Double comet alert! Comets Lemmon and Comet Swan will be at their closest and brightest this week. Here’s how to tell them apart.
If you want to see two comets, your chance is early this week. After a year of no comets bright enough to be seen without specialized equipment, two comets appeared simultaneously: Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemon) and Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN). Comet Lemon may be more like Lyme than its name suggests, but on Tuesday (October […]
ALMA and JWST unravel the great mysteries of star formation: This week’s space photos
simple facts What it is: HH 211, a baby star that erupts with a huge jet of energy Location: 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. Share date: September 17, 2025 Most events in the universe are not completely understood, including the relatively simple process of star formation. Stars form in dense clouds […]
How does our brain wake up?
When you wake up in the morning, your alarm may go off and your brain feels like it’s turned on, but you may still feel groggy for a while. But the actual process of waking up the brain is a gradual, coordinated event. So how exactly does that happen? First, let’s define what it means […]
NASA mission to visit ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid saves $20 million from budget cuts in last-minute decision
NASA’s plan to fly a spacecraft along a potentially dangerous asteroid in 2029 will continue at least next year. Following threats to cancel the mission, the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft received a last-minute allocation of $20 million in the House budget to continue basic operations next year. However, the fate of 18 other NASA missions scheduled to […]
Astronomers detect first ‘heartbeat’ of newborn star hidden inside powerful cosmic explosion
Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest explosions in the universe, momentarily outsmarting entire galaxies with intense flashes of high-energy radiation. These (excuse the joke) astronomical explosions release more energy in a few seconds than the sun produces in its entire 10 billion year lifespan, sending jets of gamma rays into space. Despite their incredible brightness, gamma-ray […]
Methane ‘switch’ discovered in Arctic Ocean that promotes rapid global warming
The Arctic Ocean was once an important source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and researchers warn it could do so again. Methane (CH4) is second only to carbon dioxide (CO2) in trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Since 2020, human greenhouse gas emissions have increased atmospheric methane by about 10 parts per billion per year, […]
3,500-year-old Egyptian military fortress with ancient oven and fossilized fabric discovered in Sinai desert
Archaeologists have discovered a 3,500-year-old military fortress with zigzag walls in Egypt’s North Sinai Desert, near the Mediterranean coast. The fort is surprisingly well preserved, with remains of ovens and fossilized chunks of dough that the fort’s soldiers never had a chance to eat. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a translated statement […]
Can you actually get high by licking a toad?
In 2022, the U.S. National Park Service posted a blurry photo of a toad taken with a night-vision wildlife camera with a tongue-in-cheek warning: As with most things you encounter in national parks, whether it’s a banana slug, an unfamiliar mushroom, or a giant toad with glowing eyes in the middle of the night, don’t […]
Era of reionization: Astronomers look for signals from ‘one of the most unexplored epochs in the universe’
The young universe may have been boiling over long before starlight first filled the universe, according to a new study. The discovery suggests that some 800 million years after the Big Bang, energy from newborn black holes and the dying embers of the first stars was already warming vast clouds of intergalactic hydrogen gas, offering […]
Iran’s volcano appears to have woken up – 700,000 years after its last eruption
A volcano in southern Iran that was thought to have disappeared about 710,000 years ago is trembling. A new study published Oct. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the ground near the summit of Taftan Volcano rose 3.5 inches (9 centimeters) over a 10-month period from July 2023 to May 2024. The […]