By Evan Gough – February 02, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-magnetic-superhighways-that-drive-galaxy-evolution 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 the field. That means they […]

By Johns Hopkins University January 29, 2026 Collected at: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-found-a-surprising-way-to-track-falling-space-junk/ Earthquake sensors are giving scientists a new way to track space junk as it falls back to Earth. Thousands of discarded, human-made objects remain in orbit around Earth, and when pieces of this space debris fall back to the surface, they can pose real dangers […]

By Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology January 28, 2026 Collected at: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-crack-mystery-behind-jupiter-and-saturns-wild-polar-weather/ Jupiter and Saturn host strikingly different polar storms, despite being similar giant planets, and scientists have long wondered why. New simulations suggest the answer may lie deep below the clouds. Spacecraft flybys have given scientists a front row seat to some of the strangest weather […]

By Matthew Williams – January 31, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/for-the-first-time-scientists-detect-molecule-critical-to-life-in-interstellar-space The chemical is known as thiepine, or 2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione (C₆H₆S), a ring-shaped sulfur-bearing hydrocarbon produced in biochemical reactions. When examining the molecular cloud G+0.693–0.027, a star-forming region about 27,000 light-years from Earth near the center of the Milky Way, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for […]

By Bruce Dorminey – January 30, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/boron-could-be-astrobiologys-unsung-hero 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, although it’s still not listed […]

By Laurence Tognetti, MSc – January 29, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/whats-really-going-on-inside-jupiter-new-models-offer-clues Jupiter’s atmosphere and clouds have mesmerized stargazers for centuries, as their multi-colored, swirling layers can easily be viewed from powerful telescopes on Earth. However, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has upped the ante regarding our understanding of Jupiter’s atmospheric features, having revealed them in breathtaking detail. […]

By Mark Thompson – January 29, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/nasa-fires-up-nuclear-future-for-deep-space-travel Deep space is far away. Really far away, and getting there quickly with conventional chemical rockets is like trying to cross an ocean in a rowing boat, technically possible but painfully slow and severely limited in what you can carry. NASA has just taken a […]

By Mark Thompson – January 28, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/mercury-may-not-be-dead-after-all For decades, Mercury has carried the reputation of being a dead, dry planet whose geological story ended long ago. Its cratered surface, baked by the Sun and seemingly frozen in time, appeared to tell a tale of ancient violence followed by billions of years of […]

By Mark Thompson – January 27, 2026 Collected at: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/stellar-fireworks-at-the-heart-of-the-milky-way Deep in the frozen heart of Antarctica, the South Pole Telescope has been watching one of the most extreme neighbourhoods in our Galaxy, and it’s just caught something extraordinary happening there. Astronomers have detected powerful stellar flares erupting from stars near the supermassive black hole […]

By Pranjal Malewar Published: January 27, 2026 Collected at: https://www.techexplorist.com/nasa-finds-new-evidence-dark-matter-steers-cosmos/101904/ For hundreds of years, scientists have looked at the stars without knowing that most of the universe is hidden. The matter that makes up everything we see, like oceans, planets, and galaxies, is only one-sixth of all the matter in the universe. The rest is […]