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Walkabout the Galaxy

Mar 18, 2026

Gravitational Wave observatory LIGO has seen a signature that looks like the merger of primordial (pre-stellar, big bang (not big band!) era) black holes. If confirmed with future observations, this would tell us a lot about the early universe and potentially shed light on dark matter. Finally! Plus, closer to home, the...


Feb 25, 2026

Supermassive black holes can be terrible neighbors. New research shows that their powerful jets of charged particles can shut down star formation in neighboring galaxies within the galaxy cluster, which is just plain rude. Closer to home, our own Down Quark Audrey Martin is part of a study shedding new light (with the...


Feb 18, 2026

The Earth spent some crazy amounts of time (tens of millions of years) completely frozen over. And not, in the grand scheme of things, all that long ago. New research shows the ocean was salty and super-cold. How did life survive? New techniques using radio observations reveal a complicated and twisty galactic...


Feb 5, 2026

There's always been a fuzzy line between asteroids and comets, and new observations of asteroids in the vicinity of Jupiter provide a hint to the origin of the mysterious active asteroids that look like asteroids but act like comets. Elsewhere in the galaxy, the famous ring nebula gets a new spectral image that...


Jan 29, 2026

Scientists head to the volcanic fields of Iceland to test instruments for the VERITAS mission to Venus, Artemis II is ready for its historic flight to the Moon, and the Dark Energy Survey reveals the distribution of dark matter on an astounding scale. For mind-blowing astro-stuff, space news, and trivia, join...