Space

A cannibal solar storm slammed into Earth’s magnetic field around 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Sept. 1, sparking a geomagnetic storm that lit up skies across Europe and North America overnight. The storm reached G2 (moderate) levels according to both the U.K. Met Office and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), and while different conditions could have produced even more intense…

The joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has tracked electrons traveling at nearly the speed of light back to the sun, finding they originated in different types of solar outbursts. Solar Orbiter detected these so-called Solar Energetic Electrons (SEEs) in space after being accelerated to high energies, and researchers were able to pinpoint their source in an attempt…

Spaceflight has a broad impact on the way our body functions — and that includes our reproductive systems. Indeed, to get a better idea of how future pregnancies and new generations born to humans beyond Earth will be affected, scientists need to examine how well our reproductive germ cells and stem cells respond to potentially harmful factors, like radiation and microgravity. Researchers from…

Cosmic dust particles that give birth to planets around young stars have for the first time been found forming — the James Webb Space Telescope has witnessed the creation of these tiny planetary building blocks around a dead star. “This discovery is a big step forward in understanding how the basic materials of planets come together,” Mikako Matsuura of Cardiff University, who led…