3+ hour, 27+ min ago   (603+ words) The enormous Cygnus Bubble is usually linked to a busy star-forming region. A new study argues that the microquasar Cygnus X-3 may be the more natural source of its highest-energy gamma rays. Cygnus X-3 is a microquasar, a binary system containing a…...

5+ hour, 42+ min ago   (476+ words) A sub-threshold Einstein Probe X-ray flash was found after ZTF spotted supernova SN 2025wkm. Researchers link the signal to shock breakout and a possible magnetar-powered engine. EP250827b was a soft X-ray flash that lasted more than 1,000 seconds. Spectral fits put its peak…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago   (251+ words) Tiny minerals inside one of the most pristine meteorites ever found still carry a record of magnetism from the solar system’s first 200,000 years. Tiny mineral grains inside an Antarctic meteorite may preserve the oldest evidence yet of a magnetic field…...

2+ day, 22+ hour ago   (1203+ words) Twenty-seven faint objects beyond Neptune are giving astronomers a rare look at the planet-building material that survived when the outer solar system stopped growing. The outer solar system is not empty. Beyond Neptune, in the cold region known as the…...

3+ day, 23+ hour ago   (556+ words) A brilliant X-ray source is not automatically a black hole. Matter falling toward a neutron star can also become intensely luminous, and some neutron stars have surprised astronomers by producing far more radiation than expected. Identifying the object requires evidence…...

4+ day, 2+ hour ago   (493+ words) Twenty-seven faint objects beyond Neptune have emerged from a deep James Webb Space Telescope survey, extending the search for the solar system’s building blocks to worlds only kilometres across. Hubble observations of part of the sample add a second clue:…...

6+ day, 4+ hour ago   (624+ words) A neutron star is what remains after the core of a massive star collapses. It is not a small ordinary star. It is the crushed core of a dead one, compressed until protons and electrons are forced together and most…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (387+ words) Astronomers have catalogued more than 120 molecular species in a cloud near the centre of the Milky Way. The finding matters because the cloud contains several compounds associated with the chemical building blocks of life, and it closely resembles another unusually…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (268+ words) Einstein’s theory of general relativity has survived another demanding test. Researchers used clouds of ultracold atoms aboard China’s space station to compare how two forms of rubidium respond to gravity, and found no measurable difference between them. Before your next…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (699+ words) Planets are assembled inside broad disks of gas and dust around young stars, but those disks do not last forever. A new James Webb Space Telescope survey shows that winds from young, Sun-like stars can remove the gas while planets…...