Astronomers from Western University Discover the Birthplace of Cosmic “Buckyballs” Fifteen years after Western astronomers first discovered ‘buckyballs’ in space, they’re back with stunning images and rich data generated by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results of their study have revealed the cosmic origin of these strange molecules. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Saturn’s Icy Rings Likely Formed from Lost Moon “Chrysalis” You’re a long-necked Titanosaurs grazing the plains and chomping away on tree leaves about 100 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous in what would eventually become a future Starbucks location. You look up at the night sky and notice a bright dot that seems slightly larger and brighter than usual since you’ve seen it a bunch. You grunt at your cousin (official dinosaur language) asking if he notices it, too. Your cousin grunts back that it does seem bigger and brighter and wonders what’s up. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
A Brief-ish History of SETI. Part II: Ozma and the Drake Equation By the mid-20th century, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence would emerge as an established field of scientific research. The era witnessed the first experiments, and many of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of SETI were proposed during this time. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Scientists trace latest interstellar comet’s home to a cold, isolated corner of the Milky Way The comet that rambled past us from another star last year likely originated in a cold, isolated corner of the galaxy that had yet to gel into its own solar system, astronomers reported Thursday. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Non-rotating early galaxy is a surprise to astronomers Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have made a surprising discovery about a galaxy long, long ago and far, far away: It isn’t rotating. That’s something only seen in the most massive, mature galaxies that are closer to us in space and time, said Ben Forrest, a research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis, and first author on the paper published May 4 in Nature Astronomy. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
When Mars Bites Back More than 300 million kilometres from the nearest mechanic, NASA’s Curiosity rover found itself in a situation that would make any engineer break into a cold sweat. A rock got stuck to its drill and wouldn’t let go. What followed was a week long, long distance rescue operation that says as much about the ingenuity of the people behind the machine as it does about the extraordinary challenges of exploring another world. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Black hole jets measured in real time, revealing 10,000-sun power For the first time, scientists have measured the instantaneous mind-blowing power of jets blasting from a black hole. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Lonely Jupiter-like planet 900 light years away tells us more about gas giants One night last fall, University of Cincinnati astrophysics graduate Paul Smith waited anxiously for data to start rolling across his computer screen from the James Webb Space Telescope a million miles from Earth. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Pluto-Like World’s Thin Atmosphere Poses a Mystery for Astronomers Astronomers are puzzling over another oddball on the edge of the solar system: This time, it’s an icy object less than a quarter of Pluto’s size with a thin atmosphere – a layer of gas that’s not typically found around objects so small. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Pentagon Releases UFO Files That Go Back to the Apollo Moon Missions The Department of Defense has released a fresh batch of images and transcripts relating to reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as UFOs, including pictures and descriptions from NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Spiral galaxy’s brilliant heart shines bright in a new picture from NASA’s Webb telescope A spiral galaxy’s brilliant heart outshines everything within sight in a new picture from NASA’s Webb Space Telescope. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Black Holes Don’t Live Forever, But They Might Live Long Enough To Look Like White Holes Black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation, meaning their days are numbered. But a new study finds they could enter a metastable stage where they look similar to white holes. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Material Science Behind A Spacecraft’s Impact Armor Aerospace engineers have to consider numerous factors when designing a spacecraft, but one that comes up more and more often is the need to design against Micro-Meteoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD). While most designers understand the threat, designing structural solutions capable of withstanding the hypervelocity impacts these undercontrolled pieces of material can cause can take a significant bite out of a mission’s mass budget. A new paper from Binkal Kumar Sharma of the University of Bremen and Harshitha Baskar, an independent researcher, provides a detailed review of cutting-edge options for defending against those deadly particles. Universe TodayRead More →
Moving-mesh simulations of spreading dynamics and local electron cooling in structured gamma-ray burst afterglow jets Sayan Kundu, Hendrik van Eerten arXiv:2605.05320v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present the results for the dynamics and emission profiles of axi-symmetric numerical simulations of structured gamma-ray burst afterglow jets, computed using the relativistic moving-mesh hydrodynamics code GAMMA. We find that the spreading of jets of average opening angle is moderately impacted by the initial steepness of the angular structure, although the effect disappears once the working surface of the jet substantially exceeds its initial width, and that the travel time of a sound wave across the front surface remainsRead More →
A preliminary exploration of the effects of baseline length for the LIFE space mission Jonah T. Hansen, Thomas Birbacher, Felix A. Dannert, Philipp Huber, Andrea Fortier, Adrian M. Glauser, Jens Kammerer, Romain Laugier, Lia Sartori, Sascha P. Quanz arXiv:2605.06648v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: By aiming to find and characterise dozens of habitable exoplanets through the technique of nulling interferometry, the LIFE space mission will produce transformational science. One of the key parameters for such an interferometric mission is the nulling baseline length – the distance between nulled apertures, which past studies have assumed to be 10-100m. Advances in planet occurrence statistics and simulation tools allowRead More →
Constraints on the inflationary vacuum and reheating era from NANOGrav Debtosh Chowdhury, Rounak Nath, Sudipta Show arXiv:2605.05310v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: NANOGrav and various pulsar timing array experiments recently reported evidence for a common red noise signal across millisecond pulsars. This signal exhibits Hellings-Downs inter-pulsar correlation patterns, providing compelling evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) signal. In general, such a background can come from several astrophysical and cosmological phenomena. Assuming such SGWB has an inflationary origin, we use latest NANOGrav 15-year dataset to constrain the inflationary parameters e.g., tensor spectral index ($n_t$), tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$), and explore the implications for the reheating phaseRead More →
Fifteen new millisecond pulsars in 47 Tucanae W. Chen, D. Risbud, P. C. C. Freire, A. Ridolfi, E. Barr, M. Kramer, B. Stappers, F. Camilo, F. Abbate, A. Possenti, Y. P. Men, P. V. Padmanabh, S. M. Ransom, L. Vleeschower, V. Venkatraman Krishnan, D. J. Champion, Rene Breton, V. Balakrishnan, S. Buchner arXiv:2605.06492v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: 47 Tucanae is one of the largest, brightest, and closest globular clusters to Earth. It hosts an exotic stellar population with stellar dynamics that indicate a complex evolution history. The cluster contains a large number of X-ray binaries and millisecond pulsars. However, given its large distance relative toRead More →
An X-ray and optical spectral study of the changing-look narrow-line Seyfert 1 2MASX J0413-0050 A. Vietri, A. Tortosa, D. Ili’c, S. Ciroi, M. Berton, E. J"arvel"a, C. Ricci, E. Sani, L. Crepaldi, B. Dalla Barba, S. Chen, E. Congiu, P. Cond`o, I. Varglund, G. Rodighiero arXiv:2605.05301v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Active galactic nuclei (AGN) showing dramatic spectral and flux variations, either due to changes in the accretion rate (changing-state, CS-AGN) of the supermassive black hole or in the line-of-sight column density (changing-obscuration, CO-AGN), have been classified as changing-look (CL) AGN. Here we present a peculiar source, 2MASX J0413-0050, first identified as a narrow-line Seyfert 1Read More →
Multi-wavelength outburst activity from EP J174942.2-384834: a very faint X-ray transient discovered by Einstein Probe F. Coti Zelati, A. Marino, Y. L. Wang, M. Veresvarska, N. Rea, S. Guillot, D. A. H. Buckley, N. Rawat, S. E. Motta, Y. Xu, Z. Li, Y. -F. Huang, H. Feng, L. Tao, M. Imbrogno, G. Illiano, M. C. Baglio, H. Q. Cheng, C. C. Jin, H. Sun, W. Yuan, F. Carotenuto, R. P. Fender, A. Coleiro, D. G"otz, H. L. Li, P. Maggi, Y. L. Qiu, J. Wang, L. P. Xin arXiv:2605.05303v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We report the discovery and multi-wavelength characterization of the Galactic transient EPRead More →
Extended thermodynamics and $P-v$ Criticality of Kalb-Ramond black hole coupled with nonlinear electrodynamics D. V. Singh, S. Upadhyay, P. Paul, K. Myrzakulov arXiv:2605.05281v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present an exact black hole solution in anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime with a Kalb-Ramond field coupled to nonlinear electrodynamics (NLED), characterized by mass, magnetic monopole charge, and Lorentz-violating parameters. The geometry admits two horizons (inner and outer) that coalesce into a degenerate horizon at a critical monopole charge. Beyond this critical point, no black hole solutions exist. In the limit of vanishing Lorentz-violating parameters, the solution reduces to the modified Kalb-Ramond and Bardeen black holes, while suitableRead More →
