How and when to watch the solar eclipse on Thursday

The moon will partially cover the sun in the UK later this week, but some parts of the northern hemisphere will experience a total eclipse

This Thursday, Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic, most of Europe, much of North America and Asia will experience a solar eclipse.

Most will see a partial eclipse, where the moon takes a bite out of the sun. From a few specific places in Russia, Greenland and Canada, the event will be visible as an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is located near the furthest part of its orbit around the Earth.

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Asteroid’s 22m-year journey from source to Earth mapped in historic first

Flight path of Kalahari’s six-tonne asteroid is first tracing of meteorite shedding rock to solar system origin

Astronomers have reconstructed the 22m-year-long voyage of an asteroid that hurtled through the solar system and exploded over Botswana, showering meteorites across the Kalahari desert.

It is the first time scientists have traced showering space rock to its source – in this case Vesta, one of largest bodies in the asteroid belt that circles the sun between Jupiter and Mars.

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Cielo review – love letter to the desert’s starry skies

Alison McAlpine’s documentary draws out tales from locals and astronomers to evoke the magic and mystery of Chile’s stargazing hotspot

Cielo means “sky” in Spanish, and “heaven”, too. And it’s with a sense of humbled wonder at the immense mystery of it all that the Canadian film-maker Alison McAlpine casts her camera upwards in this beautiful documentary about the night sky. It’s filmed at the stargazing hotspot of Chile’s Atacama desert, where there is virtually no light pollution; the heavens appear to be within touching distance – as if a seam in the sky has been unpicked and the stars tumble out like diamonds.

For those of us who live in urban areas, we look up from noisy streets and bright city lights to the vast emptiness of the sky. In Atacama, it’s the reverse; the sky seems more alive than the earth – a bare, Martian landscape of rock and sand. With her cinematographer, Benjamín Echazarreta, McAlpine shoots some astonishing time-lapse photography, which features alongside interviews with astronomers at the European observatories in the desert and locals who eke out a living somehow. One man is a UFO photographer; he thinks that humans are more evil than the aliens and, knowing this, the aliens don’t bother to land.

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String theorist Michio Kaku: ‘Reaching out to aliens is a terrible idea’

The physicist on Newton finding inspiration amid the great plague, how the multiverse can unite religions, and why a ‘theory of everything’ is within our grasp

Michio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at City College, New York, a proponent of string theory but also a well-known populariser of science, with multiple TV appearances and several bestselling books behind him. His latest book, The God Equation, is a clear and accessible examination of the quest to combine Einstein’s general relativity with quantum theory to create an all-encompassing “theory of everything” about the nature of the universe.

How close do you believe science is to accomplishing a theory of everything?
Well, I think we actually have the theory but not in its final form. It hasn’t been tested yet and Nobel prize winners have taken opposite points of view concerning something called string theory. I’m the co-founder of string field theory, which is one of the main branches of string theory, so I have some “skin in the game”. I try to be fair and balanced. I think we’re on the verge of a new era. New experiments are being done to detect deviations from the Standard Model. Plus, we have the mystery of dark matter. Any of these unexplored areas could give a clue as to the theory of everything.

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Space oddity Oumuamua probably shard of Pluto-like world, scientists say

Interstellar visitor likely made of frozen nitrogen, cookie-shaped rather than cigar, and not a comet or asteroid – while some stick to alien theory

Our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor is neither a comet nor asteroid as first suspected and looks nothing like a cigar. A new study says the mystery object is likely a remnant of a Pluto-like world and shaped like a cookie.

Arizona State University astronomers report the strange 45-metre (148ft) object appears to be made of frozen nitrogen, just like the surface of Pluto, and Neptune’s largest moon, Triton.

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Scientists may have solved ancient mystery of ‘first computer’

Researchers claim breakthrough in study of 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in sea

From the moment it was discovered more than a century ago, scholars have puzzled over the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable and baffling astronomical calculator that survives from the ancient world.

The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.

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Astronomers’ hopes raised by glimpse of possible new planet

Bright speck in space near Alpha Centauri A may be evidence of asteroids or dust – or a technical glitch

Astronomers have glimpsed what may be a previously unknown planet circling one of the closest stars to Earth.

Researchers spotted the bright dot near Alpha Centauri A, one of a pair of stars that swing around each other so tightly they appear as one in the southern constellation of Centaurus. The stars form what is called a binary system 4.37 light years away, a mere stone’s throw in cosmic terms.

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Star buys: celebrities send meteorite prices into orbit

Elon Musk, Steven Spielberg and Nicolas Cage among those who collect rocks that can cost millions

They really are from out of this world, and the prices are astronomical. For those who have everything they need on Earth, what they now want is a little bit of space. Meteorites are attracting the attention of celebrity collectors who have pushed the price of the rocks – which have hurtled through space for hundreds or even thousands of year before crashing into this planet – tenfold over the past decade.

More than 70 of the most spectacular meteorites ever found will go under the hammer at Christie’s auction house next week in a sale that is expected to generate millions of pounds. Included in the Deep Impact auction are meteorites embedded with gem stones and others have suffered such an impact from blasting through the atmosphere at up to 160,000mph that they resemble sculptures by Alberto Giacometti or Henry Moore.

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How to watch the Jupiter and Saturn ‘great conjunction’ on winter solstice

On 21 December 2020, the planets will align, appearing closer than they have since the middle ages, in what is being called a ‘Christmas kiss’

This year, stargazers will have the chance to see a Christmas “kiss” beneath interplanetary mistletoe when Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer to one another and brighter than they have in 800 years in an event known as a “great conjunction”.

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Burst of radio waves in Milky Way probably came from neutron star

First fast radio burst found in our galaxy is traced to magnetar 30,000 light years away

For more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the origins of mysterious and fleeting bursts of radio waves that arrive from faraway galaxies.

Now, scientists have discovered the first such blast in the Milky Way and traced it back to its probable source: a small, spinning remnant from a collapsed star about 30,000 light years from Earth.

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Three scientists share Nobel prize in physics for work on black holes

Roger Penrose says win, shared with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, ‘is in some ways a distraction’

Three scientists have won the 2020 Nobel prize in physics for their work on black hole formation and the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

Sir Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez together scooped the 114th Nobel prize in physics.

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The search for life – from Venus to the outer solar system

While the discovery of the normally microbe-produced phosphine on our toxic neighbour is astonishing, other candidates for life are more promising

It remains one of the most unexpected scientific discoveries of the year. To their astonishment, British scientists last week revealed they had uncovered strong evidence that phosphine – a toxic, rancid gas produced by microbes – exists in the burning, acid-drenched atmosphere of Venus.

Related: If we don't find life on planets like Venus, doesn't it make us that bit more special? | Charles Cockell

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Scientists find gas linked to life in atmosphere of Venus

Phosphine, released by microbes in oxygen-starved environments, was present in quantities larger than expected

Traces of a pungent gas that waft through the clouds of Venus may be emanations from aerial organisms – microbial life, but not as we know it.

Astronomers detected phosphine 30 miles up in the planet’s atmosphere and have failed to identify a process other than life that could account for its presence.

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Are Elon Musk’s ‘megaconstellations’ a blight on the night sky?

Miniature satellites open up a world of technological possibility. But experts say they degrade the astronomical landscape

The natural serenity of the night sky is a touchstone for all of us. Everyone alive today looks at the same stars no matter where they are located on the planet. But the connection is more profound because, next to our brief lives, the stars are immortal. Shakespeare saw the same stars in the same patterns that we do. So did Galileo, Columbus, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and the first human ancestor to look up in curiosity. The night sky is nothing short of our common human heritage.

Last year, however, something happened that might change that view for ever. On 23 May 2019, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched 60 small satellites from a single rocket. The satellites were the first in what is planned to be a “megaconstellation” of thousands of satellites that will bring internet coverage to the entire planet.

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Are aliens hiding in plain sight?

Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognise extraterrestrials if we found them?

In July, three unmanned missions blasted off to Mars – from China (Tianwen-1), the US (Nasa’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover) and the United Arab Emirates (Hope). The Chinese and American missions have lander craft that will seek signs of current or past life on Mars. Nasa is also planning to send its Europa Clipper probe to survey Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the robotic lander Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan. Both moons are widely thought to be promising hunting grounds for life in our solar system – as are the underground oceans of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.

Meanwhile, we can now glimpse the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars (exoplanets), of which more than 4,000 are now known. Some hope these studies might disclose possible signatures of life.

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‘It just sounds like a thud’: astronomers hear biggest cosmic event since big bang

Researchers believe noise was two black holes colliding around 7 billion years ago, creating a previously unseen class of stellar object

Scientists have announced the detection of a signal from a long-ago collision between two black holes that created a new one of a size never seen before.

“It’s the biggest bang since the big bang observed by humanity,” said Caltech professor of physics Alan Weinstein, who was part of the discovery team.

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Beyond Pluto: the hunt for our solar system’s new ninth planet

Scientists think a planet larger than Earth lurks in the far reaches of the solar system. Now a new telescope could confirm their belief and change solar system science

You’d think that if you found the first evidence that a planet larger than the Earth was lurking unseen in the furthest reaches of our solar system, it would be a big moment. It would make you one of only a small handful of people in all of history to have discovered such a thing.

But for astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, it was a much quieter affair. “It wasn’t like there was a eureka moment,” he says. “The evidence just built up slowly.”

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Astronomers warn ‘wilderness’ of southern night sky at risk from SpaceX satellites

Stargazing under threat as pristine skies over New Zealand and Australia are clogged with hundreds of Starlink satellites

Astronomers in the southern hemisphere have warned that the wonders of the night sky are at risk from hundreds of satellites that have been shot into space by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

The night skies of Australia and New Zealand are globally renowned for their clarity, drawing tourists from across the world to dark-sky sanctuaries such as Tekapo on New Zealand’s South Island and the Warrumbungle national park in New South Wales.

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Life, but not as they knew it: ISS crew return to Earth transformed by Covid-19

American and Russian crew touch down in Kazakhstan after months on International Space Station

The three-person crew of the International Space Station returned to Earth on Friday morning, arriving back to a world that has been radically transformed by coronavirus in the time they were away.

Space travel is often a journey into the unknown, but for Americans Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, and Russian Oleg Skripochka, their return to Earth may bring more surprises than the time they spent in orbit. The trio’s landing capsule touched down on the Kazakh steppe in the early hours of the morning.

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