Joanna Thompson

Scientists have gotten the best-ever view of 'space tornadoes' howling near the Milky Way's black hole. The cosmic twisters could play an important role in distributing organic molecules throughout the galaxy.

A new study suggests that water first appeared in the universe just a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang — meaning life could have evolved billions of years earlier than previously thought.

Indian teenager Aaryan Shulka performs calculations in his head quicker than most people can use a calculator. At a recent event hosted by Guinness World Records, 14-year-old Shulka shattered six mental math records in one day.

NASA's Curiosity rover photographed remnants of rippling waves in an ancient Martian lakebed, proving that the Red Planet had open water for longer in its history than previously thought.

A space rock dubbed 2024 YR4 has a roughly 2.3% chance of smashing into our planet, NASA scientists announced.

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted a record-smashing galaxy wrapped in 9 rings of stars — along with the dwarf galaxy that violently plunged through its center.

Scientists used changes in the supermassive black hole M87*'s accretion disk to infer its orientation, size and turbulence

Black holes that have been obscured by clouds of dust still emit infrared light, enabling astronomers to spot them for the very first time.

A 1,100-pound metal ring from a rocket smashed in to a Kenyan village, where it startled residents and flattened trees

A massive, energetic jet from Virgo A could help scientists understand how matter behaves around a black hole.

Galaxies in the early universe tend to be clumpy, but the new JWST discovery of a "grand design" spiral galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang has scientists stumped.

New Hubble Space Telescope images of a black hole-powered quasar reveal 'weird' structures and gigantic jets of energy that scientists are just beginning to explain.

A five-year leak on a Russian module of the International Space Station has gotten worse over time. Now, NASA and Russia's Roscosmos space agency disagree just how bad it is.

Pluto was demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006. So why is its status still so controversial today?

A recently shared image of a distant galaxy surrounded by three concentric rings challenges our understanding of galactic taxonomy.

How many moons does Jupiter have? Scientists have discovered dozens of them, but the answer may be more complicated than it seems.

China's mysterious Shenlong space plane has released an unidentified object in orbit — the seventh such object released in the past six months. The U.S. Space Force is monitoring the situation.

A new study debunks the idea that domestic dogs specifically evolved puppy dog eyes to tug on our heartstrings.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have discovered evidence of a carbon-rich atmosphere around the hellish world 55 Cancri e. This marks the best evidence yet of an atmosphere around a rocky exoplanet.

A new Japanese mission to photograph space junk from orbit marks a milestone in orbital debris cleanup efforts.

A new study of vertebrate evolution reveals that we have more in common with spooky-looking fish called lampreys than we thought.

Eclipses can be strange. Here are some of the weird things you can expect to experience during the April 8 total eclipse.

Dozens of boulders dislodged by NASA's asteroid-smashing DART test could hit Mars in the future, new research suggests.

First predicted by Einstein more than a century ago, lasers have shaped our modern technological landscape. But how do they work?