NASA Faces Another Shift in Its Leadership — and in Its Vision The next few months are likely to bring a dramatic transition for NASA, under the leadership of a new administrator who has new ideas about changing the course of the space agency. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
An Explanation For The JWST’s Puzzling Early Galaxies The JWST surprised when it detected very early galaxies that were extremely luminous. This suggested that they were more massive than researchers thought they could be. Not enough time had passed for them to grow so large. New research has an explanation. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Shocked galaxy clusters: Unraveling the mysteries of radio relics Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, with each containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. When two of these giants collide, they send powerful shock waves through one another, releasing energy on a scale not seen since the Big Bang. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Machine Learning Discovers Quasars Acting as Lenses Astronomers have used machine learning to discover seven new quasar lens systems, arrangements where a quasar’s host galaxy bends light from a more distant galaxy behind it. The find more than doubles the number of known candidates and demonstrates how artificial intelligence can unearth astronomical needles in haystacks containing hundreds of thousands of objects. A team of researchers are training neural networks on synthetic data to revolutionising the search for these rare natural lenses. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
China’s 900 Metre Impact Crater Rewrites Recent History Scientists have discovered a 900 metre wide impact crater in southern China, the largest modern meteorite scar on Earth. The Jinlin crater triples the size of the previous record holder and suggests that recent extraterrestrial impacts have been far more dramatic than anyone realised. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Standard Cosmological Model Is The Simplest Model Of The Universe, But Not The Only One A new study of supernovae suggests that the standard model of cosmology isn’t quite right. If the data holds up, what other cosmological models might work better? Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Miniature Binary Star System Hosts Three Earth-sized Exoplanets A new discovery adds to the growing menagerie of exoplanets. These days, word of a new exoplanet discovery raises nary an eyebrow. To date, the current number of known exoplanets beyond our solar system stands at confirmed 6,148 worlds and counting. But a recent study out of the University of Liège in Belgium titled Two Warm Earth-sized Planets and an Earth-sized Candidate in the Binary System TOI-2267 shows just how strange these worlds can be. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Demand for JWST’s Observational Time Hits A New Peak Getting time on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the dream of many astronomers. The most powerful space telescope currently in our arsenal, the JWST has been in operation for almost four years at this point, after a long and tumultuous development time. Now, going into its fifth year of operation, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the organization that operates the science and mission operations centers for the JWST has received its highest number ever of submission for observational programs. Now a team of volunteer judges and the institute’s scientists just have to pickRead More →
New Research Helps Narrow the Search for Elusive Neutrino Sources A research team has conducted the first systematic search for optical counterparts to a neutrino “multiplet,” a rare event in which multiple high-energy neutrinos are detected from the same direction within a short period. The event was observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive detector buried deep within the Antarctic ice. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
More Research Shows That Enceladus Has A Stable Ocean That Could Host Life Is Saturn’s moon Enceladus habitable? There’s ample evidence that the moon holds a warm ocean underneath its frozen surface, and that the building blocks of life are present in that ocean. But for life to arise and persist, the ocean needs to sustain itself for a long time, and new research shows that’s exactly what’s happening. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
If The Supernova Standard Candle Is Wrong, It Could Solve The Hubble Tension New evidence suggests the standard model of cosmology is wrong, but the results could resolve the long-standing Hubble Tension problem in modern cosmology. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Black hole mergers could give rise to observable gravitational-wave tails Black holes, regions of spacetime in which gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, are intriguing and extensively studied cosmological phenomena. Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that when two black holes merge, they emit ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Our solar system is moving faster than expected How fast and in which direction is our solar system moving through the universe? This seemingly simple question is one of the key tests of our cosmological understanding. A research team led by astrophysicist Lukas Böhme at Bielefeld University has now found new answers, ones that challenge the established standard model of cosmology. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
The Rust That Could Reveal Alien Life Iron rusts. On Earth, this common chemical reaction often signals the presence of something far more interesting than just corroding metal for example, living microorganisms that make their living by manipulating iron atoms. Now researchers argue these microbial rust makers could provide some of the most promising biosignatures for detecting life on Mars and the icy moons of the outer Solar System. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Search for Worlds in the Making Astronomers have deployed a survey with the most memorable and tasty acronym in astrophysics – SPAM, The Search for Protoplanets with Aperture Masking – to catch planets in the act of being born. Using Keck Observatory’s most powerful instruments, researchers have just captured the closest ever view of a protoplanetary disk 400 light years away, revealing a telltale gap and clumpy structures that hint at a world coalescing from interstellar dust. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Universe is Decelerating and Standard Candles Aren’t So Standard According to a New Study A new study argues that the Universe is decelerating, based on a correlation between the brightness of Type-Ia supernovae and the age of their host galaxies. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
It’s Time to Give the Moon Its Own Time Tracking time is one of those things that seems easy, until you really start to get into the details of what time actually is. We define a second as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. However, according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, mass slows down these oscillations, making time appear to move more slowly for objects in large gravity wells. This distinction becomes critical as we start considering how to keep track of time between two separate gravity wells of varying strengths, such as on the Earth and the Moon. A new paper by PascaleRead More →
Euclid’s First Data Release Sheds Light on Galaxy Evolution ESA’s Euclid space telescope is revealing the patterns of galaxy evolution of millions of galaxies across cosmic time. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) are using this data to trace how galaxies grow, merge, and transform. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Unique shape of star’s explosion revealed just a day after detection Swift observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the explosive death of a star just as the blast was breaking through the star’s surface. For the first time, astronomers unveiled the shape of the explosion at its earliest, fleeting stage. This brief initial phase wouldn’t have been observable a day later and helps address a whole set of questions about how massive stars go supernova. ESO News Feed Go to SourceRead More →
Meet Jacklyn, The Barge That Changed Blue Origin’s Plans After spending four years converting a massive cargo ferry into a rocket catching ship, Blue Origin scrapped the entire vessel and started from scratch. The story of Jacklyn, named after Jeff Bezos’s mother, reveals how even a company founded by one of the world’s richest people had to learn hard lessons about what actually works when trying to catch 57 metre rocket boosters descending from space at hypersonic speeds. The barge that ultimately took its name represents a dramatic shift in strategy, from elegant complexity to purpose built simplicity. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
