Space

For researchers seeking answers to the question of whether we are alone in the universe, one event nearly half a century ago lingers even today — the so-called “Wow! Signal” detected back in 1977. That strong, baffling radio episode was captured by Ohio State University’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, also known as the “Big Ear.” It has…

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS for the first time. The powerful space telescope trained its infrared vision and its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument (NIRspec) on the comet on Aug. 6, 2025. Discovered on July 1 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope, 3I/ATLAS is just the third-ever object found…

On Aug. 2, 2027, a total solar eclipse will cast its shadow from the Strait of Gibraltar through North Africa and into the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. During the eclipse, the sun’s disk will be completely covered from our perspective on Earth for a maximum of 6 minutes,22 seconds — the longest totality on land in 36 years, and the longest totality until June 3, 2114. No wonder…

New observations of a pair of colliding spiral galaxies hint at what might be in store for the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy if and when they collide. The findings, described in July in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may also help to solve a puzzle plaguing the standard model of cosmology. The two colliding galaxies, NGC 5713 and NGC 5179, are located 88…