Vanessa McBride, International Astronomical Union's Office of Astronomy for Development
The pandemic has underscored that the world requires agility for survival. That makes blue skies science, which encourages curiosity and nimble thinking, perhaps more important than ever.
A galaxy 320 million light-years away has a surprisingly similar structure to the Milky Way, suggesting our galaxy isn’t as unique as it once seemed to astronomers.
In the early morning of May 26, 2021, there will be a super blood-red lunar eclipse. The show will be spectacular and can all be explained by the orbits of the Earth and Moon.
It has only been in the past century that weather prediction on Earth has advanced enough to work two weeks in advance. Predicting space weather, however, is only reliable an hour in advance.
Astronomers just measured the largest flare ever from Proxima Centauri, humanity’s closest neighboring star. These flares could be bad news for life trying to develop on a planet orbiting the star.
Astronomy has been hailed as one area of science making moves to promote gender equity. But new modelling suggests targets are still not being met, and more effort is needed to nurture womens’ careers.
A small add-on to existing gravitational wave detectors could reveal what happens to matter as it becomes a black hole, a process like the big bang in reverse.
Australian astronomers are part of a prize-winning team that was the first to pinpoint the location of a fast radio burst. But there is much we still don’t know about these mysterious bursts.
Researchers have found a way to speed up the search for dark matter using technology from quantum computing. By squeezing quantum noise, detectors can now look for axions twice as fast.
If you are a sci-fi junkie you’ve probably wondered what would happen if you were unlucky enough to fall into a black hole. How well you’d fare all depends on the type of black hole.