Robert Lea

Scientists may have figured out how Mars hung onto its surface liquid water in its ancient history via alternating periods of hot and cold. But what would the impact have been on habitability?

By studying the fastest jet ever seen erupting from an infant star, astronomers have discovered that the mechanism that launches these jets also launch supermassive black hole jets.

Observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope and the VLT have revealed jets blasting from supermassive black holes cause gas to cool and fall toward them in a cosmic feeding process.

A 196-foot-wide asteroid has a 1-in-83 chance of striking Earth in 2032. An expert tells Space.com where this asteroid could impact our planet and what level of destruction it could cause.

A "cosmic CT scan" performed by scientists using two very different cosmic surveys has revealed the cosmos is less clumpy and more complicated than we thought.

"Little red dot" galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early cosmos appear to be ruled by supermassive black holes that are 1,000 times too massive.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is set to detect millions of exploding vampire stellar remnants called "white dwarfs," shedding light on dark energy.

A new analysis of M87*, the first black hole imaged by humanity, has revealed turbulence in the matter around it, which this supermassive black hole feasts upon.

The James Webb Space Telescope has revolutionized astronomy in just three years. A new project celebrates its impact on the study of exoplanets, worlds beyond the solar system.

Astronomers have witnessed a monster supermassive black hole erupting with a light-year-long jet traveling at one-third the speed of light.

The size and spin of black holes can reveal how and where they were born, and gravitational waves offer a way to decode this information like a cosmic DNA test.

NASA's TESS exoplanet hunter has found the fastest-disintegrating planet ever. Losing a moons-worth of matter every million years, it is a prime target for the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA's Chandra and NuSTAR telescopes have teamed up to study a supermassive black hole-powered quasar that could have played a key role in ending the cosmic dark ages.

The James Webb Space Telescope's ancient "little red dot" galaxies have been seen as a sign of "broken cosmology." Feeding supermassive black holes may have come to the rescue.

Goodnight Gaia. The European Space Agency star-tracking satellite ceased operations on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, after 12 years of mapping the Milky Way.

Hot Jupiters may not be the lonely giants scientists once thought they were.

Feeding supermassive black holes are more common in the cosmos than previously suspected. What could possibly hide such ravenous cosmic titans?

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted one of the earliest and most distant supernovas, marking the death of a stellar monster 20 times the mass of the sun.

A strange break in a stream of stars in the Milky Way could be the result of dark matter, but only if the dark matter is hot and self-interacting.

The weird outbursts of a distant supermassive black hole may be caused by a death-defying white dwarf walking a cosmic tight rope around it.

Scientists want to know if a tidal disruption event that exploded twice is the result of a star abandoning its binary partner, allowing it to be devoured by a supermassive black hole.

The fastest-spinning white dwarf ever discovered is a shrinking cosmic vampire feasting on a stellar companion. A feeding process is pushing the dead star toward an imminent supernova explosion.

BepiColombo made its sixth and final flyby of Mercury on Wed (Jan. 8) capturing images of the tiny planet hinting at the mysteries it will soon investigate.