Ian Randall

1 week ago | newsweek.com | Ian Randall

The European Space Agency ( ESA) has released an awe-inspiring new image of the iconic Sombrero Galaxy, known formally as Messier 104. The image was published as part of the 35th anniversary celebrations of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched into orbit in April 1990. The Sombrero Galaxy is a fan-favorite of many an amateur astronomer and "an eye-catching target for Hubble," notes the ESA in a statement.

1 week ago | newsweek.com | Ian Randall

The weather forecast for Jupiter calls for clouds with a chance of lightning and "mushballs"-a slushy mix of ammonia and water encased in a hard water ice shell that rain down like hail here on Earth. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley who, setting out to show that the "exotic" weather phenomena couldn't exist, ended up proving the exact opposite.

1 week ago | newsweek.com | Ian Randall

Astronomers may have found the long-missing half of the universe's regular matter-and it appears to have been right under our noses all this time. Models of how the universe has evolved since the Big Bang allow us to predict how much normal matter (as opposed to dark matter) there should be in the observable universe. The problem, however, is that these predictions don't match what we can actually see out in the cosmos, creating a long-standing puzzle for scientists.

1 week ago | newsweek.com | Ian Randall

NASA's James Webb Telescope has been investigating the first-ever case of a star caught swallowing a planet -and, in classic crime thriller style, there has been a plot twist. Instead of the star swelling in size until it engulfed the planet, as was initially suspected, an 'autopsy' revealed instead that the planet's orbit shrank until it fell to its doom in the star.

1 week ago | newsweek.com | Ian Randall

Despite appearing "dead"-i.e., forming no new stars-some red galaxies may secretly be alive, quietly birthing small stars under our noses. This is the conclusion of astronomy professor Charles Steinhardt of the University of Missouri, who has said these red galaxies could have played a much larger role in the history of the universe than we realized.