Day: January 30, 2025

Mars was hot then cold then hot again. Could life have really survived there?

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New research suggests that temperatures on ancient Mars may have fluctuated between hot and cold periods through a relatively short period during its lifetime of billions of years. But these hot and cold spells may have been detrimental to life if it existed on the Red Planet. Mars may be a dry and arid planet today, but scientists know that Earth’s neighbor was much wetter and much more like our planet in its ancient past. These new findings from a team of researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School…

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SPHEREx’s Concentric Cones

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Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will create a map of the cosmos like no other. Using a technique called spectroscopy to image the entire sky in 102 wavelengths of infrared light, SPHEREx will gather information about the composition of and distance to millions of galaxies and stars. With this map, scientists will study what happened in the first fraction of a second after the big bang, how galaxies formed and evolved, and the origins of water in planetary systems…

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NASA astronaut Suni Williams sets new record on 5.5-hour spacewalk outside ISS (video)

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Two NASA astronauts working outside of the International Space Station on Thursday (Jan. 30) were able to finally remove a faulty radio communications unit, succeeding where two previous spacewalks had been unsuccessful. The extended work needed to free the radio frequency group (RFG) by Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore came at a cost, though, as the two ran out of time to accomplish all of the tasks planned for Thursday’s EVA (extravehicular activity). Williams and Wilmore, who launched together on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and are serving together on…

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Astronomers find hundreds of ‘hidden’ black holes — and there may be billions or even trillions more

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Astronomers have discovered hundreds of hidden supermassive black holes lurking in the universe — and there may be billions or even trillions more out there that we still haven’t found. The researchers identified these giant black holes by peering through clouds of dust and gas in infrared light. The finds could help astronomers refine their theories of how galaxies evolve, the researchers say. Hunting for black holes is difficult work. They are the darkest objects in the universe, as not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Scientists can sometimes…

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