Space & Time News

October 17, 2025

Top Headlines

Harvard Astrophysicist Suggests Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be an Alien Probe

Oct. 15, 2025 — 3I/ATLAS, a mysterious interstellar object racing toward the Sun, is baffling scientists with its speed and origin. Some researchers suggest it could even be alien-made, drawing comparisons to probes ...

The Sun’s Hidden Poles Could Finally Reveal Its Greatest Secrets

Oct. 14, 2025 — High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...

The Moon’s South Pole Hides a 4-billion-year-old Secret

Oct. 12, 2025 — A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...

An Interstellar Visitor Lights Up the Red Planet’s Sky

Oct. 12, 2025 — ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...

Scientists Stunned by Wild Martian Dust Devils Racing at Hurricane Speeds

Oct. 9, 2025 — Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...

ESA’s Chilling New “Super Antenna” in Australia Reaches Spacecraft Billions of Miles Away

Oct. 6, 2025 — ESA has inaugurated a powerful new 35-meter deep space antenna at its New Norcia site in Western Australia, marking a major boost to Europe’s ability to communicate with spacecraft exploring the ...

A Tiny Detector Could Unveil Gravitational Waves We’ve Never Seen Before

Oct. 3, 2025 — Researchers have designed a new type of gravitational wave detector that operates in the milli-Hertz range, a region untouched by current observatories. Built with optical resonators and atomic clocks, the compact detectors can fit on a lab table ...

New Rocket Fuel Compound Packs 150% More Energy

Sep. 30, 2025 — A new boron-rich compound, manganese diboride, delivers much higher energy density than current solid-rocket materials while remaining stable until intentionally ignited. Its power comes from an unusual, strained atomic structure formed during ...

Cosmic Simulations That Once Needed Supercomputers Now Run on a Laptop

Sep. 18, 2025 — Astronomers have long relied on supercomputers to simulate the immense structure of the Universe, but a new tool called Effort.jl is changing that. By mimicking the behavior of complex cosmological models, this emulator delivers results with the ...

The Moon Could Finally Reveal Dark Matter

Sep. 18, 2025 — Faint hydrogen signals from the cosmic Dark Ages may soon help determine the mass of dark matter particles. Simulations suggest future Moon-based observatories could distinguish between warm and cold dark matter, providing long-sought answers about ...

This New AI Can Spot Solar Storms Days Before They Strike

Sep. 17, 2025 — A new AI model from NYU Abu Dhabi predicts solar wind days in advance with far greater accuracy than existing methods. By analyzing ultraviolet solar images, it could help protect satellites, navigation systems, and power grids from disruptive space ...

Rapid Rocket Growth Raises Alarm over Earth’s Fragile Ozone Layer

Sep. 15, 2025 — The booming space industry has filled the skies with rockets and satellites, but this rapid expansion comes with a hidden danger: slowing the recovery of the ozone layer. Rocket launches and burning space debris release chlorine, soot, and metals ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:41am EDT

MIT Finds Traces of a Lost World Deep Within Planet Earth

Oct. 17, 2025 — Researchers have discovered chemical fingerprints of Earth's earliest incarnation, preserved in ancient mantle rocks. A unique imbalance in potassium isotopes points to remnants of “proto Earth” ...

Saturn's Moon Titan Just Broke One of Chemistry’s Oldest Rules

Oct. 17, 2025 — Scientists from NASA and Chalmers University have discovered that incompatible substances can mix on Titan’s icy surface, breaking the “like dissolves like” rule of chemistry. Under ultra-cold ...

Rogue Black Hole Shocks Astronomers With Record Radio Blast

Oct. 16, 2025 — For the first time, scientists observed a black hole tearing apart a star far from its galaxy’s center, producing the fastest-changing radio signals ever recorded. The event, AT 2024tvd, revealed ...

Asteroid Ryugu’s Hidden Waters Could Explain How Earth Got Its Oceans

Oct. 16, 2025 — Ryugu’s samples reveal that water activity on asteroids lasted far longer than scientists thought, possibly reshaping theories of how Earth gained its oceans. A billion-year-old impact may have ...

A Giant Asteroid Hit Earth, but Its Crater Is Missing

Oct. 16, 2025 — Researchers discovered a new field of ancient tektites in South Australia, revealing a long-forgotten asteroid impact. These 11-million-year-old glass fragments differ chemically and geographically ...

Who or What Dug Mars’ Mysterious Gullies? The Answer Is Explosive

Oct. 16, 2025 — CO₂ ice blocks on Mars may dig gullies as they slide and sublimate in the thin atmosphere. In lab experiments, scientists recreated these eerie, worm-like movements under Martian conditions. The ...

Physicists Discover Mysterious New Type of Time Crystal

Oct. 15, 2025 — Scientists at TU Wien have uncovered that quantum correlations can stabilize time crystals—structures that oscillate in time without an external driver. Contrary to previous assumptions, quantum ...

It Actually Rains on the Sun. Here’s the Stunning Reason

Oct. 15, 2025 — Scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi have discovered why it rains on the Sun. Solar rain, made of cooling plasma, forms rapidly during solar flares, a mystery now solved by modeling time-varying ...

These Giant Planets Shouldn’t Exist. But They Do

Oct. 15, 2025 — Astronomers are investigating a strange class of exoplanets known as eccentric warm Jupiters — massive gas giants that orbit their stars in unexpected, elongated paths. Unlike their close-orbiting ...

Astronomers Detect a Cosmic “heartbeat” in Pulsar Signals

Oct. 15, 2025 — Researchers analyzing pulsar data have found tantalizing hints of ultra-slow gravitational waves. A team from Hirosaki University suggests these signals might carry “beats” — patterns formed by ...

Earlier Headlines

A Million-Sun-Mass Mystery Object Found Lurking in Deep Space

Oct. 11, 2025 — Scientists using a global array of radio telescopes have detected the universe’s lowest-mass dark object by observing how it warped light through gravitational lensing. The invisible mass, about a ...

JWST Spots a Hidden Red Supergiant Just Before It Exploded

Oct. 9, 2025 — The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered a massive red supergiant star just before it exploded, finally solving a cosmic mystery. Hidden beneath layers of dust, the doomed star revealed itself ...

Tiny Asteroid Flew Right Over Antarctica, and No One Saw It Coming

Oct. 9, 2025 — Asteroid 2025 TF zipped past Earth above Antarctica, coming within 428 km of the surface. Roughly the size of a small car, it was detected hours after the flyby and posed no danger. ESA astronomers ...

Scientists Uncover a Hidden Power Source Inside a Monster Black Hole

Oct. 7, 2025 — Scientists have simulated how M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, powers its immense particle jet. The Frankfurt team’s FPIC code shows that magnetic reconnection, ...

Gaia Solves the Mystery of Tumbling Asteroids and Reveals What’s Inside Them

Oct. 7, 2025 — By combining Gaia’s massive asteroid dataset with AI modeling, scientists discovered that asteroid rotation depends on how often they’ve been hit. A mysterious gap in rotation speeds marks where ...

Astronomers Discover the Most Powerful and Distant Cosmic Ring Ever Seen

Oct. 6, 2025 — Astronomers have found the most distant and energetic “odd radio circle” ever detected — a massive double-ringed radio structure nearly 10 billion years old. The discovery, made with the help ...

Rogue Planet Spotted Devouring 6 Billion Tons Every Second

Oct. 3, 2025 — Astronomers have uncovered a runaway feeding frenzy in a rogue planet drifting freely through space, devouring six billion tonnes of gas and dust every second. Located 620 light-years away in the ...

JWST May Have Found the Universe’s First Stars Powered by Dark Matter

Oct. 14, 2025 — New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope hint that the universe’s first stars might not have been ordinary fusion-powered suns, but enormous “supermassive dark stars” powered by ...

Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus Just Revealed Stunning New Clues to Life

Oct. 2, 2025 — Fresh analysis of Cassini data has revealed new complex organic molecules inside ice grains spewing from Enceladus. These discoveries strengthen the case that the moon’s underground ocean hosts ...

October’s Sky Comes Alive With a Supermoon and Shooting Stars

Oct. 6, 2025 — October’s night sky is set to dazzle, featuring a radiant supermoon, the fiery Draconid meteor shower, and the sparkling Orionids. As the full moon reaches its largest and brightest on October 6, ...

The Moon’s Far Side Is Hiding a Chilling Secret

Oct. 3, 2025 — New lunar samples from the far side reveal it formed from cooler magma than the near side, confirming the Moon’s interior is not uniform. Researchers suggest fewer heat-producing elements on the ...

Hubble Captures a Galaxy That Glows in Blue and Gold

Oct. 7, 2025 — Hubble captured a breathtaking view of NGC 6000, a spiral galaxy where blue newborn stars shine beside golden, aging ones. The image also reveals traces of ancient supernovae still glowing faintly ...

Scientists May Be Closing in on Dark Matter’s True Identity

Oct. 1, 2025 — The LUX-ZEPLIN detector is breaking new ground in the hunt for dark matter, setting unprecedented limits on WIMP particles. Its results not only narrow the possibilities for dark matter but also open ...

Astronomers Stunned as Fiery Auroras Blaze on a Planet Without a Star

Sep. 29, 2025 — The James Webb Telescope has revealed fierce auroras, storms, and unchanging sand-like clouds on the rogue planet SIMP-0136. These insights are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of alien ...

Hubble Finds a Hybrid Galaxy With a Mysterious and Violent Past

Sep. 29, 2025 — Hubble has captured a striking new image of NGC 2775, a galaxy that defies easy classification. Blending features of spirals, ellipticals, and lenticulars, its puzzling structure may be the result of ...

10 People Who Beat 8,000 Others to Become NASA Astronaut Candidates

Sep. 23, 2025 — NASA has chosen 10 new astronaut candidates who will train for missions to the Moon and Mars. Their selection represents a powerful blend of talent and ambition, fueling humanity’s next great leaps ...

The Surprising New Particle That Could Finally Explain Dark Matter

Sep. 25, 2025 — Physicists are eyeing charged gravitinos—ultra-heavy, stable particles from supergravity theory—as possible Dark Matter candidates. Unlike axions or WIMPs, these particles carry electric charge ...

Neutrinos May Be the Hidden Force Behind Gold and Platinum

Sep. 21, 2025 — When two neutron stars collide, they unleash some of the most powerful forces in the universe, creating ripples in spacetime, showers of radiation, and even the building blocks of gold and platinum. ...

Hubble Reveals Baby Stars in a Galaxy Torn by Gravity

Sep. 21, 2025 — Hubble’s latest look at Messier 96 reveals a warped spiral galaxy glowing with rings of stellar birth. The new details shed light on how stars emerge and influence their ...

Alien Water Worlds Were Just a Mirage

Sep. 19, 2025 — A new study challenges the dream of water-rich “Hycean” planets like K2-18b, suggesting that most sub-Neptunes lose their water deep into their interiors during formation. Instead of vast oceans, ...