Space
-
Focus
Australia re-enters the space race
SA-based Southern Launch begins rocket test program.
South Australia’s west coast will roar with the sound of rocket launches this week, as start-up Southern Launch begin...
-
SpaceWatch: A matter about dark matter
Active Bennu and hot moons, but no aliens.
Dark matter theories may lack something Astronomers suspect something is missing in current theories of how dark m...
-
History
Ruby Payne-Scott stood out in the crowd
The short but remarkable career of a pioneering astronomer.
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) maintains a rich and lively online p...
-
The Moon’s rusting and it’s Earth’s fault
Iron oxide shouldn’t form on the lunar surface, yet it does.
Rust requires three ingredients – water, oxygen, and iron. And yet the Moon, where water and oxygen are famously in s...
-
Massive haloes explain a massive gas stream
Astronomers get to grips with the great Magellanic mystery.
The Magellanic Stream is hard to ignore. The enormous stream of gas stripped from the two dwarf Magellanic galaxies t...
-
What spaceflight does to body and brain
Two new studies look at the impact on astronauts.
Two new studies have analysed the impact of space travel on humans – and one could be of benefit here on Earth. US...
-
Grains of dust revise Solar System history
Scientists study the chemical composition of meteorites.
Asteroids that formed far out in the Solar System appear to contain dust grains that themselves condensed from the in...
-
A planet-forming disc torn apart
Two studies reveal misaligned rings around triple-star system.
Astronomers say they have identified the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-formi...
-
Black holes merge to create something huge
The most massive ever observed with gravitational waves.
Astronomers from the international LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaboration have reported their biggest catch yet – a ...
-
Can a black hole fire up a cold heart?
Astronomers find hot gas in the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster.
Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole 5.9 billion light-years away in the const...
-
Our nearest neighbour has quite a halo
Scientists take a good look around the Andromeda galaxy.
The immense gas halo around our nearest neighbouring galaxy is already bumping into our own, scientists suggest. U...
-
Conversation
Can the Moon be a person?
Lunar mining might require a change of thinking.
By Alice Gorman, Flinders University Everyone is planning to return to the Moon. At least 10 missions by half a do...