2+ day, 1+ hour ago   (934+ words) Scientists found that Mercury's roughest terrain may conceal ancient cliffs, suggesting the planet shrank substantially more than estimates showed. Mercury’s surface is crossed by long cliffs and ridges. They formed as the crust buckled to fit a planet that got…...

2+ day, 18+ hour ago   (1029+ words) A frozen object beyond Jupiter is venting carbon dioxide gas into space, revealing what can drive activity so far from the sun. A centaur, one of the icy bodies that orbit beyond Jupiter, has started venting gas into space, even…...

5+ day, 20+ hour ago   (825+ words) Black hole ringdowns could reveal signs of surrounding matter or new physics, giving scientists a new way to test gravity in extreme conditions. When two black holes collide and merge into one, the newly formed giant doesn’t just sit there....

1+ week, 17+ hour ago   (889+ words) Planets spin. So do stars and whole galaxies. Black holes should be no exception, but a spin is hard to catch, because the twist a rotating one puts into nearby space weakens sharply with distance. The orbit is a long,…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (992+ words) Waves too quick for older telescopes to see ripple through the Sun's polar corona, and they carry a big share of the fast solar wind's energy. Solar physicists can work out how much energy it takes to push the Sun’s…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (747+ words) Hubble reveals a vast cosmic bubble where massive stars cleared away gas, only for the compressed material around it to begin forming thousands of new stars. Today’s Image of the Day from the European Space Agency reveals a huge stellar…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (874+ words) Comets around a young Sun-like star could reveal how water is transported into the inner regions of developing planetary systems. Around a young, Sun-like star some 370 light-years away, astronomers have spotted signs of what looks like a fleet of comets…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (1042+ words) Astronomers tracked a black hole outburst for months and found powerful gas outflows continuing after the system had dramatically faded. Nothing gets back out of a black hole. Once material crosses the edge, that’s exactly right. Everything still circling outside…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (1237+ words) Sun vortices seen by the world's largest solar telescope confirm an old prediction and may explain how the star's magnetic energy builds. Something has to twist the Sun’s magnetic field into the tight coil that stores the energy behind a…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (1001+ words) Astronomers have found a strange black hole wrapped in dense gas that could explain how giant black holes grew so quickly after the Big Bang. Nearly every large galaxy keeps a giant black hole at its center. Some of those…...