Science & Space News: Discoveries, Astronomy and Research

Dogs living around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are genetically distinct from dogs just a few miles away, and a new study suggests the reason may be natural selection rather than radiation-induced mutations, ScienceAlert reported. The

Black holes are known for merging, not breaking apart. But a team of physicists has calculated that, under the right conditions, a black hole could split into two, according to Universe Today. The idea is purely theoretical, and no one has

Archaeologists in Pompeii have opened a wooden wardrobe that stayed sealed for almost 2,000 years and found everyday belongings inside, including makeup tools, a perfume bottle, coins and a child’s necklace, The Guardian reported. The wardr

Astronomers have reported a pair of gamma-ray bursts that does not match anything seen or predicted before: a short burst and a long burst, separated by only four minutes. According to ScienceAlert, the finding, described in a paper in Natu

NASA says that on Nov. 18, 2026, Voyager 1 will pass a new distance milestone: one light-day from the Sun, at 16.1 billion miles. The date falls 49 years after the spacecraft’s launch, according to the agency’s November Night Sky Notes. The

Halloween has deep roots in folklore, but according to EarthSky, its heart is astronomical. The holiday on Oct. 31 is a cross-quarter day, a point on the calendar that falls roughly midway between an equinox and a solstice, and so it is tie

One of the sky’s spookiest sights comes with the Halloween season: the Witch Head Nebula, a huge but extremely dim cloud of gas and dust that sits beside the constellation Orion. According to EarthSky, Orion climbs over the eastern horizon

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has spotted a distant object that could become the sixth officially recognized dwarf planet in the solar system. Temporarily designated 2026 ED138, it orbits beyond Neptune and Pluto and may be among t

Scientists have long known that cooler temperatures extend life in many animals. A new study in the journal Nature suggests part of the reason is an active chemical signal that starts in muscle, according to ScienceAlert. The work was done

A wispy, ghost-like cloud drifting on its own inside the Carina Nebula is not a haunting at all. According to Universe Today, astronomers who studied it with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope found that it

Two astronauts installed and unrolled a new solar array on the International Space Station on Thursday, Oct. 29, in what Space.com described as the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the orbiting outpost. NASA's Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk of the C

Reid Wiseman, who commanded NASA's Artemis II lunar flyby, is leaving the astronaut ranks for a leadership post at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA announced. Caltech named him associate vice president and deputy director of JPL, and he