2+ hour, 52+ min ago   (600+ words) SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he's making space-based artificial intelligence the "immediate focus" of a newly expanded company that not only builds rockets and satellites, but also controls xAI's generative-AI software and the X social-media platform. That's the upshot of…...

10+ hour, 30+ min ago   (498+ words) A galaxy's powerful magnetic fields have a fundamental effect on light, and it's all because of dust. Tiny dust grains in interstellar space are elongated rather than spherical. In the presence of a magnetic field, these grains align themselves with…...

15+ hour, 8+ min ago   (779+ words) This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 7722, a lenticular galaxy about 187 million light-years away in the constellation'Pegasus. This "lens-shaped" galaxy sits in between more familiar'spiral alaxies'and'elliptical galaxies in the galaxy classification scheme. The dark, dramatic dust lanes are…...

3+ day, 8+ hour ago   (514+ words) For the first time, a complex, ring-shaped molecule containing 13 atoms'including sulfur'has been detected in interstellar space, based on laboratory measurements. The discovery closes a critical gap by linking simple chemistry in space with the complex organic building blocks found in…...

3+ day, 8+ hour ago   (760+ words) The search for life-supporting worlds in the Solar System includes the Jovian moon Europa. Yes, it's an iceberg of a world, but underneath its frozen exterior lies a deep, salty ocean and a nickel-iron core. It's heated by tidal flexing,…...

3+ day, 9+ hour ago   (861+ words) We see stars as the main constituent of galaxies. They're the visible part, and they're what announce a galaxy's presence. But a galaxy's gas supply is its lifeblood, and tracing the gas as it flows in and through a galaxy…...

3+ day, 15+ hour ago   (719+ words) Observations show that Jupiter's icy moon Europa has a thick icy shell covering a warm ocean. The ocean is chemically-rich, and may have all the essential ingredients for life. That's why Europa is such a juicy target in the search…...

3+ day, 15+ hour ago   (891+ words) The light, rare element boron, better known as the primary component of borax, a longtime household cleaner, was almost mined to exhaustion in parts of the old American West. But boron could arguably be an unsung hero in cosmic astrobiology,…...

3+ day, 17+ hour ago   (448+ words) Admittedly, there is some nuance to that finding. The particular feature they looked at was something called the Margin Unit - a band of olivine- and carbonate-rich rocks ringing the inner edge of the crater. The paper actually splits this into…...

3+ day, 23+ hour ago   (170+ words) That synchronisation challenge has long been the limiting factor in radio astronomy. Now, researchers at KAIST in South Korea have developed a solution that replaces the electronic reference signals telescopes have traditionally used with something far more precise, laser light....