Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Nov 15, 2025
Researchers from Purple Mountain Observatory have conducted an observational test of the black hole area law. Using the gravitational-wave event GW230814, which features a high signal-to-noise ratio, the team closely examined the event horizons of merging black holes. The black hole area law, first proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1971, predicts that the total event horizon area after a merger wil

After a successful second flight of New Glenn, includig landing the booster, Blue Origin is looking to perform its next launch early next year, possibly with the same booster.

Video: 00:22:00

The Sun is always mesmerising to watch, but Solar Orbiter captured a special treat on camera: a dark ‘prominence’ sticking out from the side of the Sun.   

The dark-looking material is dense plasma (charged gas) trapped by the Sun's complex magnetic field. It looks dark because it is cooler than its surroundings, being around 10 000 °C compared to the surrounding million-degree plasma.  

When viewed against the background of space, the hovering plasma is referred to as a prominence. When viewed against the Sun's surface, it is called a filament. (In this image you can see examples of both.) 

Solar prominences and filaments extend for tens of thousands of kilometres, several times the diameter of Earth. They can last days or even months. This video

Image: Sentinel-6B rolls out to the launch pad

Beijing (AFP) Nov 14, 2025
Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Friday, state TV footage showed, after a delay caused by their spacecraft being struck by debris in orbit. The Tiangong space station, the crown jewel of China's space programme, is crewed by teams of three astronauts who are exchanged every six months. The return of the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft and crew were planned for November 5, after the S

Cape Canaveral (AFP) Nov 14, 2025
Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on Thursday with NASA twin spacecraft destined for Mars aboard, and in a breakthrough nailed the landing of its booster. The launch was stalled for days over weather both on Earth and in space, but it was worth the wait: in the rocket's second-ever flight, Blue Origin managed to recover the booster for reuse. Ecstatic ch

Washington DC (UPI) Nov 13, 2025
Following a handful of troubling valve issues that pushed a launch back for a week, an Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:04 p.m. EST on Thursday night, carrying a communications satellite for Viasat. The 6-ton Viasat 3 satellite will be deployed from the Atlas rocket about 3 1/2 hours after launch, and eventually reach geostationary orbit

Bielefeld, Germany (SPX) Nov 14, 2025
How fast and in which direction is our solar system moving through the universe? This seemingly simple question is one of the key tests of our cosmological understanding. A research team led by astrophysicist Lukas Bohme at Bielefeld University has now found new answers, ones that challenge the established standard model of cosmology. The study's findings have just been published in the journal