1+ week, 20+ hour ago   (333+ words) MIT chemistry professor Mei Hong co-led the study with Professor of Planetary Sciences, Sara Seager, publishing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to track molecular structure in high resolution, Hong’s…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (379+ words) Visible light shows a galaxy’s familiar framework of stars, dust, and gas clouds. X-rays, however, reveal gas heated to millions of degrees by supermassive black holes, exploding stars, and scorching stellar winds. When researchers combine Chandra’s high-energy X-ray data with…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (437+ words) Roman’s flagship planet-hunting technique, gravitational microlensing, harnesses Einstein’s general theory of relativity. When a foreground star passes precisely in front of a background star, the foreground star’s gravity acts as a natural magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the background light....

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (279+ words) NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) caught the first faint dips in light as TIDYE-1b crossed its star every 8.83 days. To confirm the signal against the background noise of a volatile young star, Barber’s team used a specialized algorithm named…...

2+ week, 21+ hour ago   (535+ words) The Futura Team represents the pulse of Futura’s editorial department, bringing together a collective expertise dedicated to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Rather than the work of a single author, every article published under this signature is the result of…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago   (332+ words) Discovered in 2004 by Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory, the comet bears the name of history’s most prolific individual comet finder. 220P/McNaught belongs to the Jupiter family of comets, a group of short-period icy bodies that complete an…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago   (482+ words) The Futura Team represents the pulse of Futura’s editorial department, bringing together a collective expertise dedicated to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Rather than the work of a single author, every article published under this signature is the result of…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (474+ words) Scientists made the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015. That high-frequency burst came from colliding stellar-mass black holes. That signal matched what Einstein’s general relativity had predicted decades earlier. Since then, researchers have turned to a different technique to…...

3+ week, 1+ hour ago   (379+ words) The approach depends on location. Within our solar system, probes sample rock, ice, and water on the ground. Farther out, astronomers have only starlight to go on. NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent years scouring Mars for fossil biosignatures, chemical or…...

3+ week, 3+ hour ago   (239+ words) Specifically, Roman’s mission will serve three major scientific goals: First technical feat: though Roman has a primary mirror the same diameter as Hubble’s (2.4 meters), it weighs four times less (186 kilograms). NASA mentions “major technological breakthroughs” behind this achievement, though has…...