Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, but a supercomputer just modeled stuff that’s even harder. Called a ‘super-diamond,’ the theoretical material could exist beyond our planet—and maybe, one day, be created here on Earth.
The month is off to a running start when it comes to space, with a fresh crew launched to the International Space Station, some new astronomical insights, and the promise of a third SpaceX Starship test flight. Click through for the week’s coolest space imagery.
The Webb Space Telescope has spotted something weird: a brown dwarf with what appear to be aurorae, what we Earthlings sometimes call the Northern Lights. What makes the observation particularly surprising is that the brown dwarf doesn’t have a nearby star that could cause such an aurora.
Last month, astronomers focused the Webb Space Telescope on the galaxy MRG-M0138 and found something surprising: a supernova in the ancient universe, magnified for your viewing pleasure by the gravitational lensed galaxy.
Yes, that’s Uranus. The giant icy orb looks more like an agatized dinosaur egg than a planet in this new image by the Webb Space Telescope.
Space is an inky black yonder... but for the countless light sources that pepper the billions of light-years that human instruments can see. Thanks to ground-based telescopes and observatories parked millions of miles from Earth, 2023 has been a terrific year for space imagery. Astronomers captured fascinating new…
NASA is addressing an issue with a Hubble Space Telescope gyroscope that prompted the observatory to enter safe mode on November 23. Science operations have been suspended as a result, but the space agency doesn’t seem too worried.
The center of our galaxy is a menagerie of exotic objects; a supermassive black hole, clouds of hot gas, and giant stars that can help inform the origin story of much of the universe. Using the Webb telescope, scientists got to see this chaotic region of the Milky Way in a different light, revealing new features and…
The Hubble Space Telescope just ogled an exoplanet passing in front of a star in a triple system, revealing the nearby world’s mass.
The Webb Space Telescope has revealed a world quite alien compared to our own: WASP-107b, a Neptune-like gas giant that orbits a star some 211 light-years from Earth. Webb has now detected water vapor and sulfur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, as well as sand-like silicate clouds.