Latest articles by Robert Lea
How do you study an invisible exoplanet? Astronomers discover planetary 'fingerprints' in the rings around stars
How do you weigh a planet you can't see? Astronomers may have the answer and it involves "reading between the rings," the bright beautiful structures exoplanets create.
Astronomers discover a 'lost world' of black hole mergers: 'It's the astronomical equivalent of uncovering an ancient civilization'
This could change our understanding of how the cosmic titans collide.
Red dwarf stars are cosmic killers that eat their own planets
Astronomers have discovered the first evidence that tiny red dwarf stars can devour their own planets.
James Webb Space Telescope discovers a black hole that formed before its host galaxy. Scientists aren't sure how
"It's a paradigm shift, a total revisiting of the classical scenarios of how black holes form and grow."
Most powerful 'ghost particle' ever may have come from a cosmic particle accelerator fed by a black hole
"We have never observed such a high-energy neutrino before, and if it turns out to come from cosmic accelerators like blazars, it would give us new insight into how these objects can emit particles at energies beyond what we previously expected."
'One of the great unresolved embarrassments of physics': It's been 340 years since Newton and scientists still haven't solved the secret of gravity
"The mystery is not solved."
Scientists just found a supercharged supernova — powered up by a magnetic star corpse
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray spacecraft has observed a super-bright, supercharged supernova explosion powered up by the creation of a highly magnetic dead star, or magnetar.
Scientists thought Jupiter's moon Europa was ejecting water. Now they're not so sure
"The evidence for water vapor plumes on Europa isn’t as strong as we first understood it."
NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS reveals its most complete look at the night sky yet
TESS has released its most complete view of the sky over Earth, revealing the location of 6,000 potential worlds beyond the solar system.
James Webb Space Telescope maps our universe's largest structure in unprecedented detail
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have mapped the "cosmic web" of galaxies, the largest structure in the universe, with unprecedented detail.
We still can't see dark matter. But what if we can hear it?
Black holes smashing together may churn dark matter "butter," scientists say.
NASA's Psyche asteroid probe will fly within 3,000 miles of Mars today: Here's what to expect
NASA's asteroid-bound spacecraft Psyche is headed for an encounter with Mars on Friday (May 15) to get a boost from the Red Planet.
No, this isn't a solar eclipse. It's an image of Mars, captured by NASA's asteroid-bound Psyche probe
NASA spacecraft Psyche has captured a stunning image of Mars ahead of a flyby on Friday (May 15).
What flings mysteriously powerful particles called 'cosmic rays' at Earth?
High-energy cosmic rays, 10 million times more powerful than particles accelerated in Earth's strongest atom smasher, may hide a superheavy secret that is the key to unlocking a 60-year-old puzzle.
'Cannibal stars,' AI and the Rubin Observatory could shed light on the mystery of dark energy. Here's how
Scientists are hunting for "unknown unknowns" that could lead us to missing ingredients in our recipe of the cosmos.
Black holes slamming into scorching stars may be causing mysterious blue flashes in the cosmos
Powerful bright blue cosmic explosions called Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients could be caused when a black hole or neutron star slams into the universe's hottest class of star.
How do the biggest black holes in the universe form? Ripples in spacetime provide a clue
Merging black holes and neutron stars have unusual oval orbits prior to colliding and merging, which challenge the laws of physics.
3 puzzles of our universe could be solved with this new dark matter theory
A new recipe of dark matter that interacts with itself could be the solution to three separate and vastly different cosmic puzzles.
What is quantum gravity? Scientists think it could explain the beginning of our universe
A new recipe of "quadratic gravity" could help to better define the picture of the Big Bang and the singularity that existed prior to the dawn of time.
Did decaying dark matter help create the universe's first supermassive black holes?
"With the James Webb Space Telescope now revealing more supermassive black holes in the early universe, this mechanism may help bridge the gap between theory and observation."
This X-ray image shows our solar system 'breathing'
The eROSITA spacecraft has built the most precise map of soft X-rays over Earth, observing a fascinating phenomenon driven by solar winds from the sun.
Famous asteroid Ryugu may have been bombarded by a swarm of tiny space rocks 1,000 years ago
Samples of Ryugu returned to Earth by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft show that the asteroid bears the scars of a recent bombardment by tiny space rocks.
What will happen when our sun starts dying? These 'stellar archaeologists' may have found a clue
Acting as stellar archaeologists, scientists have found fossilized magnetism on long-dead white dwarf stars, which may help to explain how stars evolve.
