Did Ancient Martian Life Eat Rocks For Food? Some lucky astronomers get to work with some of the rarest material in the world. Real Martian meteorites are extraordinarily rare, but are invaluable in terms of understanding Martian geology. Now, one of the most famous meteorites, nicknamed “Black Beauty”, is helping shed light on a much […]
Some Earth Life Could Already Survive on Mars Mars’ surface is a harsh environment for life. But life on Earth is notoriously resilient as well. No one is quite sure yet how microbes from Earth would fare on the Martian surface. However, the impact of a potential transmigration of microbes to the red planet could […]
Astronomers Think They’ve Found the Neutron Star Remnant Left Behind from Supernova 1987A It was the brightest supernova in nearly 400 years when it lit the skies of the southern hemisphere in February 1987. Supernova 1987A – the explosion of a blue supergiant star in the nearby mini-galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud – […]
One Type of Fast Radio Bursts… Solved? Every now and then there is a burst of radio light in the sky. It lasts for just milliseconds before fading. It’s known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), and they are difficult to observe and study. We know they are powerful bursts of energy, but we aren’t […]
The GRANTECAN discovers the largest cluster of galaxies known in the early universe A study, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and carried out with OSIRIS, an instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has found the most densely populated galaxy cluster in formation in the primitive universe. The researchers […]
The Core Of The Milky Way Is An Extreme Place Astronomers always like to look at incredibly violent places. Violence, in the astronomical sense, makes for rare conditions that can explain much about our universe. One of the violent places that astronomers love to study is the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, astronomers […]
What a Geologist Sees When They Look at Perseverance’s Landing Site Geologists love fieldwork. They love getting their specialized hammers and chisels into seams in the rock, exposing unweathered surfaces and teasing out the rock’s secrets. Mars would be the ultimate field trip for many of them, but sadly, that’s not possible. Instead, we’ve sent […]
Titan’s Atmosphere Recreated in an Earth Laboratory Beyond Earth, the general scientific consensus is that the best place to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life is Mars. However, it is by no means the only place. Aside from the many extrasolar planets that have been designated as “potentially-habitable,” there are plenty of other candidates right […]
Our Part of the Galaxy is Packed with Binary Stars Binary star systems are everywhere. They make up a huge percentage of all known solar systems: from what we can tell, about half of all Sun-like stars have a binary partner. But we haven’t really had a chance to study them in detail yet. That’s […]
The Space Court Foundation Presents: “Women of Color in Space” In the coming generations, humanity’s presence in space is expected to grow considerably. With everything from space tourism, the commercialization of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), asteroid mining, and maybe even settlements on the Moon and Mars in mind, there appears to be no limit to […]
There was a Secret Code in the Perseverance Parachute A secret coded message was hidden on the gigantic parachute used to land the Perseverance rover safely on the surface on Mars. And no, it wasn’t a clandestine message to the Martians. It was a message of inspiration for us humans. But it also came as […]
Cygnus X-1 was the First Black Hole Ever Found. New Measurements Show it’s Much More Massive Than Previously Believed In 1964 two Aerobee suborbital rockets were launched with the goal of mapping x-ray sources in the sky. Each rocket contained a directed Geiger counter, so that as the rocket rotated at the peak of its […]
New study suggests supermassive black holes could form from dark matter A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving ‘normal’ matter, supermassive black holes could instead form directly from dark matter in […]
Merging boson stars could explain massive black hole collision and prove existence of dark matter An international team of scientists led by the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics (IGFAE) and the University of Aveiro shows that the heaviest black hole collision ever observed, produced by the gravitational-wave GW190521, might actually be something even more […]
Astronomers detect new super-Earth exoplanet orbiting nearby star Using the radial velocity (RV) technique, astronomers have discovered a new super-Earth alien world as part of the HADES and CARMENES programs. The newfound exoplanet, designated GJ 740 b, orbits a bright star some 36 light-years away and is at least three times more massive than the […]
Magnetic fields drive astrophysical jet shapes Outflows of matter are general features stemming from systems powered by compact objects such as black holes, active galactic nuclei, pulsar wind nebulae, accreting objects such as Young Stellar Objects (YSO) and mature stars such as our sun. phys.org Go to Source
NASA’s Webb telescope will capture more stars at higher resolution: What that means for astronomy The combination of high resolution and infrared-detecting instruments on NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will reveal stars that are currently hidden even from the powerful Hubble Space Telescope. The wealth of additional star data will allow astronomers to investigate […]
Researchers detect cold gas pipelines feeding early, massive galaxies To come into being, galaxies need a steady diet of cold gases to undergo gravitational collapse. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow. phys.org Go to Source
Perseverance’s Landing … Seen From Orbit! The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has done it again. The imaging team was able to capture the Perseverance rover as it descended through the Martian atmosphere, hanging under its parachute. Stunning. Closeup view of the Mars 2020 descent stage streaking through Mars’ atmosphere on February 18, […]
Since Perseverance is Searching for Life, What Will it Be Looking for? You have to be careful what you say to people. When NASA or someone else says that the Perseverance rover will be looking for fossil evidence of ancient life, the uninformed may guffaw loudly. Or worse, they may think that scientists are looking […]
