Warming ocean waters have caused a drop Dimmed in the brightness of the Earth, according to a study which found that our planet is now reflecting about half a watt less light per square metre than it was 20 years ago. Scientists have always found it difficult to understand how they’d react to climate change, which…
The universe is (nearly) 14 billion years old, astronomers confirm. With looming discrepancies about the true age of universe, scientists have taken a fresh look at the observable (expanding) universe and have estimated that it is 13.77 billion years old (plus or minus 40 million years). In 2019, scientists studying the movement of galaxies concluded…
Hubble Space Telescope Captures a Cluster in the Heart of the Milky Way This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to…
The Jupiter storm is larger than planet Earth, and astronomers have been observing it regularly for more than 150 years — with occasional other observations as early as the 1600s — providing evidence of change over a relatively long time. The storm speeds are incredible compared to what we see on Earth, but at Jupiter…
The moon‘s polar regions are home to craters and other depressions that never receive sunlight. Today, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany present the highest-resolution images to date covering 17 such craters. Craters of this type could contain frozen water, making them attractive targets…
Hubble Space Telescope’s(HST) glamour shots of the universe are so revealing they nearly always have a discovery behind them. In this image, a remote galaxy is greatly magnified and distorted by the effects of gravitationally warped space. After its public release, astronomers used the picture to measure the galaxy’s distance of 9.4 billion light-years. This…
Water is essential for life on Earth and other planets, and scientists have found ample evidence of water in Mars’ early history. But Mars has no liquid water on its surface today. New research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests a fundamental reason: Mars may be just too small to hold onto large amounts…
