Leah Crane
New Scientist
Chicago, IL, United States
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Past articles by Leah:
JWST took a stunning picture of a star that’s about to go supernova
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken an astonishingly detailed image of a Wolf-Rayet star as it blows off its outer layers in preparation to go supernova → Read More
Russian fighter jet collides with US military drone over the Black Sea
The US operates drones in international airspace around Ukraine, and a Russian fighter jet has hit one – an MQ-9 Reaper drone – in an incident the US military is calling “unsafe and unprofessional” → Read More
Ghost catfish get their rainbow iridescence from transparent muscles
Most iridescent fish shine because of structures in their scales or skin, but the transparent ghost catfish gets its shine from prism-like structures in its muscle fibres → Read More
The first 3D-printed rocket is about to launch into space
US aerospace start-up Relativity Space is planning to launch its 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket on 8 March, skipping planned tests and heading straight for orbit → Read More
First 3D-printed rocket is about to launch into space
US aerospace startup Relativity Space is planning to launch its 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket on 8 March, skipping planned tests and heading straight for orbit → Read More
How to understand wormholes and their weird quantum effects
Classical relativity suggests that nothing could pass through a wormhole and exit, but quantum effects change that, says space reporter Leah Crane → Read More
Galaxies’ missing matter may be found – but now there’s too much of it
Most galaxies seemed to be missing a huge proportion of the matter we expected them to have – now researchers may have found its hiding spot, but the discovery contradicts accepted models of galaxy formation → Read More
Huge young galaxies seen by JWST may upend our models of the universe
Galaxies spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope seem far too massive to have formed so early on in the universe’s history, which could be a problem for our ideas of galaxy formation → Read More
Mars rover sensors may not be sensitive enough to find signs of life
While testing Mars rover sensors in the Atacama desert, researchers inadvertently found a variety of unclassifiable microorganisms called “the dark biome” → Read More
Wormholes could magnify light by a factor of 100,000
Wormholes, which are strange hypothetical tunnels through space-time, could act as cosmic magnifying glasses for objects behind them → Read More
Sunquakes may be caused by weird beams of electrons from solar flares
Mysterious ripples in the sun’s plasma have gone unexplained for decades, but they may be caused by strange beams of high-energy electrons fired inward by solar flares → Read More
Galaxy clusters are smashing together to form 'flaming cosmic narwhal'
Six of the most powerful astronomical observatories have captured a stunning image of Abell 2256, which is made of multiple galaxy clusters smashing together → Read More
Amazing JWST images show a nebula shaped by a multi-star system
The stunning filaments and coils of light that make up the Southern Ring Nebula were shaped by as many as five stars all orbiting one another in a complex dance → Read More
Supermassive black hole snacks on the same star once every few years
A black hole almost 900 million light years away consumes part of an orbiting star every time it gets too close → Read More
JWST has taken astonishing images of debris orbiting a nearby star
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed a glowing disc of debris left over from planet formation around a nearby star called AU Microscopii → Read More
The Milky Way seems to be missing nearly half of its regular matter
Measurements of a blast of radio waves passing through our galaxy have shown that the Milky Way's proportion of visible matter is 40 per cent lower than the rest of the universe → Read More
NASA picture is best yet of a permanently shadowed region on the moon
The new ShadowCam instrument has sent its first image back from lunar orbit, showing the inside of an area of the moon that never gets any direct sunlight → Read More
Strangely strong interstellar meteorites may come from supernovae
The two interstellar meteorites identified so far seem to be significantly stronger than local meteorites, which may mean they formed in supernovae → Read More
Spacecraft are heading to a metal asteroid and Jupiter's moons in 2023
The JUICE and Psyche mission are set to blast off in 2023, with the aim of studying Jupiter's largest moons and a possible iron core of a planet in the hopes of understanding how worlds become habitable → Read More
We saw the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy in 2022
Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope released a picture in May of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way → Read More