Space

The smallest magnetic loops ever seen in the sun’s corona — imaged for the first time by the National Science Foundation’s Daniel F. Inouye Solar Telescope — could be the bottom floor of the machinery that powers the ferocious flares that routinely blast out from our star. “It’s a landmark moment in solar science,” said Cole Tamburri of the University of Colorado…

New research suggests that dark matter could gather over vast periods of time at the heart of Jupiter-sized planets, creating black holes that eat these worlds from within. This striking concept may mean extrasolar planets, or “exoplanets,” could be used to study the mystery of dark matter. In this new model, superheavy dark matter particles could be trapped by exoplanets, losing…

The latest mission of the U.S. Space Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane is underway. The robotic X-37B lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida tonight (Aug. 21) at 11:50 p.m. EDT (0350 GMT on Aug. 22). The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth as planned 8.5 minutes later, touching down at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station…

A “devil” comet’s water is strikingly similar to the water on Earth, researchers have discovered. The finding supports the idea that water was brought to our planet through comet impacts, helping set the stage for life to evolve, the team reported Aug. 8 in the journal Nature Astronomy. “Our new results provide the strongest evidence yet that at least some Halley-type…