The discovery of life on another world would be a monumental moment in the history of human civilization. The most likely way we will, one day, find alien life will be discovering chemical markers of life in the atmosphere of planets orbiting distant stars. One of these markers is oxygen, which currently makes up a […]
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Flying into space and landing on another planet is already quite the accomplishment, but it seems that NASA has taken things further by not only landing on Mars, but they have also successfully flown a helicopter on the planet. By doing so, it makes it their first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Advertising This […]
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At the moment, the Starlink project has at least 1,350 satellites in orbit. There’s talk of building up to 12,000 small satellites for its broadband network (in six years, the company says, the number could be as high as 42,000). OneWeb, a British company, has fewer than 150 satellites in space right now, with its […]
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ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. Behold: the complete video of the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. NASA released this extraordinary footage of its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, ascending 10 feet into the air on Monday. The video is just short of a minute, and was shot by the […]
Read MoreCielo means “sky” in Spanish, and “heaven”, too. And it’s with a sense of humbled wonder at the immense mystery of it all that the Canadian film-maker Alison McAlpine casts her camera upwards in this beautiful documentary about the night sky. It’s filmed at the stargazing hotspot of Chile’s Atacama desert, where there is virtually […]
Read MoreNasa’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has completed the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, the space agency has announced. The small helicopter successfully took flight on the red planet on Monday morning, hovering in the air at an altitude of about 3 metres (10 feet), before descending and touching back down on the Martian surface. […]
Read MoreThere is something curious about the great experiments and discoveries in fundamental physics from the past few decades. They have covered black holes, gravitational waves, the Higgs particle and quantum entanglement. They have led to Nobel prizes, reached the front pages of newspapers and made the scientific community proud. But they haven’t told us anything […]
Read MoreNasa on Monday will attempt to fly a miniature helicopter above the surface of Mars in what would be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If all goes to plan, the 1.8kg helicopter will slowly ascend to an altitude of three metres above the Martian surface, hover for 30 seconds, […]
Read MoreScientists and astronomers tell us that the universe is expanding. But what is it expanding into, ie what’s beyond the universe?Phil Town, Lisbon Please email new questions to nq@theguardian.com Readers reply What’s beyond the universe? Simples! All those objects you’ve mislaid somewhere and never set eyes on since. Pens, glasses, wallets, keys, phones, penknives, combs, […]
Read MoreNasa has chosen SpaceX to build the next-generation spacecraft that will return humans to the moon, further strengthening Elon Musk’s grip on the burgeoning public-private space industry. The $2.9bn contract to build the lunar lander that will spearhead the Artemis program, Nasa’s ambitious project to return to the moon for the first time since the […]
Read MoreThis week was the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight. On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The flight lasted 108 minutes and reached a maximum altitude of 327km (203 miles). Following the re-entry of his space capsule, Gagarin parachuted the last 7km to Earth, landing in […]
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Pulsars are one of the more intriguing objects in the sky, radiating regular flashes of electromagnetic energy, which can (sometimes) be seen from Earth. Flashing with astonishing regularity, these objects are stellar corpses of massive stars that met their demise in supernovae. When beams of energy are aligned just right, they can be seen from […]
Read MoreAnybody who fancies watching a new science fiction film this month can count their lucky stars. A Netflix drama, Stowaway, features Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette and Daniel Dae Kim as a trio of astronauts who are on their way to Mars when they discover that an unfortunate launch-plan engineer, Shamier Anderson, is still onboard. The […]
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Quasars are found throughout the Universe, but quasar pairs are rare. “We estimate that in the distant universe, for every 1,000 quasars, there is one double quasar. So finding these double quasars is like finding a needle in a haystack,” Dr. Yue Shen of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explains. These newly-recognized pairs are the […]
Read MoreNasa is gearing up to attempt the first controlled flight on another planet next week, with the tiny Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. The helicopter is expected to take to the skies next week, with Wednesday being the earliest time scheduled. Ingenuity arrived at the Jezero Crater on the red planet on 18 February after an […]
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The Russian space agency Roscosmos and China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) recently agreed to establish lunar outposts on, and in orbit around, the Moon. This announcement comes as Russia prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of Yuri’s Night — the beginning of human spaceflight. Roscosmos originated in 1991 from the dissolved soviet space program. The […]
Read MoreIt’s been a half century since Gil Scott-Heron recorded the spoken-word poem Whitey on the Moon for his 1970 debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox: “I can’t pay no doctor bill/ (but Whitey’s on the moon)/ Ten years from now I’ll be paying still/ (while Whitey’s on the moon).” The year before, the […]
Read MoreCrab Nebula. Image: NASA/ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. In the year 1054, skywatchers in China and Japan witnessed light from an exploding star reach Earth, creating a dazzling bright spot in the sky. More than a millennium later, scientists have […]
Read MoreSevere light pollution in Britain appears to have fallen, according to the CPRE, the countryside charity. Across a week in February, the charity asked volunteers to look up and count the stars they could see. The results suggest that 51% of participants were experiencing severe light pollution, compared to 61% the previous year – an […]
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ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. The name “USS Jellyfish” may evoke visions of a Starfleet vessel designed to accommodate gelatinous marine aliens. But it is actually the name of a very real, newly discovered structure in outer space that is like nothing that has ever been observed before. The […]
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to launch later this year and the scientific community is buzzing with anticipation. Some scientists are excited at the prospect of ‘traveling through time’ to discover the origin story of our universe, while others hope it’ll help us connect the dots between classical and quantum physics. But […]
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Due for launch in the mid-2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is destined to become one of the great planet-hunting telescopes. Although the main mirror at the heart of the Roman Telescope is no larger than the one in the Hubble Space Telescope, the Roman mirror is just 25 percent as massive as its predecessor. […]
Read MoreAt this time of year in the northern hemisphere, the constellation of Leo, the Lion, is beautifully placed for observation in the evenings. The chart shows the view tonight, looking south at midnight from London. It presents the perfect opportunity to track down a faint star cluster that can be seen with the naked eye. […]
Read MoreMichio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at City College, New York, a proponent of string theory but also a well-known populariser of science, with multiple TV appearances and several bestselling books behind him. His latest book, The God Equation, is a clear and accessible examination of the quest to combine Einstein’s general relativity […]
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Far from the Sun, near the outer limits of our solar system, the ice giant Uranus slowly orbits its distant parent star. For the first time, astronomers have seen X-rays emanating from this distant world. The Chandra X-ray observatory, launched in 1999, examines the Universe in X-rays, highly-energetic wavelengths of electromagnetic energy most commonly associated […]
Read MoreFor the fourth time in a row, SpaceX has lost one of its Starship prototypes during a high-altitude test launch. Starship Serial Number 11 (SN11) launched from the company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas, on 30 March at 8am local time (2pm BST) in thick fog. Similar to the three previous attempts, SN11 climbed […]
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In the nearly galaxy M87, more than 50 million light years from Earth, a supermassive black hole feeds on vast clouds of gas and dust. Jets, more than 5,000 light years long, erupt from this enigmatic body six billion times more massive than the Sun. In 2019, the first detailed images ever recorded of the […]
Read MoreHave you taken a recent photograph of the cosmos that you’re particularly proud of? Whether you are a seasoned astronomer or new to stargazing, we would like to hear from you. How to get in touch You can send in your photos by filling in the form below. Your responses are secure as the form […]
Read MoreArtificial satellites and space junk orbiting the Earth can increase the brightness of the night sky, researchers have found, with experts warning such light pollution could hinder astronomers’ ability to make observations of our universe. There are more than 9,200 tonnes of space objects in orbit around the Earth, ranging from defunct satellites to tiny […]
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Until just a century ago, our galaxy was thought to be the lone family of stars occupying the Cosmos. Philosophers, notably Immanuel Kant in the 18th Century, postulated the existence of other families of stars beyond our own. Unfortunately, their postulations — although correct — were not based in empirical data, and so could not be proven. This began […]
Read MoreNow is the best time of the year to see the zodiacal light in the evening sky from the northern hemisphere. It’s a subtle glow that takes some effort to notice, but is always worth your time because of its gossamer beauty. The chart shows the view looking west from London on Monday at 2100 […]
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