Space

Astrophysicists say may be one step closer to understanding how new planets form. A circumstellar disk with telltale signs of planet formation around the star AB Aurigae could be a new planet in…

March 19,2008 marked the brightest ever cosmic explosion observed from Earth ( see Georg von Hippel's article here and the news article here). The outburst denoted as GRB 080319B was probably the…

White dwarfs are good timekeepers, and as such, hold clues about the age of the cosmos. “Once a white dwarf forms, all it does is sit and cool, so we can measure the temperature of a white dwarf, and…

NASA's Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on March 12. Scientists are amazed that this…

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Gemini Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory have made the best determination of the power of a supernova explosion long after…

As Georg von Hippel wrote about here, a powerful stellar explosion detected March 19 by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked…

Located at the University of Utah, the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) is an experiment to study the highest energy cosmic rays to determine the energy, direction, and chemical composition of the…

Life on another planet? No, it's far too hot on HD 189733b for that, but the Hubble Space Telescope's first ever detection of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star…

Amino acids are organic molecules that are the backbone of the proteins that build many of the structures and drive many of the chemical reactions inside living cells. The production of proteins is…

In a find that sheds light on how Earth-like planets may form, astronomers this week reported finding the first evidence of small, sandy particles orbiting a newborn solar system at about the same…