Category Astronomy/Space

As this month’s string of powerful X-class solar flares sparked brilliant auroras that lit up skies across an unusually wide swath of the globe—from northern Europe to Florida—researchers at NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR) captured a less visible, but crucial, record of the storm’s impact on Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Recent measurements recorded by NJIT’s new network of radio telescopes show how a rare sequence of intense flares from Nov. 9–14, including an X5.1 event marking 2025’s strongest flare so far, jolted the ionosphere—the plasma-filled atmospheric layer essential for radio signals, GPS accuracy and satellite orbits.

The flares triggered R3 (strong) radio blackouts across Africa and Europe, with several coronal ...

Mosses thrive in the most extreme environments on Earth, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the sands of Death Valley, the Antarctic tundra to the lava fields of active volcanoes. Inspired by moss’s resilience, researchers sent moss sporophytes—reproductive structures that encase spores—to the most extreme environment yet: space.

Their results, published in the journal iScience on November 20, show that more than 80% of the spores survived nine...

High-energy cosmic radiation damages cells and DNA, causing cancer, and secondary neutrons—generated especially from the planetary surfaces—can be up to 20 times more harmful than other radiations...

Supercomputers are rewriting our understanding of Enceladus’ icy plumes and the mysterious ocean that may harbor life beneath them. Cutting-edge simulations show that Enceladus’ plumes are losing 20–40% less mass than earlier estimates suggested. The new models provide sharper insights into subsurface conditions that future landers may one day probe directly.

In the 17th century, astronomers Christiaan Huygens and Giovanni Cassini pointed some of the earliest telescopes at Saturn and made a surprising discovery. The bright structures around the planet were not solid extensions of the world itself, but separate rings formed from many thin, nested arcs.

Centuries later, NASA’s Cassini-Huygens (Cassini) mission carried that exploration into the space age...