EDT news702746073 Scientists from Queen's University Belfast have led an international team in the discovery of a rare new planet, which is larger than Jupiter and orbits a distant star every 180 days. Named NGTS-38 b, it is an exoplanet—a planet that orbits a star beyond our solar system. It is about 8% larger than Jupiter and almost five times more massive. Planets of this size and mass are often referred to as "super-Jupiters." https://phys.org/news/2026-07-scientists-rare-super-jupiter-planet.html Astronomy Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:40:02 EDT news702737535 In a new study, published in the Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, Warwick researchers led an international effort to uncover some of the faintest debris in geosynchronous orbit ever observed, finding fragments as small as 5 centimeters (2 inches) and obtaining valuable data to characterize their behavior. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-astronomers-deep-tiny-dangerous-space.html Space Exploration Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:30:01 EDT news702737741 Researchers are closer to unraveling a longstanding solar mystery surrounding the extreme thinness of the sun's tachocline layer of strong shearing motion—a region believed to be critical for creating the violent eruptions of high-energy particles and radiation from the sun known as "space weather." https://phys.org/news/2026-07-unraveling-solar-mystery-extreme-thinness.html Astronomy Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:40:01 EDT news702724695 Building material samples from the University of Delaware spent six months mounted outside the International Space Station, where the harsh conditions of low Earth orbit tested their limits. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-lab-moon-lunar-cement-alternative.html Space Exploration Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:00:03 EDT news702724623 Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) have detected an extraordinary burst of radio light from a rare cosmic event in which an intermediate-mass black hole tears apart a star, revealing what appears to be the off-axis afterglow of a powerful jet. The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hidden-jet-link-black-hole.html Astronomy Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:50:02 EDT news702724684 When two black holes orbit each other, they eventually spiral inward and collide in one of the most violent phenomena in the universe. The event is so energetic that it significantly distorts the universe around it. It emits gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—that are strong enough to be detected with precision instruments on Earth even when they originate billions of light-years away. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-black-hole-collisions-entropy-law.html Astronomy Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:00:01 EDT news702721529 Astronomers studying a population of unusually X-ray-silent and overmassive black holes discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope have found that they may not be as massive as they appear. The new paper, outlining a plausible scenario that would produce such black holes, was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on June 19. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jwst-overmassive-early-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:40:01 EDT news702638719 Following its longest hibernation period ever of nearly a year, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has emerged in good health and is ready to begin transmitting science data gathered in the distant Kuiper Belt far beyond Pluto. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nasa-horizons-spacecraft-hibernation-good.html Space Exploration Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:00:02 EDT news702655742 When it comes to the search for life elsewhere in the universe, methane and other chemical compounds are seen as signs of biology because they are often produced by living microbes. However, scientists can be misled because certain geological processes can produce chemical signatures identical to those of living organisms. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-baseline-tool-alien-life-geology.html Astrobiology Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:30:01 EDT news702646858 Like a shelf in an old house, the Earth collects a lot of dust from its surroundings. This "space dust" is mostly made up of micrometeorites that survive atmospheric entry and provides researchers with a cheap and easy way to obtain samples to study our cosmic neighbors. However, it can be difficult to determine which objects certain samples originated from if their parent bodies aren't already in available catalogs. A recent study, published in Science Advances, describes a new subset of space dust with such mysterious origins and how researchers are tracking down potential sources. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-earth-space-unidentified-asteroids.html Astrobiology Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:50:02 EDT news702646844 Researchers working with data from the South Pole Telescope have released a major catalog of galaxy clusters, giving scientists a powerful new tool for studying how the universe grew and changed over billions of years. The findings are published on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-south-pole-telescope-analysis-galaxy.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:20:10 EDT news702638872 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified what may be the most distant barred spiral galaxy ever discovered, dating to a time less than 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The paper outlining its properties was posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 23. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jwst-distant-barred-galaxy-candidate.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:20:01 EDT news702627886 Astronomers using computer simulations have investigated whether a class of star clusters nicknamed "cosmic wallflowers" could be the long-sought ancestors of the globular clusters we see orbiting galaxies today. Their paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 25, suggests that where a cluster is born and how fast it spins may determine its fate. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-cosmic-wallflowers-key-globular-clusters.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Jul 2026 07:10:02 EDT news702543435 A new Southwest Research Institute-led study compared eight AI-generated lunar crater catalogs, discovering that many of their published performance metrics drop sharply when the databases are evaluated using the same scientific standards humans are held to. Crater catalogs provide a comprehensive record of impact craters on planetary surfaces. They log the precise location, dimensions and physical characteristics of impact structures to help scientists understand the geological history of the solar system and its components. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-discrepancies-ai-lunar-crater.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:40:01 EDT news702552476 In the course of studying planets beyond our solar system (6,316 confirmed exoplanets and counting), scientists have discovered some very interesting systems. Consider TOI-201, a compact system populated by three bodies, including a brown dwarf, orbiting on the same plane. The system was recently observed by an international team led by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). https://phys.org/news/2026-07-astronomers-characterize-improbable-brown-dwarf.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:00:01 EDT news702552273 Rare images taken by a Japanese space probe during a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid have revealed that the space rock resembled a snowman, scientists said Monday. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-japan-snowman-asteroid-image-flyby.html Space Exploration Mon, 06 Jul 2026 11:10:11 EDT news702554975 In new images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate its fourth science anniversary, a familiar galaxy transforms into something far richer and far more complex than ever seen before. Webb's unprecedented sensitivity across near- and mid-infrared wavelengths cuts through the thick lanes of dust that obscure Centaurus A's center in visible light, showing a densely packed tapestry of individual stars and an active, ever-changing galaxy. These images mark four years of better-than-anticipated performance and successful science operations for the most powerful space telescope in history. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-webb-uncovers-shrouded-heart-centaurus.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:49:43 EDT news702553747 When massive stars die, they unleash some of the most powerful explosions in the universe. Yet not all supernovae are created equal. Some continue to shine brightly for months or even years as their expanding debris crashes into dense clouds of gas surrounding the star. These spectacular events, known as interacting supernovae, have puzzled astronomers for decades because the origin of this mysterious material has remained unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-death-binary-stars-interacting-supernovae.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:00:12 EDT news702550495 Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) to study the composition of 3I/ATLAS, the brightest interstellar object ever seen, in detail. By measuring specific chemical fingerprints—the first observations of this kind for a comet that formed outside the solar system—they found that 3I/ATLAS likely originated in the outskirts of an old star system. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-older-sun-astronomers-clues-interstellar.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:03:06 EDT news702543737 China's Tianwen-2 space probe, which is set to bring back samples from an asteroid for research, has reached its target after traveling 1 billion kilometers (620 million miles) over more than a year, the Chinese space agency said Monday. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-china-space-probe-asteroid-billion.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 06 Jul 2026 04:17:17 EDT news702530194 Astronomers have spotted many "red and dead" galaxies in the early universe. These are massive systems that stopped forming stars surprisingly early in cosmic history. Now, they may have found evidence of one in the act of becoming dead: a massive galaxy being stripped of its star-forming gas just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The clues behind why it lost its star-forming material are detailed in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 16. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-caught-early-galaxy-dying.html Astronomy Sat, 04 Jul 2026 09:40:01 EDT news701947729 Short-lived sources of radio radiation in the sky, known as radio transients, can originate in the vicinity of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. They are the result of processes that take place under extreme physical conditions. While most radio transients associated with galactic centers last only days or weeks, the galaxy SDSS J110546.07+145202.4 has been shining very brightly in radio light for several years—the first source of its kind. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-radio-outburst-black-hole-properties.html Astronomy Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:00:01 EDT news702290072 An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new massive barred spiral galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated M1149-BSG-z5, was identified using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The finding was detailed in a paper published June 23 on the preprint server arXiv. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jwst-barred-spiral-galaxy.html Astronomy Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:40:03 EDT news702286662