ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Researchers have learned how a type of aurora on Mars is formed. The physicists report discrete aurora form through the interaction of the solar wind and the crust at Mars' southern hemisphere.

A unique new instrument, coupled with a powerful telescope and a little help from nature, has given researchers the ability to peer into galactic nurseries at the heart of the young universe.

Researchers have helped peer inside a nova -- a type of astrophysical nuclear explosion -- without leaving Earth. These stellar events help forge the universe's chemical elements, and astronomers have explored their nature with an intense isotope beam and a custom experimental device with record-setting sensitivity.

If any humans had been alive 2 to 4 billion years ago, they may have looked up and seen a sliver of frost on the moon's surface. Some of that ice may still be hiding in craters on the lunar surface today.