
Keith Cooper
Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor in the United Kingdom, and has a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He's the author of "The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astrobiology for a multitude of magazines and websites.
Latest articles by Keith Cooper

Supernovas are hard to detect. Scientists just found a way to spot them hours after they explode
By Keith Cooper published
Astronomers have learned how to find supernova explosions in their earliest stages, giving us an unprecedented look at how these stars blow up.

What if we've been thinking about dark matter all wrong, scientist wonders
By Keith Cooper published
Two exotic new theories suggest dark matter could be either made from tiny black holes or formed by Hawking radiation at the cosmic horizon.

TRAPPIST-1d isn't the Earth-like planet scientists had hoped it to be, according to JWST data
By Keith Cooper published
As another world around TRAPPIST-1 shows no signs of an atmosphere, astronomers urge us not to give up hope for an Earth-like atmosphere on one of the other worlds in the system.

Red supergiant star expels mysteriously large cloud of gas
By Keith Cooper published
The star, called DFK 52, is a member of a cluster of similar red supergiants, but it's losing mass at an extreme rate never seen before.

Scientists may have found a powerful new space object: 'It doesn't fit comfortably into any known category'
By Keith Cooper published
Nicknamed 'Punctum,' this puzzling phenomenon is highly energetic, but is only seen in millimeter-wavelength light and cannot be explained by any known object.

Is astronomy safe from organized scientific fraud?
By Keith Cooper published
As space becomes more important to the economy of nations around the world, the risk of paper mills flooding the literature with fraudulent results is increasing.

Spacecraft headed to DART asteroid crash site images 2 faint space rocks to boost planetary defense tactics
By Keith Cooper published
The techniques used to target the asteroids could also be employed in tracking hazardous asteroids and interstellar objects.

Hubble Telescope gives us our best look yet at the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (video, photo)
By Keith Cooper published
New Hubble Telescope imagery of the interstellar interloper comet 3I/ATLAS reveals a dusty coma and the beginning of a tail.

Alien life on Mars or Europa could survive off cosmic rays instead of the sun, scientists suggest
By Keith Cooper published
Electrons released when cosmic rays strike water-ice can provide energy for microbes and facilitate the formation of complex organic molecules.

James Webb Space Telescope revisits a classic Hubble image of over 2,500 galaxies
By Keith Cooper published
The image reveals over 2,500 galaxies, many of which are seen as they were during the first billion years of cosmic history.

Exotic 'blazar' is part of most extreme double black hole system ever found, crooked jet suggests
By Keith Cooper published
A beam of particles speeding away from a monstrous black hole is severely kinked, suggesting that the black hole is actually part of the most extreme binary system known.

Einstein was wrong (slightly) about quantum physics, new version of the famous double-slit experiment reveals
By Keith Cooper published
A new version of the famous double-slit experiment showed that it's impossible to measure light as both a wave and a particle at the same time, thanks to quantum physics' uncertainty principle.

JWST sees beauty in the death of a star, offers a preview of what's in store for our sun
By Keith Cooper published
The James Webb Space Telescope's investigations of the planetary nebula NGC 6072 suggest a second star played a hand in sculpting the death of the primary star.

Scientists behind controversial 2010 arsenic-based life study clap back as paper gets pulled: 'We do not support this retraction'
By Keith Cooper published
A retraction intends to bring to an end the acrimonious debate about the validity of the 15-year old findings that threatened to upend what we thought we know about life.

Rogue black hole found terrorizing unfortunate star in distant galaxy
By Keith Cooper published
The Hubble Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory saw an enigmatic intermediate-mass black hole lighting up in X-rays, potentially revealing a way of finding more of them in the future.

Scientists just made the 1st antimatter 'qubit.' Here's why it could be a big deal
By Keith Cooper published
Although the antimatter qubit won't find use in quantum computing, it will be used to test the differences between matter and antimatter.

'The ocean is no longer too big to watch': How AI and satellite data are helping rid Earth's seas of illegal fishing
By Keith Cooper published
Protected regions of the ocean are doing their job and keeping illegal fishing at bay, according to new research combining satellite imagery with artificial intelligence.

SpaceX launches NASA's TRACERS mission to protect Earth from space weather
By Keith Cooper last updated
NASA's TRACERS mission blasted off July 23 on a Falcon 9 rocket with three other small agency satellites that will act as technology demonstrators to monitor space weather.

Sharp-eyed US-Indian satellite set to launch July 30 to monitor Earth's surface, warn of natural disasters
By Keith Cooper published
NISAR, a joint mission of NASA and ISRO set to launch on July 30, will be able to see shifts in the landscape smaller than a centimeter to give warning of potential natural disasters.

2 new NASA satellites will track space weather to help keep us safe from solar storms
By Keith Cooper published
The new TRACERS mission will track magnetic reconnection that drives particles down into Earth's atmosphere when space weather turns bad.

Scientists extracted water and oxygen from moon dust using sunlight. Could it work on the lunar surface?
By Keith Cooper published
Soil excavated from the moon could be used to produce oxygen and methane, which could be used by lunar settlers for breathing and for rocket fuel.

2 billion-year-old moon rock found in Africa reveals secret lunar history
By Keith Cooper published
The basaltic meteorite is a piece of lunar rock that formed in a lava flow 2.35 billion years ago, long after volcanism on the moon was supposed to have ended.

If aliens existed on Mars 3.7 billion years ago, they would have needed umbrellas
By Keith Cooper published
"Our work is a new piece of evidence that suggests that Mars was once a much more complex and active planet than it is now."

Why is the moon's far side so weird? China's lunar sample-return mission may have figured it out
By Keith Cooper published
The impact that carved out the moon's huge South Pole-Aitken basin may explain the puzzling differences between the lunar near and far sides.

Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' pushes for crewed moon missions, but proposed budget cuts leave NASA science behind
By Keith Cooper published
The U.S. government's "One, Big Beautiful Bill" Act finds funding for Artemis and Lunar Gateway, but nearly half of NASA's science missions are on the chopping block ahead of the 2026 budget.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!