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Category: space – Page 3

[SCRUBBED] Watch Blue Origin Launch New Glenn to Mars!

Blue Origin’s is launching their second New Glenn rocket, for mission NG-2, from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It will deploy NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to study Mars’ magnetosphere and solar wind interactions, alongside a Viasat communications technology demonstration. Blue Origin is planning to propulsively land the booster down range.

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Rapid brightening of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it nears sun surprises scientists

An interstellar comet that originated outside our solar system has just made its closest pass to the sun, brightening dramatically and rapidly as it did so. The reason for the sudden extreme activity is currently puzzling scientists.

A stranger in the neighborhood The latest visitor to our corner of the galaxy was first spotted on July 1, 2025, by astronomers and officially named comet 3I/ATLAS. It’s only the third interstellar comet ever recorded and was calculated to be on a course that would take it close to the sun without plunging into it.

As the object neared its closest point to our star (perihelion), the immense solar glare made it virtually impossible for Earth-based telescopes to see it. So astronomers turned to space-based solar observatories like SOHO, STEREO-A and GOES-19 to keep a watchful eye.

NASA Finds Hidden Heat on Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus, Hinting at Life

Cassini’s new analysis shows Saturn’s moon Enceladus leaking heat from both poles, not just the south. This balanced heat flow suggests its underground ocean could stay liquid for geological ages, supporting conditions for life. Scientists even used temperature data to estimate ice thickness, pre

Scientists find an explanation for odd-ball, water-rich exoplanets: They make their own water

As more and more exoplanets are discovered throughout the galaxy, scientists find some that defy explanation—at least for awhile. A new study, published in Nature, describes a process that might explain why a large portion of exoplanets have water on their surface, even when it doesn’t make sense.

Water where it shouldn’t be A particular category of exoplanets that are between the size of Earth and Neptune, referred to as “sub-Neptunes,” generally have a rocky core, which is surrounded by an envelope of either hydrogen or water. This makes sense if the planet forms farther away from its host planet, in a region where water can precipitate as ice. However, some of these planets are found much closer to their host stars, where it should be too hot to hold water at the surface.

While some planets may accumulate a certain amount of water from incoming comets and asteroids, that doesn’t work for these planets either. The amount of water that is typically found on their surfaces is too high for such explanations. Past experiments have also shown that hydrogen can reduce iron in silicates, producing water. However, they came to the conclusion that only small amounts of water would be produced at the kind of high pressures experienced at the surface of a sub-Neptune planet.

Quantum nonlocality may be inherent in the very nature of identical particles

At its deepest physical foundations, the world appears to be nonlocal: particles separated in space behave not as independent quantum systems, but as parts of a single one. Polish physicists have now shown that such nonlocality—arising from the simple fact that all particles of the same type are indistinguishable—can be observed experimentally for virtually all states of identical particles.

All particles of the same type—for example, photons or electrons—are entangled with one another, including those on Earth and those in the most distant galaxies. This surprising statement follows from a fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics: particles of the same type are, in their very nature, identical. Does this mean that a universal source of entanglement—underlying the peculiar, nonlocal features of the quantum world—is at our fingertips? And can we somehow outsmart , which so carefully guards access to this extraordinary resource?

Answers to these questions have been provided by two Polish theorists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Krakow and the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IITiS PAN) in Gliwice. Their findings, published in npj Quantum Information, show how the very identity of particles gives rise to observable quantum .

Sounds modify visual perception: New links between hearing and vision in the rodent brain

Sounds can alter the way the brain interprets what it sees. This is the key finding of a new study by SISSA researchers in Trieste, published in PLOS Computational Biology. The research shows that, when sounds are paired with moving visual stimuli, the latter are perceived differently by rats. In particular, auditory cues systematically alter vision by compressing the animals’ “perceptual space.”

Derived from the integration of behavioral experiments and computational modeling, the researchers’ findings indicate that auditory signals exert an inhibitory influence on visual perception. The study thus provides a new perspective on how the senses communicate within the brain, revealing that even direct connections between primary sensory areas—not only integration within higher-order association cortices—can profoundly influence perceptual experience.

Nearby pulsar offers insights into emission physics near the death line

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and elsewhere have observed a nearby pulsar known as PSR J2129+4119. Results of the observational campaign, published October 30 on the arXiv pre-print server, deliver important insights into the behavior and properties of this pulsar.

Radio emission from pulsars exhibits a variety of phenomena, including subpulse drifting, nulling, or mode changing. In the case of subpulse drifting, radio emission from a pulsar appears to drift in spin phase within the main pulse profile. When it comes to nulling, the emission from a pulsar ceases abruptly from a few to hundreds of pulse periods before it is restored.

Discovered in 2017, PSR J2129+4119 is an old and nearby pulsar located some 7,500 light years away. It has a pulse period of 1.69 seconds, dispersion measure of 31 cm/pc3, and characteristic age of 342.8 million years. The pulsar lies below the so-called “death line”—a theoretical boundary in the period-period derivative diagram below which the coherent radio emission is sustained.

Dying Stars Are Swallowing Their Giant Planets

“This is strong evidence that as stars evolve off their main sequence they can quickly cause planets to spiral into them and be destroyed,” said Dr. Edward Bryant.

What happens to planets as their stars age and come closer to death? This is what a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the interaction between stars near the end of their lifetimes and their exoplanets with short-period orbits. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the evolution of stars and what this could mean for our Sun near the end of its lifetime.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data obtained from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission for short-period exoplanets orbiting post-main-sequence stars, which are stars approximately the size of our Sun which have exhausted their hydrogen and have ballooned into red giants. Additionally, these short-period exoplanets have orbits that last mere days.

The goal of the study was to ascertain the influence of these red giants on their planetary populations, with the researchers settling on 130 exoplanets after careful data analysis. In the end, the researchers found that only 0.28 percent of older post-main sequence stars had giant exoplanets, with 0.35 percent of younger post-main-sequence stars having giant exoplanets. Finally, the researchers found only 0.11 percent of the oldest post-main-sequence stars had exoplanets.

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