Physics
Australian Team's AI Method Independently Confirms the First Black Hole Image
CSIRO researchers rebuilt the M87 black hole's ring from raw Event Horizon Telescope data without being shown what a black hole looks like.
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Astronomy
143 stories from Planck Standard. Latest: November 12, 2026.
ScienceRubin Observatory Finds First Permanent Trojan Asteroids Trailing Neptune
Queen's University Belfast astronomers confirmed two stable asteroids and one candidate, doubling the known long-lived population in Neptune's trailing cloud.
PhysicsDust-Veiled Star Cluster at the Milky Way's Heart Is 13.4 Billion Years Old
Astronomers dated VVV CL001 using Hubble images and say that if it formed in place, it could be the oldest globular cluster in the galaxy's bulge.
ScienceWebb's 'Earliest Galaxy' Capotauro Moved, and That Makes It a Cold Brown Dwarf
A 0.13-arcsecond shift between images taken 3.5 years apart shows the object is a Milky Way dwarf about 2,400 light-years away, not a galaxy 100 million years after the Big Bang.
ScienceAstronomers Find a Giant Hydrogen Cloud With Almost No Stars, 310 Million Light-Years Away
Radio surveys from Arecibo and China's FAST telescope point to AGC 322753, a candidate dark galaxy holding 2 billion Suns' worth of gas and little or no starlight.
ScienceGaia Search Finds No Black Holes Lurking in the Sun's Neighborhood, For Now
Astronomers checked five candidate isolated black holes within 49 light-years against infrared and radio surveys and concluded they are unlikely to be real, with a big new radio dataset due in 2027.
ScienceRubin Observatory Finds a Possible Dwarf Planet 46 Times Farther From the Sun Than Earth
The object, provisionally 2026 ED138, may be about 1,000 kilometers wide and would be the largest body found beyond Neptune in roughly 20 years.
ScienceRed Giant's Record Superflares Traced to a Binary Companion and a Magnetic Dynamo
Hungarian astronomers say tidal forces left the star KIC 2852961 almost, but not quite, locked in rotation, and that gap powers the most violent flares in the Kepler field.
ScienceEuclid, a Galaxy-Mapping Telescope, Finds Its First New Comet 810 Million Miles Out
A Helsinki researcher's streak-hunting software caught C/2026 S1 (Euclid) in five image sets, and the Minor Planet Center confirmed it on Oct. 8.
PhysicsHubble Data Upend the Theory That Supernova Winds Cleared the Early Universe's Fog
Nearby starburst galaxies with the fastest winds leaked the least ionizing light, suggesting young stars did the work before the first supernovae went off.
ScienceMilky Way's Disk Grew 'Upside Down,' With Younger Stars Forming in Ever-Thinner Layers
Gaia ages for stars across the galaxy show the disk flattened fast until about 10.8 billion years ago, then slowly, favoring one of two rival models of how it formed.
ScienceALMA Finds a 'Dragon Egg' Core That May Be a Massive Star in Its Earliest Stage
A compact clump 16,300 light-years away holds 20 to 30 times the Sun's mass yet shows no sign of jets, a rare view of how giant stars begin.
ScienceStellar Collision Could Solve the Orion Nebula's Age Paradox, Leiden Astronomers Propose
Planet-forming disks in the famous nebula look far younger than their stars. A merger of two stars a few hundred thousand years ago, triggered by a third, may explain why.
Science'Mega-Earths' May Be a Mirage: Active Stars Could Be Faking Rocky Planets Over 10 Earth Masses
A new analysis finds all eight suspiciously dense super-heavy planets orbit magnetically active stars, with odds of that happening by chance near 1% for the four rocky ones.
PhysicsWebb Spots a Possible Supernova Just Days After the Star Exploded
A transient called AT 2026abck, in a galaxy at redshift 5.017, was caught four to 10 days after its blast without help from a gravitational lens, astronomers report.
ScienceBlack Hole Caught Shredding a Star 3,500 Light-Years From Its Galaxy's Center
TDE 2023mfm is a rare off-nuclear tidal disruption, hinting that a wandering black hole of 1 to 10 million solar masses roams the host galaxy.
ScienceALMA Catches a Dying Star Mid-Transformation and Finds a Ring From Its Last Outburst
Radio images of IRAS 06530 reveal a vast ring, spiral arcs and a young central nebula, but none of the fast jets that theory says should have shaped them.
PhysicsAstronomers Confirm the Most Powerful Radio Galaxy Ever Found, Seen 12.5 Billion Years in the Past
The source, TXS 2354+015, sits at redshift 4.946, when the universe was under 1.2 billion years old, and its radio output beats the previous record from a 2008 census.
ScienceAstronomers Catch a Star Slowly Eating a Brown Dwarf 300 Light-Years Away
The system ZTF J0440+2325, reported in Nature Astronomy, is the first caught with one low-mass object steadily feeding on another, and it could last for billions of years.
ScienceAstronomers Detect the Most Distant Fast Radio Burst Ever, From 10 Billion Years Ago
The flash, FRB 20240304B, left a tiny star-forming galaxy when the universe was only about 3 billion years old, more than doubling the previous distance record.
ScienceNASA's Roman Space Telescope Switches On Its 300-Megapixel Camera and Sees First Starlight
The first test image shows stars as blurry rings, exactly as expected. Sharp pictures are still months away, and science operations are set for 2027.
PhysicsBlack Hole Jets Light Up Gas Far Beyond Their Galaxies, Helping Explain Why Stars Stop Forming
By stacking data on hundreds of galaxies, Arizona State astronomers found hydrogen glowing along jet paths deep into the gas halos that feed star birth, but not in other directions.
PhysicsA Black Hole Fired Its Jets Four Separate Times, the First Galaxy Ever Caught Doing So
Astronomers in India found four nested pairs of radio hotspots around a galaxy 3.9 million light-years across, each one older the farther it sits from the core. The jets' direction has also swung by 24 degrees, a sign the black hole's spin axis is wobbling.
PhysicsALMA Catches a Baby Gas Giant Stirring Its Birth Cloud for the First Time
Radio images of WISPIT 2b, a planet five times Jupiter's mass still pulling in gas 430 light-years away, show swirls that simulations predicted for decades but no one had seen next to a known planet.
ScienceThe Dead Sea Scrolls Sect Swore by a 364-Day Year That Put Every Holiday on the Same Weekday Forever
Nearly 20 of the Qumran scrolls deal with calendars and astronomy. Prof. Eshbal Ratzon argues the calendar was live in the sect's second-century BCE founding fight with Jerusalem, became unworkable as the seasons slid, and was set aside as relations warmed under Alexander Jannaeus, without ever losing its place in the community's identity.
ScienceAstronomers Found a Giant Planet Circling a Star Hotter Than 8,000 Degrees Every Two Days on a Stretched, Egg-Shaped Orbit, and Its Orbit Is Tilting Out of View
TOI-1355 b gave itself away when its secondary eclipse arrived early, a sign the orbit is not circular. The University of Tokyo team says the planet was probably flung inward by other giants and is now being slowly reeled into a circle by its star's tides. They are already writing a JWST proposal.
ScienceNASA's Roman Telescope Was Built With Fuel for 10 Years
The August 31 burn was more than 99 percent accurate. Goddard's center director credited 'exquisite planning by our orbital dynamics team, brilliant execution by the operations team, and a precise launch from SpaceX.' A second burn later this month is expected to add four more years.
ScienceWebb Looked Through the Dust at the Squid Galaxy's Black Hole and Found an Outflow Up to 100 Times More Powerful Than Anyone Had Measured
NGC 1068 is 45 million light-years away and one of the best-studied active galaxies in the sky. The hidden component moves 300 km/s faster than the visible one, tops 2,000 km/s and is escaping the galaxy for good.
ScienceWebb Watched a Rocky Planet 105 Light-Years Away Cross Its Star 12 Times and Found No Moon Bigger Than a Tenth of Earth
David Kipping's search of LP 890-9c is by far the most sensitive exomoon hunt ever done. It rules out anything the size of Europa, Rhea or Umbriel, and it shows JWST has no noise floor stopping it from finding moons that small.
ScienceA 33-Solar-Mass Star 29 Million Light-Years Away Has 'Erupted' 27 Times Since 2012, Like a Supernova About to Blow
X-rays flared on schedule during AT 2016blu's March 2026 outburst and were absent in Chandra data from 2001–02. The star is the first known luminous blue variable with a compact companion.
ScienceOne Star of a Twin Pair Ate More Than 11 Earths' Worth of Rock. Beryllium Gave It Away
Twin stars form from the same cloud and should match chemically. HD 129171 does not — and the element that proves it is one stars cannot make themselves.
ScienceA New Sky Map Runs to 5.6 Trillion Pixels and Catalogues Almost 4 Billion Objects Out to 11 Billion Light-Years
The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys released their 11th data set on Monday, covering roughly three-quarters of the sky. More than 160 scientists and four telescopes built it, and anyone can open it in a browser.
ScienceSloan's 20th Data Release Hands Over Three Million Spectra and Its First Southern Sky
DR20 includes half a million black hole spectra, 1.5 million Milky Way stars and the survey's first optical spectroscopy from the Southern Hemisphere — all of it free to anyone who wants it.
PhysicsChina's FAST Telescope Found Two Hydrogen Clouds Near M51 With No Stars in Them at All
Each holds about three million suns' worth of hydrogen inside a halo weighing 3.7 billion solar masses. If the interpretation holds, they are dark matter halos that never lit up.
ScienceOhio State Modeled 700 Manganese Emission Lines and Turned a Supernova Leftover Into a Cosmic Clock
Manganese piles up in a galaxy over time, so the amount of it says how old the place is. The hard part was knowing what its light should look like.
PhysicsALMA Watched Betelgeuse's Surface for a Decade
The star's inner atmosphere has grown lopsided since 2015, and the newly confirmed companion star may be steering where the convection cells sit.
ScienceSaturn Has Grown a Ten-Sided Wave Around Its South Pole, and Hubble Says It Has Been There Since at Least 2023
The planet's north pole has worn a hexagon for four decades. The new southern decagon is still strengthening — and two amateur astronomers saw the first hints of it.
ScienceA 5-Million-Year-Old Star Is Swallowing Comets. Astronomers Caught It by Watching Sodium Flicker
Sodium gas appeared and vanished over successive nights around PDS 70, a young sunlike star 370 light-years away. The likely explanation is icy bodies falling inward past two newborn gas giants.
PhysicsAstronomers Have Been Weighing Distant Galaxies With a Ruler That Changes Length Depending on Where You Are
A Missouri team compared star clusters mapped by Gaia and found the mix of large and small stars differs from cluster to cluster — breaking a 50-year assumption and possibly explaining Webb's impossibly heavy early galaxies.
ScienceThe World's Largest Solar Telescope Found Whirlpools on the Sun Just 12 Miles Wide — Like Spotting a Euro Coin From 110 Miles Away
The vortices had never been resolved before. Researchers think they twist magnetic field lines tight enough to power nanoflares and move magnetic energy through the Sun's atmosphere faster than models allow.
ScienceA SpaceX Upper Stage Hit the Moon at 5,400 MPH and Left a 100-Foot Crater
The 8,800-pound Falcon 9 second stage that launched two lunar landers in January 2025 finally came down Wednesday, near the far-side craters Einstein and Bell.
ScienceA Dead Star Half the Width of Earth Weighs 1.23 Suns. Its Core Is Probably Oxygen and Neon, Not Carbon
Astronomers measured the gravitational redshift of SDSS J0608−0059 and found it sits on the wrong mass-radius curve for an ordinary white dwarf — evidence it came from a single massive star, not a merger.
WatchScienceA 4-Ton SpaceX Rocket Slammed Into the Moon at 5,400 MPH. A Telescope in Chile Caught the Lithium It Threw Up
The discarded Falcon 9 upper stage that launched two private lunar landers in January 2025 drifted for eighteen months and hit near Einstein Crater at 6:35 UTC Wednesday. Nobody photographed the collision, but the Very Large Telescope read its chemical signature.
PhysicsThe Sharpest Images Ever Taken of Asteroid 44 Nysa Show Three Lobes Split by Valleys — and a Hidden Moon
Astronomers using adaptive optics on two of the world's largest telescopes found a shape no model of asteroid formation predicts, and a faint companion nobody had seen.
PhysicsA Supermassive Black Hole With No Galaxy Around It Gave Itself Away by Shredding a Star
The flash astronomers named TDE 2025abcr came from 30,000 light-years off-center in a galaxy 750 million light-years away — the first quiet, wandering giant ever caught this far from home.
PhysicsAstronomers Finally Photograph Betelgeuse's Hidden Companion After a Century of Suspicion
A faint point of light 8.8 astronomical units from the red supergiant turned out to be a young star of roughly three solar masses — bright enough to see only because it is heavier than anyone predicted.
PhysicsThe Sun Holds 55% More Silver Than Astronomers Thought, and It Finally Matches the Meteorites
A Swedish team rebuilt the physics of how silver atoms absorb sunlight and closed a stubborn gap between our star and the oldest rocks in the solar system.
ScienceChina's Tianwen-1 Orbiter Photographed Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS From 30 Million Kilometers Away
A camera built to shoot the bright surface of Mars was pushed far beyond its design limits to capture a visitor from another star system, tail and all.
PhysicsAstronomers Find Omega Centauri's First Stellar-Mass Black Hole After a 20-Year Hunt
Sifting through two decades of Hubble images, a University of Utah team spotted a star being tugged by an invisible companion — the first of thousands of black holes thought to be hiding in the giant cluster.
PhysicsAstronomers Map Four Alien Worlds Around Barnard's Star — and None Look Anything Like Earth
Cambridge scientists find the planets circling our closest single-star neighbor are smaller than Earth, larger than Mars, laced with a rare deep-mantle mineral, and locked so close to their star that any atmosphere would be stripped away.
PhysicsA Super-Earth 25 Light-Years Away Sits in the ‘Sweet Spot’ for Life, Astronomers Report
A UC Irvine–led team detected a planet about twice the size of Earth orbiting a nearby red dwarf, receiving almost exactly as much starlight as Earth gets from the sun.
PhysicsAstronomers Detect the First Atmosphere on a Rocky Planet in a Star's Habitable Zone
Using a ground-based telescope in Chile, scientists spotted helium streaming off the exoplanet LHS 1140 b, the first time an atmosphere has been confirmed around a rocky world in the life-friendly zone of another star.
Science'You Are What You Eat': Astronomers Catch a Sun-Like Star That Appears to Have Swallowed One of Its Planets
A telltale surge of lithium in the star TOI-5882, some 1,300 light-years away, points to a planet consumed whole — possibly nudged to its doom by a hidden brown-dwarf companion.
ScienceOur Nearest Single-Star Neighbor May Host Four Tiny, Water-Starved Worlds Unlike Anything in Our Solar System
A chemical analysis of Barnard's Star suggests its four sub-Earth planets are packed with a rare deep-Earth mineral, stripped of atmospheres and locked in eternal day and night — utterly hostile to life just six light-years away.
PhysicsHubble Uncovers Four Hidden White Dwarfs Lurking Beside Red Dwarfs in Our Cosmic Backyard
Astronomers at Warwick and Colorado used Hubble's ultraviolet vision to pull four dead stars out of the glare of brighter companions — one just 25 light-years away, now the ninth-closest white dwarf to the Sun.
PhysicsNASA's Webb Uncovers a Hidden Third Planet Around Beta Pictoris, One of Astronomy's Most-Studied Stars
The newly identified world, Beta Pictoris d, makes the young nearby system only the second ever found to host at least three directly imaged planets.
ScienceAstronomers Detect a Sugar in Deep Space for the First Time, Hinting at Life's Cosmic Origins
Erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar found in raspberries, was spotted in a cloud near the galaxy's center — and may have rained down on the early Earth by the millions of tons.
ScienceJames Webb Spots the Most Distant Barred Spiral Galaxy Ever, Forcing a Rethink of the Early Universe
A massive, chemically mature spiral with a 14,700-light-year central bar existed just over a billion years after the Big Bang — a structure astronomers thought could not form so early.
PhysicsThose 'Impossible' Early Black Holes Webb Found May Not Be Giants After All, New Analysis Says
Astronomers argue the universe's X-ray-silent, seemingly overmassive black holes are actually smaller objects feeding at furious rates — a finding that could defuse one of cosmology's freshest crises.
PhysicsA Planet of Eternal Day and Endless Night May Still Have a Sliver Fit for Life
New modeling of tidally locked worlds like LHS 3844b suggests heat can circulate in a stable loop, making the twilight 'terminator zone' between scorching day and frozen night more hospitable than thought.
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