A Black Hole's Mass

There are no scales for weighing black holes. Yet astrophysicists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have devised a new way for indirectly measuring the mass of a black hole, while also confirming its existence. They tested the new method, reported in the...

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Sizes of Black Holes

Black holes are singularities, points of infinitely small volume with infinite density. Such incredibly compact objects cause infinite curvature in the fabric of spacetime. Everything that falls into a black hole is sucked toward the singularity. At some distance...

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Could Venus Have Supported Life 700 Million Years Ago?

The hellish planet Venus may have had a perfectly habitable environment for 2 to 3 billion years after the planet formed, suggesting life would have had ample time to emerge there, according to a new study.  A study presented at the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019 by Michael...

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Water Vapour on the Habitable-Zone Exoplanet K2-18b

Astronomers have finally uncovered water vapour in the atmosphere of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. The find means that liquid water could also exist on the rocky world's surface, potentially even forming a global ocean. The discovery,...

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It Rains on the Sun, But When And How?

Rain comes in various forms throughout the solar system water on Earth, methane/ethane on Titan and sulfuric acid on Venus. But did you know it also rains on the sun? Huge drops of plasma in the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, onto the scorching surface.  Mason, a...

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Is It Possible To Terraform Mars To Support Life As We Know It?

Science fiction writers have long featured terraforming, the process of creating an Earth-like or habitable environment on another planet, in their stories. Scientists themselves have proposed terraforming to enable the long-term colonization of Mars. A solution...

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How Does Solar Sail Work?

Solar sails are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors. These particles of light have no mass and yet when they impinge on something, they can impart momentum and provide a tiny push. You get shoved by photons every...

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

Reaching a major milestone, engineers have successfully connected the two halves of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California. Once it reaches space, NASA's most powerful and complex space telescope...

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Why Does Earth's Magnetic Field Flip?

Earth's magnetic field has flipped many times over the last billion years, according to the geologic record. But only in the past decade have scientists developed and evolved a computer model to demonstrate how these reversals occur. Based on a set of physics equations...

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Magnetic North Is Shifting Fast. But Why?

Like most planets in our solar system, the Earth has its own magnetic field. Thanks to its largely molten iron core, our planet is, in fact, a bit like a bar magnet. It has a north and south magnetic pole, separate from the geographic poles, with a field connecting the...

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What Is Geothermal Energy?

Geothermal energy is heat derived within the sub-surface of the earth. It is contained in the rocks and fluids beneath the earth’s crust and can be found as far down to the earth’s hot molten rock, magma. Water or steam carry the geothermal energy to the Earth’s surface....

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