ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Make Movie of Black Hole Spinning Like a Top

Scientists around the world were able to create a short visualization of an active black hole wobbling like a top, according to a new paper—an important observation for the field. Black holes might seem like cosmic vacuum cleaners, but as they suck up matter from their environment, they can spew high-energy jets of material. This … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Hubble Measurements Confirm There’s Something Weird About How the Universe Is Expanding

New results from the Hubble Space Telescope have deepened one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy. Astronomers know that the Universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating. Sometimes you’ll hear news stories claim that the Universe is expanding “faster than we thought.” But that’s not quite what’s going on. The rate of the expansion, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

NASA and FEMA Will Simulate an Impending Asteroid Strike Next Week

NASA, FEMA, and other national and international agencies are once again gearing up for a hypothetical asteroid impact preparedness scenario. They hope to learn the best strategies for responding to a potential strike, starting from the moment a threatening asteroid is first detected by astronomers. Next week marks the start of the International Academy of … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Try Your Luck at Watching the Lyrid Meteor Shower Tonight

The Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight, but actually spotting a meteor could be tough going for lots of observers. Meteor watchers can expect around 18 meteors per hour at the show’s peak. But the bright moon, a waning gibbous two days after the full moon, could wash out some of these “shooting stars.” Seeing meteors … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Hubble Telescope Turns 29, Shares Incredible Photo of Southern Crab Nebula to Celebrate

Hubble scientists like to honor the telescope’s birthday with an annual release of 4/20-worthy space porn, and this year’s pic is as stunning as ever. The image, in full below, offers an updated view of the Southern Crab Nebula. So, what are you looking at? The image shows a pair of stars, a red giant … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Piece of a Comet Found Tucked Inside Meteorite

Scientists have found a cometary building block in an unexpected place: deep inside a meteorite, according to a new paper. The researchers reported finding a 0.1 millimeter, carbon-rich rock fragment inside of a meteorite. They interpreted it as a piece of a comet captured during the earliest ages of the Solar System when the planets … Continued

Tech News

Amazon’s Oil Addiction, Black Holes, and Tiny Ancient Humans: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Wow, it’s finally here: The last season of HBO’s Game of Thrones premieres tonight. In a matter of mere minutes, viewers will have the chance to re-experience the magical world of Westeros, spending a final few episodes in the company of fan favorites like Dragon Owner, The Explosion Doer, Grizzled Conscience Man, Zombie McHugenstein, Sword … Continued

SciencePhysics & Chemistry

Gravitational Wave Detectors Spot Two Potential Black Hole Collisions in a Week

Less than two weeks after the gravitational wave detectors turned back on, they’ve already seen evidence of two pairs of colliding black holes. Scientists are no longer hoping just to discover gravitational waves, the ripples through space first predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Since they first detected the waves in 2015, they’ve … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Why Doesn’t the Black Hole Image Look Like the One From Interstellar?

No one knew what a black hole looked like before today. Sure, we thought we knew, thanks to simulations and the now-famous black hole featured in the movie Interstellar. But today, scientists behind the Event Horizon Telescope unveiled an image of the 6.5-billion-solar-mass black hole at the center of the (relatively) nearby galaxy M87. And … Continued

SciencePhysics & Chemistry

What We Learned From the First Black Hole Image

Today, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope released a picture that will go down in scientific history: the first-ever image of a black hole. But there’s more to science than pretty pictures. Alongside the release, scientists dropped six papers documenting how they created the image and what they’ve already learned about the black hole at … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Gaze Into the Abyss: The First-Ever Image of a Black Hole

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Scientists have presented the first-ever image of a black hole. The image shows the shadow of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, a massive galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster 55 million light-years away. Its mass is 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. … Continued

Tech News

Misogyny at Microsoft, Farscape, and the New Airpods: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

It’s April 2019—and perhaps the month that will later be known as the dawn of the Age of Fungus. A concerning report in the New York Times this weekend detailed how multiple strains of Candida auris, a drug-resistant species of pathogenic fungus, have quietly spread across the globe. The Centers for Disease Control reports a … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Huge Lava Lamp-Like Blobs Spotted in 40-Year-Old Observations of the Sun

Scientists have found lava lamp-like blobs up to 500 times larger than the Earth in the solar wind, in data from a pair of spacecraft that launched in the 1970s. There’s a ton we don’t know about the matter blasted into space by the Sun—that’s why scientists have sent the new Parker Solar Probe to … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

We May Get the First Close-Up Image of a Black Hole Next Week

The Event Horizon Telescope, a network of telescopes on mission to observe supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, is set to release its first results in a public press conference on Wednesday April 10. We don’t know what the results will be—but they have the potential to be utterly worldview-changing. “The event horizon … Continued

SciencePhysics & Chemistry

The Gravitational Wave Detectors Are Turning Back On and We’re Psyched

The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors are set to resume their hunt for gravitational waves on April 1. This go-around, they’ll be even more sensitive thanks to a set of upgrades to their lasers, mirrors, and other components. This next run will be a big deal—for different reasons than the first two observation sessions. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Wildly Spinning Asteroid Caught In the Throes of Self-Destruction

With its long, bright tail, this object bears an uncanny resemblance to a comet, but it’s actually an active asteroid. New observations suggest the asteroid is spinning so quickly that it’s starting to break down and crumble, in what is a relatively rare cosmological phenomenon. The object in question is known as asteroid (6478) Gault, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Saturn’s Ravioli-Shaped ‘Ring Moons’ May Have Formed From a Giant Impact

During the final days of the legendary Cassini mission, the NASA spacecraft performed a series of ring-skimming orbits around Saturn, snapping unprecedented images of the gas giant’s enigmatic ring moons. These photos and other data have now been analyzed by astronomers, shedding new light on these elusive objects and the origin of Saturn’s majestic rings. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Vice President Pence Gives NASA Five Years to Put Americans Back on the Moon—or Else

Speaking on behalf of President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA to put American astronauts on the moon “within the next five years” at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council on Tuesday. Pence declared that current estimates, which say American astronauts would not walk on the Moon until 2028, were “not … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A New List of Stars Shows Us Where to Look for Earth-Like Planets

Astronomers have created a catalog of 1,822 nearby stars around which the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission might spot planets receiving Earth-like levels of starlight. This is a crucial step in humanity’s search for an Earth-like, potentially habitable exoplanet. Whether life exists elsewhere and what it’s like, and whether there are other habitable planets … Continued

Tech News

Formation of Dark Vortex on Neptune Captured For the Very First Time

Late last year, astronomers detected the sixth known dark vortex on Neptune. This time, however, scientists were able to chronicle the formation of this swirling storm over the course of several years, offering new insights into these enigmatic and ephemeral weather features. The discovery of Neptune’s latest dark vortex, and the appearance of a dramatic … Continued