Category Astronomy/Space

Dark matter is a confounding concept that teeters on the leading edges of cosmology and physics. We don’t know what it is or how exactly it fits into our understanding of the universe. We only know that its unseen mass is a critical part of the cosmos.

Astronomers know dark matter exists. They can tell by the way galaxies rotate, by exploiting gravitational lensing, and by analyzing fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. But new research suggests that there might be another way to detect its presence.

The research is “Dark Matter (S)pins the Planet,” and it’s available on the arXiv preprint server. Haihao Shi, from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the lead author. The co-authors are all from Chinese research institutions.

NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to help scientists understand the planet’s climate and geography. But another key objective is to pave the way for human exploration of Mars, and as part of that effort, the rover carries a set of five spacesuit material samples. Now, after those samples have endured four years of exposure on Mars’ dusty, radiation-soaked surface, scientists are beginning the next phase of studying them.

The end goal is to predict accurately the usable lifetime of a Mars spacesuit. What the agency learns about how the materials perform on Mars will inform the design of future spacesuits for the first astronauts on the red planet.

“This is one of the forward-looking aspects of the rover’s mission—no...

Researchers at TU Delft and Brown University have developed scalable nanotechnology-based lightsails that could support future advances in space exploration and experimental physics. Their research, published in Nature Communications, introduces new materials and production methods to create the thinnest large-scale reflectors ever made.

Lightsails are ultra-thin, reflective structures that use laser-driven radiation pressure to propel spacecraft at high speeds. Unlike conventional nanotechnology, which miniaturizes devices in all dimensions, lightsails follow a different approach. They are nanoscale in thickness—about 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair—but can extend to sheets with large dimensions.

Fabricating a lightsail as envisioned for the Breakthrough Starshot Ini...

Astronomers have identified a bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in the very early universe. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.

A key goal of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has been to see further than ever before into the distant past of our universe, when the first galaxies were forming after the Big Bang, a period known as cosmic dawn.

Researchers studying one of those very early galaxies have now made a discovery in the spectrum of its light, that challenges our established understanding of the universe’s early history. Their results are reported in the journal Nature.

Webb discovered the incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, obs...