astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The existence of these monsters -- millions of times more luminous than the sun, losing weight ...
The rocky moon, which was first discovered by the ancient astronomer Galileo in 1610, is named for a mythological woman transformed into a cow during a marital dispute. Because Io is so close to its massive host planet, the moon is subjected to a tremendous gravitational pull as it orbits ...
Astronomers at West Virginia University have found the most massive neutron star ever recorded, located about 4,600 light-years from Earth. The neutron star, which has been dubbed J0740+6620, is exceptionally dense — it’s about 2.17 times the mass of the sun packed into a sphere that’s...
Astronomers may have detected the most massive collision of two black holes ever discovered, a chaotic merger that occurred some 7 billion years ago, the signs of which have only just reached us. The cataclysmic event offered researchers a front-row seat to the birth of one of the Un...
The dark area shown is a massive highlands region called Aphrodite Terra, extending about two-thirds of the way around the planet. Because of its elevation, it's cooler and therefore darker. Scientists also think the light rim around the planet could be "nightglow," a phenomenon caused when ...
A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the Sun.
Astronomers have discovered the most massive example yet of the dead stars known as neutron stars, one almost too massive to exist, a new study finds. Neutron stars, like black holes, are corpses of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas. When a star goes supernova,...
But even that goliath can't compete with what is likely the most massive object ever seen — a recently discovered galactic protocluster known as SPT2349, which was described April 25 in the journal Nature. "We hit the jackpot with this structure," Chapman, whose team uncovered the record-...
Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets stranded alone on Mars following a massive storm. In order to survive, Watney has to figure out how to contact NASA and grow food on a planet with soil that does not contain the same nutrient-rich material found on Earth. Thankfully, Watney is ...
The Titanoboa was a giant snake that lived in South America during the Paleocene epoch and was the largest snake ever discovered. The snake reached up to 50 feet in length and weighed over 2,500 pounds. The massive predator went extinct 60 million years ago. ...