Planned 1.7 million satellites ‘devastating’ for astronomy: Study The 1.7 million satellites that companies are aiming to launch into Earth’s orbit in the coming years will have “devastating consequences for astronomy,” new research warned Wednesday. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
In Anticipation of New Horizons Entering Interstellar Space, Researchers are Developing a Solar Wind Forecasting Method Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are using a solar wind forecasting method combined with analytic and numerical heliosphere models to find out where the first plasma boundary of the outer heliosphere lies as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward this mysterious region of space. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Astronomers may have caught an early galaxy in the process of dying Astronomers have spotted many “red and dead” galaxies in the early universe. These are massive systems that stopped forming stars surprisingly early in cosmic history. Now, they may have found evidence of one in the act of becoming dead: a massive galaxy being stripped of its star-forming gas just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The clues behind why it lost its star-forming material are detailed in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 16. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
A New Study into Dark Matter in the Bullet Cluster Could Disprove its Existence A study led by the University of Bonn presents new data that calls the existence of Dark Matter – a fundamental pillar of the current cosmological model – into question. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Bending Spacetime Reveals New Planet Hidden in Archived TESS Data NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has captured evidence of a Jupiter-like world orbiting another star, using a trick straight out of Einstein’s relativity: gravitational microlensing. The technique marks a first for TESS, and opens up the possibility of a whole new category of planets the spacecraft might uncover. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Long-lived radio outburst from black hole exhibits properties of the early universe Short-lived sources of radio radiation in the sky, known as radio transients, can originate in the vicinity of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. They are the result of processes that take place under extreme physical conditions. While most radio transients associated with galactic centers last only days or weeks, the galaxy SDSS J110546.07+145202.4 has been shining very brightly in radio light for several years—the first source of its kind. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Astronomers Spot an Extremely Rare Galaxy Mega-Merger Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times the math just doesn’t sit well with our brains that evolved to capture and process data about the world around us rather than groking the complexities of stellar dynamics and galaxy mergers. But every once in a while astronomers find something that, if we can wrap our heads around the numbers, gives a sense of just how big the universe is. That is precisely what a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv from a group of astronomers led by Z.L. Wen ofRead More →
JWST discovers a new barred spiral galaxy An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new massive barred spiral galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated M1149-BSG-z5, was identified using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The finding was detailed in a paper published June 23 on the preprint server arXiv. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
NASA’s Hubble spots star-spangled cosmic scene More than 500,000 stars blaze red, white, and blue in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, released in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. The image showcases Messier 3 (M3), one of the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive globular clusters, or spherical collections of gravitationally bound stars. Globular clusters are made up of ancient stars that formed at roughly the same time from the same cloud of gas, giving those stars similar ages. Around 150 known globular clusters are sprinkled around the outer regions of the Milky Way. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Cosmic neutrino ‘whispers’ may surface in 5,000-day Super-Kamiokande signal Neutrinos: They have no electric charge, pass through matter like a ghost and are so light they were initially thought to have zero mass. These are just some of the traits that make them so difficult to detect. Research on neutrinos requires massive underground observatories far from potential confounders that drown out their weak signals. One of the largest in the world, located 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) underground in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, is called Super-Kamiokande. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Could this asteroid be a piece of the moon? A Chinese spacecraft is about to find out The moon is not the only natural object traveling through space alongside Earth. Several small asteroids travel around the sun in near lockstep with our planet. And just like Earth, these space rocks also take a year to complete a full orbit. Today, we know of eight such “quasi-moons” or quasi-satellites. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
This Giant Planet Survived the Death of its Star Some planets can survive when their main sequence stars “die” and evolve into red giants. Astronomers have found several of them. One of them in particular is orbiting extremely close to its star, providing an opportunity to study it with the JWST to determine how it got there. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
An Extended Barrage of Asteroid Impacts Made Earth Too Hot to Form Continents New research shows that repeated impacts on Earth during the Hadean eon prevented thick and stable crustal material from forming. The heat from these impacts penetrated deep into the planet, and along with radiogenic heating, delayed the formation of a solid crust. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Dynamic black holes may obey Hawking-style thermodynamics with an alternative entropy measure Of the known things in the universe, black holes are among the most extreme. They pack huge amounts of mass densely into a small area, producing gravity that is so strong that even light cannot escape. To describe their properties, physicists have relied on complex equations from Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. But in the early 1970s, Stephen Hawking and other physicists found parallels between the laws of thermodynamics describing ordinary things—like how a stovetop boils a pot of water—and black hole mechanics. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
What makes a star a star? A strange ‘in‑between’ celestial object is testing astronomers’ boundaries A star called TOI-2155 lies around 1,350 light-years (839 trillion miles) from Earth. It is a little bigger, heavier and hotter than the sun, and it is not particularly interesting or unusual in itself. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Comet from another star has a composition unlike anything else in our solar system Astronomers have revealed new details about the makeup and age of a visiting comet that was born around a distant star. They conclude that the composition of 3I/Atlas is strikingly different from any object found in our solar system. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Scourge of satellites lighting up the sky could be mitigated with help of ultra-black coating Astrophysicists working to tackle the growing impact of satellite constellations have pioneered a new ultra-black coating as one possible way to mitigate the problem. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
LSST begins full operations with key contributions from Japanese researchers and engineers NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially begun full operations for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), one of the world’s largest astronomical imaging surveys. Behind the scenes, Japanese researchers and engineers are drawing on technologies and expertise cultivated through the development and operation of the Subaru Telescope to support the project’s software, systems and operations. More than 80 researchers from Japan are already participating in LSST science through access to its data. Looking ahead, the combination of Rubin’s wide-area survey and the Subaru Telescope’s detailed follow-up observations will help advanceRead More →
Cosmic dust could play key role in cracking long-standing mystery of solar corona heating A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly influence how energy moves through the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. The discovery potentially rewrites how scientists understand why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun itself. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
A Supermassive Black Hole Gets Blamed for Quenching Star Formation Some of the most massive galaxies in the Universe appear to be missing a lot of stars. That seems unusual, since birthing stars is one of a galaxy’s main tasks as it grows. According to Xin “Cindy” Xiang of the University of Michigan, something is suppressing or quenching the births of stars in these and she thinks that black holes might be the culprit. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
