Astute skywatchers may have already seen the striking line of planets across the night sky in January. This week Mercury joins the queue. Now every other world in our solar system will be visible among the stars at the same time — if you know where to look. According to Gerard van Belle, director of…
Deep in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, physicists have uncovered evidence of a ghostly subatomic particle catapulting through space at a speed they once could only dream of. “What we have discovered is, we think, the most energetic neutrino ever recorded on Earth,” said Paul de Jong, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam…
You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic. Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the…
For a few months last fall, a school-bus-size space rock named 2024 PT5 gained fame as Earth’s new “mini-moon.” Astronomers rushed to study the object while it was still close enough to Earth to observe in detail. Now, one team has concluded that 2024 PT5 is a chunk of the real moon. The rock was…