The Andromeda spiral galaxy A short time ago, in a galaxy very, very close by, a NASA satellite thought it detected a gamma ray burst in Andromeda. It was a false alarm, but astronomers used the opportunity as a reminder that “our galaxy and Andromeda are set for a head-on collision” even though it is widely accepted that galaxies in the universe tend to distance themselves from one another. NASA’s... 

Researchers in London have found a way to make matter from light, using high powered lasers. The idea behind the theory was first thought up 80 years ago by two physicists, who were to work later on creating the world’s first atomic bomb. In 1934, US physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler worked out that, on very rare occasions, two particles of light (photons) could combine to produce an electron... 

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity The NASA Curiosity rover that was thought to bring only cameras, sensors, and scientific equipment when it traveled to Mars in August 2012 may have brought along dozens of species of bacteria that originated on Earth, according to a new study. A study conducted by the American Society for Microbiology and published in the Nature science journal revealed that 377 strains... 

Stephen Hawking has shocked physicists by admitting ‘there are no black holes’. In a paper published online, Professor Hawking instead argues there are ‘grey holes’. ‘The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes – in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity,’ he says in the paper, called Information Preservation... 

Russia has drafted a program for colonization of the moon, and plans to send the first expeditions to build a permanent lunar base in 2030, the Russian Izvestia daily said Thursday, citing an official document. “The moon is a space object for the future exploration by terrestrial civilization, and a geopolitical competition for the Moon’s natural resources may begin in the 21st century,” said... 

Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, from the Galileo and Voyager space missions show a bright flat surface. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system may possess ice and liquid oceans which scientists say are stacked up like a multi-layered club sandwich and may contain life. Scientists from a NASA-funded research team performed a computer modeling of Ganymede’s oceans, taking into account... 

706 people continue fighting for four places in the Mars colonization program Mars One, a participant of the project, resident of Los Angeles, Sue Ann Pien said on Friday. More than 202 thousand people filed applications for participation in the first stage of the selection program, which ended in September, 2013. The first six groups of Martian colonists – consisting of four people each –... 

The crew members of Expedition 40/41 pose in front of a Soyuz spacecraft simulator in Star City, Russia. A number of US senators express concern that the widening diplomatic rift between Washington and Moscow could derail the US space program or even cause Russia to abandon American astronauts in space. Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee told NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Thursday... 

A solar eclipse that occurs on average only once every 73 years may be perfectly witnessed only by penguins in Antarctica, while watchers in Australia had a shot at seeing the sun as a “super-fat banana”. The crescent sun, an annular eclipse meaning that the moon is too far away to completely block out the sun, instead creating a perfect ‘ring of fire’ could be witnessed in Perth, Australia,... 

China is on track to have the world’s largest telescope, as large as 30 football fields, installed in its southwest. The installation process, due for completion in 2016, is currently being undertaken in Pingtang County of Guizhou Province. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) which is basically nothing more than just a bigger clone of the US Arecibo Observatory (305 meter),... 

There have been 26 nuclear-scale asteroid explosions in the Earth’s atmosphere between 2001 and 2013, according to a new report. The most powerful of the impacts was dozens of times the magnitude of the atom bomb that devastated Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Most of the asteroid explosions occurred much too high in the atmosphere to do any damage on the ground, according to findings by the Nuclear Test... 

Concept art showing LADEE over the lunar surface. After spending months in space analyzing the lunar atmosphere, NASA’s latest robotic space explorer crashed and burned onto the moon’s surface. Nothing sinister occurred to cause such a result, though – NASA crashed the vending-machine-sized probe on purpose following what it dubbed a successful mission. In a statement released on Friday, the... 

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has found an Earth-sized planet within the habitable zone of the star it orbits, the space agency announced Thursday. The planet, which NASA calls Kepler-186f, is located in the constellation Cygnus, about 500 light-years from Earth. Kepler-186f orbits the star... 

For the first time in more than two years, Americans will have a chance to see a total lunar eclipse, an event made even more exciting by the fact that a very rare “blood moon” will also be viewable in the sky. The lunar eclipse will begin early Tuesday morning at 12:53 a.m. EDT, when the Earth will start to move in between the sun and the moon. Once the moon becomes completely blanketed by the... 

Russia has expressed its regrets over NASA’s decision to halt cooperation with its Russian counterpart. However, experts agree that the measure will affect NASA and mutual international work, but will not significantly harm Russia. “Well, this is a US decision,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday, commenting on NASA’s decision to suspend “the majority of its...