Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 15, 2023

Are we really all made of stars?

In the early 1980s, astronomer Carl Sagan hosted and narrated a 13-part television series called Cosmos that aired on PBS. On the show, Sagan thoroughly explained many science-related topics, including Earth's history, evolution, the origin of life and the solar system. We are a way for the universe to know...

Jun 28, 2023

James Webb telescope discovers carbon compounds crucial to life in star system 1,000 light-years from Earth

Atoms are like Lego bricks: Each little building block combines to make something more complicated — from molecules, to enzymes, to DNA. For the first time, astronomers have detected a crucial step in this process: the molecule methyl cation (CH3+), which plays an important role in creating the complex carbon...

Jul 3, 2023

5 fascinating facts about the Big Bang, the theory that defines the history of the universe

The term Big Bang is thrown around casually, to the point of becoming the title of one of the most popular sitcoms ever. But while we all understand the basic idea — that the universe was once small, hot and dense — many people still hold big misconceptions about the...

Jul 6, 2023

James Webb telescope detects the earliest strand in the 'cosmic web' ever seen

On a clear night, it might look like the stars above are distributed more or less evenly. But that isn't the case — all stars are part of a gigantic cosmic web that links galaxies across the universe like threads of spider's silk, leaving unfathomably large swaths of nothingness in...

Jul 10, 2023

Scientists think they saw an asteroid crash into a dead star — and release one of the brightest explosions in the universe

The briefest, brightest explosions in the universe may be triggered when unlucky asteroids smash into collapsed stars, new research suggests. For years, astronomers have been puzzled by a type of extremely powerful explosion known as a fast radio burst (FRB). These bursts occur randomly throughout the sky, last only a...

Jul 19, 2023

Hundreds of 'ghost stars' haunt the Milky Way's center. Scientists may finally know why.

A mysterious alignment of stellar ghosts from dead stars haunts the heart of the Milky Way, and scientists may finally know why. These cosmic specters exist in the form of planetary nebulas, clouds of gas that are expelled by dying stars at the end of their lives. These can resemble...

Jul 30, 2023

Giant 'bubbletrons' shaped the forces of the universe moments after the Big Bang, new study suggests

The extremely early universe featured the most cataclysmic, transformative and energetic events that ever occurred. Driving these energies was the expansion of the cosmos and the resulting fragmentation of the fundamental forces of nature. And in that fragmentation, massive bubbles may have emerged and collided with each other, powering up...

Jul 31, 2023

Euclid space telescope: The groundbreaking mission to study dark matter and energy

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope successfully blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 1, 2023. The groundbreaking space telescope will hunt for clues about two of the universe's greatest mysteries: dark matter and dark energy. Despite making up an estimated 95% of the universe, dark matter...

Aug 10, 2023

'Wrinkle in space-time' enables James Webb to capture stunning image of most distant star ever detected

In March 2022, the Hubble Space Telescope detected the most distant star ever seen in the cosmos. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured an even more detailed glimpse of this ancient celestial body, revealing it to be a massive B-type star that's more than twice as hot...

Aug 16, 2023

13 billion-year-old 'Maisie's galaxy' is one of the oldest objects in the universe, James Webb telescope reveals

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have confirmed that a distant smudge of light named for a lucky birthday girl on Earth is one of the earliest known galaxies in the universe. The object — named Maisie's galaxy in honor of lead researcher Steven Finkelstein's daughter, who was...

Aug 17, 2023

The Milky Way wasn't always a spiral —and astronomers may finally know why it 'shape-shifted'

A 100-year-old mystery surrounding the shape-shifting nature of some galaxies has been solved, revealing in the process that our Milky Way galaxy did not always possess its familiar spiral appearance. Astronomer Alister Graham used old and new observations to show how the evolution of galaxies from one shape to another...

Aug 21, 2023

Why do some stars fail to ignite?

Between the smallest stars and the most massive planets, a strange class of celestial objects pervades the universe. Called brown dwarfs, or failed stars, these liminal objects are more massive than gas giants such as Jupiter but less massive than the smallest stars. They're also really common: Astronomers recently discovered...

Sep 14, 2023

$100,000 Breakthrough physics prize awarded to 3 scientists who study the large scale structure of the universe

Three scientists have won $100,000 for their work on new ways to study the large-scale structure of the universe — the enormous tendrils of criss-crossing matter which hide evidence of our universe's fundamental forces. Mikhail Ivanov, of MIT, Oliver Philcox, of Columbia University and the Simons Foundation, and Marko Simonović,...

Sep 21, 2023

Nuclear 'pasta' cooked up by dead stars could unravel the secrets of stellar afterlife

Imagine cooking pasta at a temperature of over a trillion degrees. But this isn't just any ordinary Sunday-night dish; it's the nuclear pasta found inside neutron stars. Researchers have just revealed that these strange nuclear shapes penetrate far deeper into the cores of neutron stars than we ever thought possible,...

Sep 26, 2023

Ancient supernova in James Webb telescope image could help solve one of the universe's biggest mysteries

A rare, warped supernova that appears three times in a single image could help researchers finally solve a long-standing inconsistency about the universe that has threatened to unravel our understanding of the cosmos, one expert claims. The type 1a supernova, named SN H0pe, was first discovered lurking in photographs captured...