Space & Astronomy

59 papers

The way light spins actually changes how it curves around a black hole, making those famous "Einstein Rings" look slightly lopsided.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 18

A third object from another star system just flew into our neighborhood, and it’s basically propelling itself like a natural rocket.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 18

Tiny black holes left over from the Big Bang might be blowing up right now, briefly glitching the laws of physics.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 18

The Webb telescope just found "virgin" galaxies made of the exact same stuff that existed right after the Big Bang.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 18

Some massive stars are such overachievers they explode twice because their centers turn into a weird "quark soup."

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 18

We found another "ghost" galaxy with zero dark matter, proving these cosmic oddballs aren't just a fluke.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 18

A star just blew up inside a massive, 70,000-light-year-wide ring left over from two galaxies smashing into each other.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 18

The Parker Solar Probe just found massive electric fields in the Sun’s atmosphere that are kicking the solar wind into overdrive.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 18

Turns out rocky planets aren't just "leftovers" from their suns—they have their own totally unique chemical recipes.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 18

Dark energy might not be spread out evenly; it could be bunching up into giant, invisible clouds.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 18

Physicists found a math loophole that could let us see right into the heart of a black hole.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 18

Scientists are literally hunting for tiny black holes that might be hiding right here in our own solar system.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 18

Most of the "exploding stars" we use to measure the universe are actually blowing up inside the ghostly shells of dead stars.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 18

A nearby black hole is secretly 100 times more powerful than we thought, solving a massive energy mystery in our galaxy.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 18

Astronomers finally spotted a galaxy powered by the very first stars ever born—ones we thought were just a myth until now.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 17

The 'stickiness' inside colliding stars might be a literal window into a hidden phase change that happened right after the Big Bang.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists just caught a single particle from deep space that has as much energy as a billion of our biggest supercolliders put together.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

If a black hole passed through a thin sheet of 'superfluid,' it would start popping out quantum whirlpools like crazy.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists want to hunt for dark matter by looking for tiny footprints it might have left in ancient rocks billions of years ago.

Practical Magic arxiv | Mar 17

We may soon be able to tell if neutron stars are full of 'quark soup' just by listening to the hum they make when they’re near a black hole.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

The very first galaxies weren't flat discs like ours—they were shaped like long, skinny cigars.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 17

Some new 'echoes' in space suggest the universe didn't start with a Big Bang, but more of a Big Bounce.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 17

Saturn’s iconic rings aren't just there—they’re the mangled remains of a lost moon we named Chrysalis.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

Astronomers finally used the 'fingerprints' of oxygen and neon to figure out exactly how heavy and big a neutron star is.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 17

New gravity models say the universe is getting more lopsided over time, which kind of breaks a big rule in space science.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 17

We’re sending a tiny telescope—only 12 centimeters wide—into space to hunt for Earth-like planets next door.

Practical Magic arxiv | Mar 17

The spin of the very first black holes was probably decided by tiny quantum jitters during the first seconds of the Big Bang.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

There's a massive star nursery out there blasting 'fingers' of gas into space like a giant cosmic firework show.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 17

The James Webb telescope just got a detailed 'light fingerprint' of a single massive spot on a star far, far away.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 17

A tiny pulsar with hardly any power is somehow blasting out gamma rays just as strong as the big ones, which totally breaks our physics models.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 17

We used to think long cosmic explosions only came from dying stars, but some are actually from black holes smashing together.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 17

Those mysterious, insanely bright radio flashes from deep space? They might just be normal signals that got a massive boost from a star’s gravity.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16

The dark matter surrounding galaxies might be the exact 'glue' needed to prop open a wormhole you could actually travel through.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 16

We used to think giant galaxy car crashes killed off star-making, but it turns out that’s not what’s actually pulling the plug.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 16

Black holes have this weird 'fuzz' that lets them remember everything that’s ever fallen in, long after the object is gone.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16

Exploding stars aren't the reason galaxies stop making new stars—it's actually just because the whole galaxy is spinning too fast.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 16

We finally found a 'dead' pair of stars that explains why thousands of star couples we expected to see in the sky are just missing.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16

There’s a star that blew up 125 years ago that’s still glowing because the gas is basically taking its sweet time 'forgetting' the explosion.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16

A new map of baby solar systems shows that almost every single one of them is warped or 'broken' instead of being a nice, flat disk.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 16

Our solar system isn't flying through space like a comet; it's actually wrapped in a bubble shaped like a giant, split croissant.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 16

We found four alien worlds where it literally rains microscopic sand from high-altitude clouds.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16

The math behind the Big Bang only really works if you assume some particles actually weigh less than zero.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 16

A new AI can take a blurry photo from a basic telescope and figure out exactly what it would look like if a billion-dollar space telescope took it.

Practical Magic arxiv | Mar 13

We found a way to spot aliens without needing to know what they look like or what they’re made of—we just look for signs of complexity.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 13

Those weird "blueberries" all over Mars are all the exact same size because they literally can't grow any bigger than the dust in the air.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

A tiny neighbor galaxy is actually bending the Milky Way and leaving behind "ghost" trails of stars that we used to think were ancient relics.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13

There’s a "zombie star" left over from an explosion in the year 1181 that’s still hauling ass through space at 10,000 miles per second.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

That bright star in the Southern Cross? It’s not one star. It’s actually a crazy family of seven stars all huddling together.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

The universe might not actually be speeding up—gravity might just be messing with our perspective and making it look that way.

Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 13

Massive galaxy clusters are acting like giant magnifying glasses, making things from the early universe look 8 times bigger than they actually are.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13

When a black hole’s jets turn off, they collapse like bubbles and basically camouflage the black hole so we can't find it.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

We just caught the "cosmic web" literally hand-feeding gas to tiny galaxies to spark massive star-making parties.

First Ever arxiv | Mar 13

If Mars was orbiting our neighbor star, its entire atmosphere would be gone in just 10 million years—poof.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13

The Webb telescope found a massive "ring" galaxy from 12 billion years ago that likely formed after a brutal head-on cosmic car crash.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13

The dwarf planet Haumea isn't actually shaped like a smooth egg—it’s got a weird, "pinched" look to it.

Unknown arxiv | Mar 13

A massive shockwave in space is rolling up galaxy gas into giant "smoke rings" that are hundreds of thousands of light-years wide.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13

Scientists are using a network of spinning stars to create a telescope the size of a galaxy to solve the universe's biggest mysteries.

Practical Magic arxiv | Mar 13

We caught supermassive black holes blowing organic "smoke" out of galaxies like they’re giant cosmic tailpipes.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

There’s a sonic boom happening in space that’s four times faster than the speed of sound, all because two galaxy clusters slammed into each other.

Cosmic Scale arxiv | Mar 13