https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. Finding an Earth-like world beyond the solar system is the holy grail of exoplanet research, and the field has seen remarkable technological advances in detecting and studying exoplanets since the first confirmed exoplanet around a sun-like star was discovered in 1995. These advances include ground- and space-based telescopes, notably the James Webb Space Telescope. Although astronomers have already directly imaged some exoplanets, directly imaging Earth-like planets around sun-like stars remains a major technological challenge, primarily because these planets are extremely faint compared with their host stars and appear very close to them in the sky. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-team-habitable-worlds-observatory.html Astronomy Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:40:11 EDT news712394053 The Earth is surrounded by an invisible barrier that was thought to prevent highly energetic electrons from reaching closer to our planet. But in 2024, Japan's Arase space probe detected these electrons well inside the barrier. Now, research led by Nagoya University has found evidence that the electrons were accelerated locally rather than infiltrating from outer radiation belts. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-solar-storm-triggered-ultrarelativistic-electrons.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:40:07 EDT news712405322 The theory that comets delivered the molecular building blocks for life on Earth is a long-standing one, since comets are known to carry many of these molecules. However, a new study challenges this idea. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-comets-didnt-seed-life-earth.html Astrobiology Wed, 28 Oct 2026 06:00:10 EDT news712240261 Scientists may add a new dwarf planet to the official roster of our solar system. The distant, icy body, provisionally dubbed 2026 ED138, orbits our system beyond Pluto. It was spotted earlier this month by a scientist combing through data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rubin-observatory-reveals-dwarf-planet.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:30:05 EDT news712338601 Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) have found a rare disk of debris around a dead star that provides a glimpse of what may happen to our solar system. Unlike in similar systems previously found, the debris—the leftovers of planets that once orbited the star—is organized in a double disk, the two parts separated by a clear gap. The disk appears to be shaped by two planetary bodies, one possibly as big as Pluto, that have survived the violent death of the star. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-debris-disk-orbiting-dead-star.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:00:12 EDT news712322463 Long before modern astronomy, humans looked to the stars and were astounded by what they saw. Even by the most ancient reckoning, the night sky offered enough to inspire awe and wonder, make us feel insignificant, fire our imaginations and foster hope and a sense of connection. Yet, for as long as humans have surveyed the heavens, they have seen no indication that life as we know it exists elsewhere—what has come to be known as the "Great Silence." https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ish-history-meti-early-ideas.html Astrobiology Tue, 27 Oct 2026 17:10:01 EDT news712315667 There is a problem in low Earth orbit, and it's growing. According to the European Space Agency, there are about 19,440 satellites on orbit, 3,540 of which are nonfunctioning and/or not emitting a signal to warn other spacecraft of their location. The need to service these sleepwalking satellites in space will only increase as more are launched. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-autonomous-rendezvous-simulated-spacecraft-failures.html Space Exploration Tue, 27 Oct 2026 16:00:03 EDT news712333651 The European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft for planetary defense has resolved its two target asteroids separately for the first time, revealing the binary nature of the Didymos system, currently some 197 million km (122 million miles) away from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-hera-asteroids.html Space Exploration Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:10:09 EDT news712327742 Over 1,645 Martian days, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover measured the fine and ultrafine Martian dust particles found clinging to samples of spacesuit materials that are carried aboard the rover, including particles small enough to penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and could inform spacesuit and habitat design, dust-removal procedures and crew health standards for future NASA missions to Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-perseverance-clues-crews-ultrafine-mars.html Space Exploration Tue, 27 Oct 2026 12:00:01 EDT news712314844 Earth may have produced much of its water during the planet's formation, as rocky pebbles reacted with the hydrogen-rich atmosphere surrounding the young planet, according to new research published in Nature Geoscience. The findings offer a potential explanation for how Earth acquired one of the essential ingredients for life and suggest that similar water-producing processes could be common on rocky planets beyond our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-earth-planet-grew.html Astrobiology Tue, 27 Oct 2026 11:40:01 EDT news712312933 The well-known star Betelgeuse has a mysterious houseguest—and it's shaking the rafters, rattling the pipes and slamming the cupboards (metaphorically speaking). It's causing enough subtle atmospheric disturbance that it might as well be making ghost noises. Who's to blame? New data suggest that its recently discovered companion star, Siwarha, is the one doing the haunting. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-radio-images-reveal-disturbances-betelgeuse.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Oct 2026 11:00:08 EDT news712312561 A Southwest Research Institute–led study used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to examine ice grains streaming from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, just the third object from beyond our solar system ever identified. The observations point to tiny aggregates of water ice and dust, about a micron or smaller. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-links-interstellar-comet-3iatlas.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:00:13 EDT news712310882 The Lazuli Space Telescope will be the first private space telescope. It's the brainchild of Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO. It will have a 3-meter mirror (9.8 feet), larger than Hubble's 2.4-meter mirror (7.9 feet), and will be launched by 2029. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-exoplanet-world-private-space-telescope.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:00:06 EDT news712235447 A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-clouds-lava-planet-astronomers.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:20:01 EDT news712234995 From its visible surface, the sun radiates heat at a relatively cool temperature of 5,800 Kelvin. Yet within the thin outer layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the corona, electrons can reach temperatures of millions of degrees, for reasons astronomers have yet to fully explain. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-laser-blasted-plasma-instabilities-sun.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:00:10 EDT news712234865 In our solar system's corner of the galaxy, stars rarely collide. It makes sense: Space is vast, and stars have room to roam. Even in most of the present-day universe, stellar collisions are rare. The James Webb Space Telescope, however, peers deep enough into space to see the universe as it was not too long after the Big Bang. Its observations have revealed extraordinarily compact stellar systems, raising the possibility that collisions between stars were once much more common. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-stellar-collisions-common-universe-young.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:00:32 EDT news712225924 A new study reveals a dust-reddened quasar from a time when the universe was less than a billion years old. Located at a redshift of 6.5488, the object J1440+0019 contains a rapidly accreting supermassive black hole with a mass of about 1.1 billion suns. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 9. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-jwst-alma-reveal-dusty-rapidly.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:20:36 EDT news711982981 Astronomers have found a vast reservoir of hydrogen with something conspicuously missing: detectable starlight. The object, called AGC 322753, contains roughly 2 billion times the sun's mass in neutral hydrogen, a potential supply of material for making stars. Its radio signal suggests the gas may be rotating in a disk, yet deep astronomical images reveal no matching glow. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fast-arecibo-dark-galaxy-vast.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 06:55:00 EDT news712216463 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Nancy Roman Space Telescope are revealing the universe's earliest chapters in detail. To help astronomers understand what they are seeing, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed "Lumina," one of the largest and most detailed simulations ever created of the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lumina-simulation-early-universe-life.html Astronomy Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:10:01 EDT news711978901 The Milky Way is home to hundreds of billions of stars arranged in a glorious spiral pattern. But beyond the obvious spiral, our galaxy has other physical characteristics. It's divided into a galactic bulge, a galactic disk and a galactic halo. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-milky-disk-grew-upside-younger.html Astronomy Sun, 25 Oct 2026 14:30:02 EDT news711894297 Many topics in astronomy and astrophysics are esoteric. There's not much of a relationship between something like the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and the life of a regular person going about their business. But the sun is different. Its presence in our lives is inescapable. Its behavior, especially its flaring, has an impact. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-flare-ribbons-reveal-hidden-solar.html Astronomy Sat, 24 Oct 2026 14:00:01 EDT news711886210 NASA is moving fast on its plans to build a moon base and return astronauts to the lunar surface in as little as two years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-apollo-urgency-moon-base.html Space Exploration Sat, 24 Oct 2026 05:28:00 EDT news712038417 Establishing a long-term presence on the moon will require solving challenges that are easy to overlook on Earth. Lunar temperatures, for instance, can vary from hundreds of degrees below zero to boiling, making effective insulation essential for lunar habitats. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-everyday-mylar-insulator-lunar-habitats.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news711979621 The Orion Nebula is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye. Some of the young stars in the nebula are surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets form. Radiation from the massive central star, 1 Ori C1 (Theta-1 Orionis C1), gradually strips material from these disks, giving them shapes that resemble tadpoles. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-stellar-collision-orion-nebula-planet.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:00:01 EDT news711977761 Two black holes can collide and merge into one. But could the opposite happen: could a single black hole split into two smaller ones? That question is explored in a new theoretical study: "When Black Holes Admit Pair-of-pants Topologies," published in the journal Physical Review D. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-holes-maximum.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:20:12 EDT news711976082 Astronomers identified an exceptionally tiny core that may represent an early stage in the formation of a massive star. Located in an infrared-dark area called Dragon Cloud, the core is nicknamed the "dragon egg." The paper, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 5. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-alma-dragon-egg-earliest-stages.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:50:01 EDT news711976208 Do cosmic radiation doses near the moon differ significantly from those received by astronauts in low Earth orbit? Experimental lithium fluoride detectors, installed aboard the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis I mission, have now made it possible to obtain preliminary estimates. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-artemis-crystals-experimental-detectors-doses.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:40:01 EDT news711967966 With a successful Mars gravity assist in its rearview mirror, NASA's Psyche spacecraft has fired up its thrusters and is accelerating toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. During the first leg of its journey, following an October 2023 launch, the mission used its electric propulsion system intermittently to maneuver into the right position to harness Mars' gravity for a propellant-saving speed boost and a slight trajectory change. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-metal-nasa-psyche-asteroid-belt.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:10:01 EDT news711962086 A sweeping barred spiral galaxy marks the spot in this image, but the real treasure is the gravitational lens in the lower-right corner, where a distant background galaxy is being magnified and distorted by the gravity of a closer galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-hubble-path-roman-gravitational.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 10:50:01 EDT news711961666 In the deepest region of the Earth's mantle, just above the core, much of the material consists of crystals of magnesium oxide. In larger rocky exoplanets called super-Earths, the higher pressures in the lower mantle may drive magnesium oxide to transform into a new high-pressure crystal structure or a metallic, electrically conductive liquid that generates a magnetic field. And in gas giants, magnesium oxide could exist in the cores themselves. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mineral-planets-reveals-lesson.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 03:42:44 EDT news711945720