For more than two decades, one idea has anchored our picture of the cosmos: the universe isn't just expanding, it's speeding up, driven by a mysterious "dark energy" baked into empty space itself. That conclusion won the 2011 Nobel Prize... Continue Reading →
Today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, credited to astrophotographer David Cowland, is a wide, wispy shell of red-glowing gas known as RCW 86. It's a quiet-looking target, but the story behind it stretches back almost two thousand years and... Continue Reading →
Today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day features the Vela Supernova Remnant — a vast tangle of glowing filaments left by a star that exploded 12,000 years ago, just 800 light-years from Earth. At its heart, a pulsar spins ten times per second.
What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium, it heats up so much it glows. Two different supernova remnants (SNRs) are visible in the featured image,... Continue Reading →
That gold on your ring finger is stellar -- and not just in a complimentary way. In a finding that may overthrow our understanding of where Earth's heavy elements such as gold and platinum come from, new research by a... Continue Reading →