Off-World (Page 10)

Latest in Off-World

Current observations suggest we could see a solar maximum as early as 2024, not 2025, defying our predictions.

There’s Something Weird Going on With the Sun

By Victor Tangermann

Earlier this week, reports emerged of a woman in France who was reportedly struck by a meteorite. Experts have their doubts.

Expert Says Rock That Hit Woman Was NOT a Meteorite

By Victor Tangermann

A golden-colored, cylindrical object was discovered by beachgoers in Australia on Sunday, as authorities still try to determine its origin.

Australia Baffled as Mysterious Space Debris Washes Up on Beach

By Frank Landymore

A woman in France was reportedly struck by a tiny, rebounding piece of meteorite while chatting with a friend over a cup of coffee.

Woman Reportedly Struck by Meteorite While Drinking Coffee

By Victor Tangermann

Scientists have discovered the coolest star ever found to emit radio waves. It's a brown dwarf, and it's not even as hot as a lighter flame.

Scientists Discover Star Cooler Than Cigarette Lighter Flame

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Astronomer Rajendra Gupta has devised a new theory about the expansion of the universe, concluding that it's 26.7 billion years old.

Scientist Claims Universe Is Twice as Old as We Thought

By Victor Tangermann

A new look at a protoplanetary disk surrounding a star revealed a massive exoplanet forming spiral arms, the first detection of its kind,

Scientists Attempt to Explain Star With Tentacle-Like Arms

By Frank Landymore

China is preparing to deliver zebrafish to its Tiangong space station to study how they interact with other microorganisms and bone loss.

China Is Sending Fish to Its Space Station

By Victor Tangermann

Scientist: No, We Didn’t Just Find an Alien Spacecraft on the Bottom of the Ocean

Scientist: No, We Didn’t Just Find an Alien Spacecraft on the Bottom of the Ocean

By Victor Tangermann

By observing quasars from 12 billion years ago, astronomers have seen the universe flow in slow-mo, thanks to wonky time dilation.

Astronomers Observe Mind-Blowing Time Dilation in the Ancient Years of the Universe

By Frank Landymore

Scientists suggest another planet could be lurking in the Oort cloud, a collection of icy objects stretching beyond the Kuiper Belt.

Our Solar System May Be Hiding an Extra Planet, Scientists Say

By Victor Tangermann

Scientist Says Universe Expansion May Be an Illusion

Scientist Says Universe Expansion May Be an Illusion

By Noor Al-Sibai

Harvard's resident UFO hunter thinks he may have tiny found fragments of an interstellar meteor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Harvard Scientist Trawling Ocean Floor for Possible Alien Spacecraft

By Noor Al-Sibai

Astronomers have observed a whole new mechanism by which stars can die — by smashing into each other in the most explosive fashion.

Scientists Astounded When Two Stars Collide in Brain Melting Explosion

By Noor Al-Sibai

The BepiColombo mission, led by the ESA and JAXA, recently completed an ultra-close flyby of Mercury's surface.

Space Probe Takes Stunning Close Up Images of Mercury

By Frank Landymore

During a spacewalk, Russian cosmonauts chucked an entire experiment into the abyss while cleaning the outside of the ISS.

Cosmonauts Litter Orbit With Entire Science Experiment During Spacewalk

By Noor Al-Sibai

The erratic behavior of Betelgeuse, a bright star some 300 light years away, has many wondering what its supernova would look like.

If Betelgeuse Explodes, It’ll Be So Bright You Could See It During the Day For a Year

By Frank Landymore

Researchers have spotted the fastest runaway star to have ever escaped the Milky Way as a result of a massive thermonuclear explosion.

Scientists Spot Star Fleeing Our Galaxy at Incredible Speed

By Victor Tangermann

A white dwarf that's about 104 light years away is slowly crystallizing, a process that could take a quadrillion years.

Scientists Spot Star Transforming Into Colossal Cosmic Diamond

By Sharon Adarlo

He hasn't even made it to Mars yet, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk already has his eyes on a new exoplanet to colonize: Proxima Centauri B.

Elon Musk Expresses Interest in Planet Four Light-Years Away

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

From their experiments, the researchers calculate that their tractor beam could be used to move debris weighing several tons.

Scientists Experimenting With Actual Tractor Beam to Clean Up Space Junk

By Frank Landymore

North Korea was trying its very best to send a spy satellite up into space — but that thing just didn't want to stay in the sky.

North Korea Attempts to Launch Satellite But It Crashes Into Ocean

By Noor Al-Sibai

A supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy is expected to be visible for months, even from amateur backyard telescopes.

New Supernova in Sky May Shine for Months

By Sharon Adarlo

A crew of space tourists headed up to the ISS this week — and, once they arrived, had to learn how to go to the bathroom in zero gravity.

Space Tourists Learn Harsh Reality of Space Station Bathroom

By Noor Al-Sibai

A team of astronomers has discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet that may be absolutely covered with volcanoes.

Scientists Discover Brutal Planet That Sounds Like Darth Vader’s Mustafar

By Victor Tangermann

This Extreme Closeup of the Sun Is Just… Extremely Weird

This Extreme Closeup of the Sun Is Just… Extremely Weird

By Victor Tangermann

Japanese scientists say they've proven wood might just be a durable in-orbit material — and now, plan to build a satellite with it.

Scientists Preparing to Launch Wooden Satellite

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

According to a recent study conducted by a team of Chinese scientists, the Milky Way galaxy might be a regular, two-armed spiral after all.

Oops! Scientists Say Our Galaxy May Be a Different Shape From What They Thought

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

After an alleged meteor struck a house in New Jersey, residents began wondering whether insurance covers extraterrestrial damage.

New Jersey Ponders Whether Meteor Damage Is Covered by Insurance

By Noor Al-Sibai

Researchers have confirmed that an avocado-sized rock that smashed through a New Jersey roof is a meteorite.

Experts Confirm Rock That Punched Through Family’s House Was Meteorite

By Victor Tangermann

Jed McCaleb, who founded the defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, has announced he's planning to launch the world's first private space station.

The Mt Gox Guy Is Back and He Says He’s Launching a Space Station

By Victor Tangermann

Commercial space launches are becoming a big problem in Florida, which according to Pete Buttigieg are clogging up flight paths.

Florida Is Apparently Launching So Many Rockets That It’s Clogging Up Commercial Flights

By Noor Al-Sibai

A possible meteorite struck a house in Hopewell, New Jersey on Monday — and incredibly, the decently-sized, maybe-space-rock is still intact.

Cops Say Meteorite Appears to Have Smashed New Jersey House

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

After completing a seven-hour spacewalk, two Russian cosmonauts intentionally left a bundle of discarded hardware drift away into empty space.

Cosmonauts Caught Littering Directly Into Space During Spacewalk

By Victor Tangermann

Until recently, scientists had never spotted a star in the act of consuming a planet — and eventually, it will happen to Earth, too.

Scientists Spot Tragic Planet Being Eaten by a Dying Star

By Noor Al-Sibai

Saturn's rings are steadily disappearing as they're being sucked up into the planet's atmosphere and scientists are trying to figure out why.

Saturn Is Sucking Up Its Rings

By Victor Tangermann

Betelgeuse is one of the most iconic stars visible on Earth — and with scientists predicting that it'll go supernova soon, Twitter has jokes.

Scientists Are Breathlessly Waiting For Betelgeuse to Explode

By Noor Al-Sibai

A small suborbital rocket carrying cremated remains failed to launch earlier this week, exploding over the New Mexico desert.

Rocket Carrying Cremated Remains Explodes Seconds After Launch

By Victor Tangermann

Tourism Company Offering Zero-G Concerts

Tourism Company Offering Zero-G Concerts

By Frank Landymore

We'd need an astronomical amount of resources to construct a Dyson sphere around the Sun, like deconstructing an entire Jupiter-sized planet.

Building a Dyson Sphere Around the Sun Would Be Easy if We Used Jupiter for Raw Materials

By Victor Tangermann

Sweden made a major whoopsie Monday when its experimental rocket accidentally landed in Norway, its neighbor.

Swedish Scientists Accidentally Shoot Norway With Rocket

By Noor Al-Sibai

Artist and music producer Austin Richard "Post Malone" Post got a rare chance to talk to NASA astronauts currently stationed on board the ISS.

Space Station Contacted by Bizarre Life Form: Post Malone

By Victor Tangermann

While Muslims commemorated one of Ramadan's holiest nights below, an Arab astronaut showed how brightly Mecca is lit up while looking down from space.

Muslim Astronaut Posts Stunning Video of Mecca From Space

By Noor Al-Sibai

Hawaii's Big Island was treated to a light show of space lasers — but luckily, it wasn't aliens that put on the stunning spectacle.

Satellite Shoots Wall of Green Lasers Down to Earth

By Noor Al-Sibai

The European Space Agency has successfully launched an exciting new deep space mission called JUICE to visit Jupiter's icy moons.

Scientists Launch JUICE Mission to Distant Worlds

By Victor Tangermann

A huge cloud of hydrogen gas blew up a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur V upper stage, not far from where Blue Origin was testing its engines.

Photo Shows Large Explosion at United Launch Alliance Test Facility

By Victor Tangermann

Researchers are working on a way to transform plastic waste into edible biomass for deep-space missions, all with the help of lab-engineered bacteria.

Cursed Tech Turns Plastic Waste Into Edible Food

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Gabe Ginsberg via Getty / Futurism

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Rocket Company Files for Bankruptcy

By Noor Al-Sibai

China's space program is getting ready to launch the first satellites of its own broadband-beaming mega constellation, SpaceNews reports.

China Constructing Huge Megaconstellation in Orbit

By Victor Tangermann

They call it the BOAT, or the brightest of all time, for a reason. But the origins of the gamma ray burst remain difficult to pin down.

Gamma Ray Burst Was So Bright It Blinded Almost All Equipment to Detect It

By Frank Landymore

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit has announced that it will cut a total of 675 jobs, roughly 85 percent of its workforce, in a SEC filing today.

Richard Branson Sacks 85% of Virgin Orbit

By Victor Tangermann

A group of astronomers argues fast radio bursts may be the result of two neutron stars merging, an event that releases a huge electromagnetic charge.

Astronomers May Have Just Found the Smoking Gun Behind Mysterious Radio Signals

By Victor Tangermann

China's space program is finalizinga recovery system that will allow discarded rocket boosters to gently and accurately descend to earth via parachutes.

China Plans to Make Its Space Debris Hit the Ground a Little Slower

By Frank Landymore

Look West to the horizon around sunset, and you should be able to witness five planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Mars — lined up near the Moon.

Five Planets Are Aligning in the Sky Right Now

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A second giant "hole," large enough to easily fit 20 Earths in one go, has torn the Sun's surface apart, heralding our star's most ferocious period during its 11-year cycle.

Low Key Hole Opens Up in Sun

By Victor Tangermann

Remember Oumuamua, that weird and possibly-alien object that flew past Earth back in 2017? Some scientists have a boring explanation for what it was.

Boring Scientists Say Strange “Oumuamua” Space Object Wasn’t Alien, Just Gassy

By Noor Al-Sibai

A ginormous, tornado of plasma has been spotted on the Sun's surface, violently raging within a powerful magnetic structure.

We’re in Awe of This Massive Tornado of Plasma on the Surface of the Sun

By Frank Landymore

Given that the sun rises and sets 16 times per day on the ISS, it may be kind of difficult for Muslim astronaut Sultan Alneyadi to fast during Ramadan.

During Ramadan, Muslims Fast From Sunrise to Sunset. A Muslim Astronaut Will Experience 16 Per Day.

By Noor Al-Sibai

The White House is more irked with Elon Musk than ever after a selfie of him with a Russian propagandist ended up online.

White House Freaked Out Over Elon Musk’s Selfie With Top Russian Propagandist

By Noor Al-Sibai

With piling debt, seized assets, and its once dependable spacecrafts now plagued with leaks, Roscosmos is in some of the worst shape ever.

Russia’s Space Program Appears to Be Completely Falling Apart

By Frank Landymore

Residents of Sacremento and Northern California at large were treated to fiery streaks soaring overhead. Magnificent, but with mundane origins.

Jettisoned From Space Station, Burning Space Junk Streaks Across California Sky

By Frank Landymore

Canada’s New Space Agency Logo Is Very Awesome (and Very Canadian)

By Noor Al-Sibai

Incredible: An Active Volcano on Venus, Seen for the Very First Time

By Frank Landymore

Virgin Orbit's financial woes have apparently deepened to the point that it has reportedly had to furlough its staff while looking for new money.

Virgin’s Satellite Launch Company Is in Deep Financial Doo-Doo

By Noor Al-Sibai