Milky Way
The massive Smith Cloud of hydrogen gas is on a collision course with the Milky Way galaxy, and while most gas clouds are destroyed in our galaxy's outer layer of hot ionized gas, scientists have discovered the cloud has a special line of defense: a "magnetic forcefield."
Deep in a dark cloud, some 10,000 light-years away, a monster so large it will be the biggest of its kind in the Milky Way is being born, and it's teaching scientists a thing or two about how stars form.
There could potentially be more than double the number of habitable exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars out there thanks to clouds, asserts a new study. If the assumption holds true, then there could potentially be 60 billion habitable planets in our Milky Way alone.
Scientists NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory have discovered the largest number of black holes in a galaxy outside of our own, and they're all right next door, ready to collide with our galaxy in several billion years.
In a rare glimpse into black hole behavior, the Herschel space observatory has caught our galaxy's supermassive black hole in the process of devouring a massive cloud of cooked gas.
How young is young? Most of our answers would be double-digit ages, but not in the cosmic scheme of things. NASA scientists are now cautiously stating that they might have found the youngest black hole in our galaxy, and it's only 1,000 years old.
The universe can be a lonely place, but you are not alone. And neither is Earth. The Milk Way is home to billions of Earth-like, potentially habitable planets that may support life, according to a new study from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Dung beetle researchers have discovered that the diminutive insect orients itself relative to the light emanating from the Milky Way, an observation which may very well apply to other various species in the animal kingdom.
Dung beetles might not have the best reputation among us, but a new discovery might just prove them smarter than we give them credit for. According to a new published study, dung beetles are the first documented case of an animal using our Milky Way galaxy for navigational purposes.
When blindingly bright ultraviolet light from the young galaxy NGC 6872 reached the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite, astronomers were startled to discover that the largest known spiral galaxy was actually bigger than we ever thought: four times larger than the Milky Way to be exact.
Researchers utilizing data from NASA's Kepler mission have realized that at around 17 percent of all stars have an Earth-sized planet orbiting them.
Currents of gamma-ray gas are flowing from the core of the Milky Way galaxy outward, and scientists using the Parkes telescope in Australia suggest that the residue is expelled by ancient supernovas, contrary to popular belief that a black hole fueled the phenomenon.
The Milky Way's asteroid belt is thought to be a harbinger of life on Earth, and a recent study suggests that the conditions that preserve carbon-based molecules may apply to less than 4 percent of known solar systems.
A recent X-Ray burst points to a previously-undiscovered stellar-mass black hole near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
A star rockets around our Milky Way's supermassive black hole at a speed of 6,600 miles per second, and can help us test some of Einstein's theories on how black holes curve space and time.
