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Universe Today

Scientists make an intriguing find in dark-matter hunt

Main LUX-ZEPLIN detector surrounded by hardware
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment's main detector sits in a surface lab before its installation underground. (Credit: Matthew Kapust / SURF)

Dark matter is the invisible stuff that accounts for roughly 85% of the mass in the universe, and for decades, physicists have been trying to figure out what it’s made of. Now an experimental facility located nearly a mile below ground in South Dakota has recorded a single interaction between subatomic particles that doesn’t match what’s expected from normal matter.

Has a dark-matter particle been detected at last? It’s too early to say, but the anomaly is attracting attention from dark-matter detectives.

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Universe Today

Roman rises! Get to know NASA’s newest space telescope

Falcon Heavy rocket rises with Roman Space Telescope aboard
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rises from its pad, sending the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into space. (NASA Photo / Joel Kowsky)

NASA’s newest eye on the sky, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has begun its journey to unravel the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and Earthlike planets — months ahead of schedule.

The 9-ton telescope rode to space today aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. ET (4:26 a.m. PT). The ascent went off without a hitch, setting up the telescope for a three-month cruise to a gravitational balance point known as Earth-sun L2, almost a million miles beyond our planet.

The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters flew themselves back to landings on the Florida coast, near the launch site, while the center core booster splashed into the sea after stage separation.

NASA had originally scheduled liftoff for 2027, but the $4.3 billion mission came in ahead of schedule and under budget.

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Universe Today

Lucky 13! Starship sends out satellites and stays intact

Aerial view of Starship rising from launch pad
SpaceX's Starship launch system rises from its Texas launch pad for a suborbital flight test. (Credit: SpaceX via X)

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket deployed operational next-generation Starlink satellites for the first time during its 13th flight test, which addressed snags that arose in the previous test.

The 407-foot-tall, two-stage rocket rose from its Starbase launch pad in Texas at 5:51 p.m. CT (3:51 p.m. PT) today, with all 33 Raptor engines firing on the Super Heavy booster. On the way up, the rocket set a record for maximum dynamic pressure, also known as Max-Q.

Minutes after liftoff, the Starship upper stage — known as Ship — separated to continue on the flight test’s trajectory, and then the booster relit its engines for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot noted that not all of the engines fired up as planned — making for a splash that was a bit spicier than expected but still safe.

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Universe Today

Large Hadron Collider shuts down for a smashing upgrade

Head-on view of magnet for High-Luminosity LHC
A magnet for the High-Luminosity LHC is readied at CERN's Large Magnet Facility. (Credit: © 2026 CERN / Florence Thompson)

After nearly 18 years of operation, highlighted by the detection of the elusive Higgs boson, Europe’s CERN physics research center says it’s bidding “Farewell” to the Large Hadron Collider. But it’s actually more like “See You Later, Accelerator!”

The new, improved High-Luminosity LHC is due to make its debut in 2030, with up to 10 times the luminosity of the original LHC. CERN officials talk about HiLumi LHC almost as if it will be a brand-new machine.

“The LHC has exceeded every expectation,” Oliver Brüning, CERN’s director for accelerators and technology, said today in a news release. “For nearly two decades, it has transformed our understanding of the universe and inspired generations of scientists, engineers and citizens around the world. Today we say goodbye to the LHC as we have known it, while preparing to welcome its successor: the HiLumi LHC, which will extend this scientific adventure far into the future.”

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Universe Today

Prize-winning plan aims to protect space infrastructure

Illustration: Earth surrounded by web of satellites
Scientists say the growing web of satellites surrounding our planet is vulnerable to meteor storms. (OneWeb Illustration)

For decades, astronomers and policymakers have been working on plans to protect our planet from killer asteroids. But now there’s a new realm to protect: the thousands of satellites we’re putting in orbit.

And that’s just the start: Future off-world infrastructure, ranging from orbital fuel depots to moon bases, could be hit by asteroids, meteoroid storms or other threats from above.

A new proposal to identify such threats — and do something about them — has earned two researchers from the University of Edinburgh this year’s Schweickart Prize, which is named in honor of Apollo 9 astronaut (and planetary defense advocate) Rusty Schweickart.

“As human activity and vital interests rapidly expand into regions beyond the protective shield of our atmosphere, the number of passing objects capable of causing serious damage to both life and critical infrastructure increases dramatically,” Schweickart said in a news release. “Our Schweickart Prize winners this year have called for a comprehensive and systematic examination of this emerging reality.”

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Universe Today

SETI experts update their protocols for ‘Disclosure Day’

Array of radio telescopes with mountain in background
The Allen Telescope Array in California uses dozens of antennas to look for signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. (SETI Institute Photo)

An international committee of experts says it has updated its rules for evaluating and revealing the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The revisions to the decades-old Declaration of Principles, created and maintained by the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Committee, come just days before the release of “Disclosure Day,” a movie about alien visitation directed by Steven Spielberg.

This is the first major update to the committee’s protocols in more than 15 years. “The information environment we operate in today is vastly more complex than it was in 2010,” committee chair Michael Garrett, an astrophysics professor at the University of Manchester, said in a news release. “In an era of deepfakes, automated misinformation and instant global connectivity, a single unverified claim could trigger confusion or panic. These new protocols ensure that scientists maintain the highest standards of evidence before making announcements to the world.”

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Universe Today

Next-gen Starship passes its first flight test despite snags

Aerial view of Starship launch from Texas pad
SpaceX's Starship V3 rocket rises from its Texas launch pad. (SpaceX via X)

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship V3 rocket got off to a glorious start for its first test flight, and although not all of its engines fired fully according to plan, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the mission “scored a goal for humanity.”

This was the 12th Starship launch, but the first one since SpaceX completed a thorough redesign of the rocket’s Super Heavy first-stage booster, the second stage (known as Ship), the Raptor rocket engines and the launch facilities at SpaceX’s Starbase in south Texas.

Super Heavy lit all 33 of its Raptor V3 engines at liftoff, and successfully sent Ship on its way over the Gulf of Mexico. But after stage separation, Super Heavy shut down its engines prematurely. As a result, the booster tumbled through the atmosphere to an uncontrolled but safe splashdown in the gulf.

SpaceX had planned for a controlled splashdown but hadn’t planned to recover the booster, so it was no great loss.

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Universe Today

Crypto investor plans to ride Starship around Mars

Chun Wang
Chun Wang works on his laptop with Earth looming outside the window of SpaceX's Dragon capsule. (Chun Wang / SpaceX via X / 2025)

Chinese-born cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang has become the latest deep-pocketed space enthusiast to set his sights on a trip around Mars. But first, he wants to take a ride around the moon on SpaceX’s Starship. And SpaceX is willing to work with him.

Wang shared his ambition today during a SpaceX webcast focusing on the first attempt to launch a next-generation Starship V3 rocket from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas for a test flight. The launch attempt had to be called off due to technical difficulties with ground equipment, but SpaceX could try again as soon as May 22.

During a lull in the countdown, the webcast team cut to an interview with Wang, who was speaking from Bouvet Island, a rugged nature reserve in the South Atlantic Ocean that’s been called the world’s most remote island. It was an apt setting for a conversation about Wang’s out-of-this-world idea.

Wang already qualifies as a space traveler: Last year, he headed up a privately funded mission that sent him and three other crew members into polar orbit in a SpaceX Dragon capsule for three and a half days. Today, SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said Wang is already back in line to take on “the first interplanetary mission on a Starship,” even though the rocket is still in testing mode and hasn’t yet made a single orbit around Earth.

“It’s going to be a flyby mission of Mars,” Wang said. “A lot of people are talking about how Mars will be like: ‘We’re going to fly to Mars, we’re going to land on Mars, we’re going to build a city on Mars.’ But let’s get this started with a flyby. … It will light the fire. It will ignite the imagination, and it will build the momentum.”

No timetable was given for the mission, but SpaceX said the round trip would take two years. Wang wasn’t worried about getting bored during the cruise to and from the Red Planet. “This is actually my style of fireworks,” he said. “I can stare at the map view on airplanes all the way from takeoff to landing. So I think I will enjoy the trip.”

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Universe Today

Pluto-like world’s thin atmosphere poses a mystery

Illustration: Time-sequence view of star being eclipsed by trans-Neptunian object
Artwork shows how light from a star would be dimmed and then blocked as a mini-world with a thin atmosphere passes in front. (Credit: NAOJ)

Scientists are puzzling over another oddball on the edge of the solar system: This time, it’s an icy object less than a quarter of Pluto’s size with a thin atmosphere – a layer of gas that’s not typically found around objects so small.

A Japanese team of researchers — including an amateur astronomer — laid out the curious case of 2002 XV93 this week in the journal Nature Astronomy. 2002 XV93 traces an elliptical path beyond the orbit of Neptune in the icy Kuiper Belt, never coming closer to the sun than 3 billion miles. Like Pluto, it’s locked in a resonance with Neptune that keeps its orbit relatively stable.

The Japanese astronomers, led by Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, tracked the mini-world with several telescopes as it passed in front of a background star in January 2024. They found that the light from the star gradually dimmed before it disappeared behind 2002 XV93, as if the light was filtered through a thin layer of gas.

That finding posed a puzzle: Based on estimates of its size, 2002 XV93 shouldn’t have enough gravitational pull to hold onto an atmosphere for longer than, say, 1,000 years.

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Universe Today

Pentagon releases UFO files from moon trips and more

Apollo 17 image with three light-colored dots highlighted in inset
An image from NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972 shows lunar terrain with an inset photo highlighting three light-colored specks. (NASA Photo)

The Department of Defense has released a fresh batch of images and transcripts relating to reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as UFOs, including pictures and descriptions from NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon.

Today’s release on the War.gov website was the first in a series planned by the Trump administration’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE. “Additional files will be released by the Department of War on a rolling basis,” the Pentagon said in a news release.

The batch includes pictures taken by astronauts on the moon during Apollo 12 in 1969 and Apollo 17 in 1972, with enlarged sections highlighting what appear to be bright spots or streaks in the sky. There’s even a transcript from the Gemini 7 mission in 1965, in which astronaut Frank Borman describes a “bogey” and a debris field consisting of “hundreds of little particles.”

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