News by Subject Space & Planetary

A new Northwestern University study discovered that spaceflight -- both aboard a space shuttle or the International Space Station (ISS) -- has a consistent effect on the gut microbiome.

Lithium fluoride crystals have recently been used to register the tracks of nuclear particles. Physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow have just demonstrated that these crystals are also ideal for detecting tracks of high-energy ions of elements even as heavy as iron.

By creating millions of virtual universes and comparing them to observations of actual galaxies, a University of Arizona-led research team has made discoveries that present a powerful new approach for studying galaxy formation.

Exposure to chronic, low dose radiation -- the conditions present in deep space -- causes neural and behavioral impairments in mice, researchers report in eNeuro. These results highlight the pressing need to develop safety measures to protect the brain from radiation during deep space missions as astronauts prepare to travel to Mars.

The scorching hot exoplanet WASP-121b may not be shredding any heavy metal guitar riffs, but it is sending heavy metals such as iron and magnesium into space. The distant planet's atmosphere is so hot that metal is vaporizing and escaping the planet's gravitational pull. The intense gravity of the planet's host star has also deformed the sizzling planet into a football shape.

NASA's newest planet-hunting satellite has discovered a type of planet missing from our own solar system. The finding will soon allow for study of this 'missing link' between rocky Earth-like planets and gas-dominant mini-Neptunes.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has discovered three new worlds that are among the smallest, nearest exoplanets known to date. The planets orbit a star just 73 light years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes -- planets about half the size of our own icy giant.

A newly-discovered planet orbiting one of the brightest young stars known could provide valuable information on how planetary bodies form.

More than 100 years after Albert Einstein published his iconic theory of general relativity, it's beginning to fray at the edges, said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. Now, in the most comprehensive test of general relativity near the monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy, Ghez and her research team report July 25 in the journal Science that Einstein's theory of general relativity holds up, at least for now.