A New Plan to Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts at Earth and Across the Solar System On October 19th, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) in our Solar System. This body, named 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), was spotted shortly after it flew by Earth on its way to the outer Solar System. […]
A hot and dry Jupiter: SPIRou reveals the atmosphere of the exoplanet Tau Boötis b Using the SPIRou spectropolarimeter on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, a team led by Stefan Pelletier, a PhD student at Université de Montréal’s Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), studied the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet Tau Boötis b, […]
Scientists capture most-detailed radio image of Andromeda galaxy to date Scientists have published a new, detailed radio image of the Andromeda galaxy—the Milky Way’s sister galaxy—which will allow them to identify and study the regions of Andromeda where new stars are born. phys.org Go to Source
First detection of light from behind a black hole Watching X-rays flung out into the universe by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800 million light-years away, Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins noticed an intriguing pattern. He observed a series of bright flares of X-rays—exciting, but not unprecedented—and then, the telescopes […]
Magnetic fields implicated in the mysterious midlife crisis of stars Middle-aged stars can experience their own kind of midlife crisis, experiencing dramatic breaks in their activity and rotation rates at about the same age as our Sun, according to new research published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. The study provides […]
Magnetic ‘balding’ of black holes saves general relativity prediction Black holes aren’t what they eat. Einstein’s general relativity predicts that no matter what a black hole consumes, its external properties depend only on its mass, rotation and electric charge. All other details about its diet disappear. Astrophysicists whimsically call this the no-hair conjecture. (Black holes, […]
Will AI leave human astronomers in the stardust? Machine learning is coming for astronomy. But that doesn’t mean astronomers and citizen scientists are obsolete. In fact, it may mean exactly the opposite. phys.org Go to Source
Balloon Mission May Also Work to Detect Quakes on Venus An opportunity in 2019 lays the groundwork for balloon-borne detectors on Venus, working to unravel a key mystery. The skies of Venus may become a busy place in the coming decade, using technology field-tested here on Earth. A team out of NASA JPL-Caltech hypothesized that […]
This is how you get Tatooines. Binary Star Planet Formation One of the less appreciated aspects of George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars was that he predicted the existence of planets in binary star systems years before we saw even the first exoplanet. Now a team from the University of Cambridge and the Max Planck […]
Water Vapour has Been Discovered at Ganymede Ganymede has been getting alot of attention lately. It was the co-star of a video from Juno recently, and now scientists found something to make it an even more intriguing place visit – water vapor. It has been well known for years that Ganymede harbors water, and lots […]
Supernova explosions are sustained by neutrinos from neutron stars, a new observation suggests A model for supernova explosions first proposed in the 1980s has received strong support from the observation by RIKEN astrophysicists of titanium-rich plumes emanating from a remnant of such an explosion. phys.org Go to Source
Finding the source of the impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 66 million years ago likely came from the outer half of the main asteroid belt, a region previously thought to produce few impactors. Researchers from Southwest Research Institute […]
Three dwarf spheroidal galaxies found to rotate An international team of astrophysicists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, U.S.) has discovered the presence of transverse rotation (in the plane of the sky) in three dwarf spheroidal galaxies. These are a […]
Global project observes rare meteor showers and meteorite falls As billionaires battle it out in a space race that only a handful of the world’s richest persons can play, a highly inclusive international project is looking in the other direction–what’s flying towards Earth–and all are welcome. phys.org Go to Source
Very-high energy gamma-ray emission detected from blazar TXS 1515–273 An international team of astronomers has carried out multi-wavelength observations of a blazar known as TXS 1515–273; they detected very-high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from this source for the first time. The finding is detailed in a paper published July 20 on arXiv.org. phys.org Go to […]
Europe Launches its new Robotic arm, Which Will Crawl Around the International Space Station Like an Inchworm The robotic arms of the ISS are some of its most useful tools. The arms, designed by Canadian and Japanese space agencies, have been instrumental in ferrying around astronauts and shepherding modules to one side of the ISS. […]
On the hunt for ‘hierarchical’ black holes Black holes, detected by their gravitational wave signal as they collide with other black holes, could be the product of much earlier parent collisions. Such an event has only been hinted at so far, but scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., and Northwestern University in […]
Astronomers show how planets form in binary systems without getting crushed Astronomers have developed the most realistic model to date of planet formation in binary star systems. phys.org Go to Source
Perseverance is About to Collect the First Sample on Mars That Could Eventually be Returned to Earth On Feb. 18th, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed within the Jezero Crater on Mars. Like its predecessor, Curiosity, a fellow member of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP), the goal of Perseverance is to seek out evidence of possible […]
Fermi spots a supernova’s ‘fizzled’ gamma-ray burst On Aug. 26, 2020, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a pulse of high-energy radiation that had been racing toward Earth for nearly half the present age of the universe. Lasting only about a second, it turned out to be one for the record books—the shortest gamma-ray burst […]
