Category: 2. Space

The search for exoplanets – planets that orbit stars located beyond the borders of our solar system – is a hot topic in astrophysics. Of the various types of exoplanets, one is hot in the literal sense: hot Jupiters, a class of exoplanets…

Sturdy legs are needed to absorb the impact of the heaviest spacecraft to ever touch down on the Red Planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover…

Near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy sits an immense “supermassive” black hole that astronomers call Sagittarius A*.

Scientists theorise that the black hole grew in tandem with our galaxy, and suspect that similar phenomena are at the heart…

In the tropics, above the equatorial rainforests and oceans, the strong solar radiation hitting Earth propels a stream of warm, moist air far upward. Once reaching the upper atmosphere, this stream moves in both hemispheres toward the poles; it…

A team of anthropologists from Tulane University have deciphered new secrets of the Maya calendar.

Maya monuments and glyphs record an 819-day count in the Maya calendar, with each group of 819 days being associated with one of four colours and…

Digital displays comprising organic materials have brought about a new era in consumer electronics, helping to mass produce brighter screens that hold numerous advantages over those made of regular crystalline materials. These organic…

The journey to Jupiter has begun. The European Space Agency’s unmanned spacecraft JUICE (short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) was recently launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. JUICE’s voyage, the ESA’s most ambitious…

The Weizmann Institute of Science is building a new observatory in the Negev, near kibbutz Neot Smadar. It will consist of 48 telescopes – each featuring a 28-cm mirror – with an extremely wide field of view. The new array will be equivalent…

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a…

In a paper published in the journal, Science Advances, researchers have applied archaeoastronomical studies to demonstrate how the civic and ceremonial buildings in Mesoamerica were largely oriented to sunrises or sunsets on specific dates from…