Hubble finds that aging brown dwarfs grow lonely It takes two to tango, but in the case of brown dwarfs that were once paired as binary systems, that relationship doesn’t last for very long, according to a recent survey from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

NASA’s Chandra identifies an underachieving black hole Astronomers have revealed that a brilliant supermassive black hole is not living up to expectations. Although it is responsible for high levels of radiation and powerful jets, this giant black hole is not as influential as many of its counterparts in other galaxies. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Method to detect dark matter could lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution Everyone loves a two-for-one deal—even physicists looking to tackle unanswered questions about the cosmos. Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are getting just such a twofer: Particle detectors originally developed to look for dark matter are now in a position to be included aboard the Line Emission Mapper (LEM), a space-based X-ray probe mission proposed for the 2030s. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

How a balloon-borne experiment can do the job of the Hubble space telescope An astronomical telescope designed to complement the aging Hubble Space Telescope lifted off from New Zealand’s south island on April 16 2023. But as a sphere the size of a football stadium rose silently and slowly over the Tauhinukorokio mountains, calls started coming in from residents. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

NASA Experiments Planned for the April 8th Total Solar Eclipse Totality and the April 8th total solar eclipse offers a rare chance to study the Sun. We’re less than three weeks out now, until the April 8th total solar eclipse crosses North America. And while over 31 million residents live in the path of totality, many more will make the journey to briefly stand in the shadow of the Moon. Several scientific projects are also underway to take advantage of the event. The eclipse traverses Mexico, the United States from Texas to Maine, and the Canadian Maritime provinces before heading out over the Atlantic. MaximumRead More →

Thermonuclear flames: Astrophysicists use supercomputer to explore exotic stellar phenomena Understanding how a thermonuclear flame spreads across the surface of a neutron star—and what that spreading can tell us about the relationship between the neutron star’s mass and its radius—can also reveal a lot about the star’s composition. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Unveiling the formation of the first galaxies Utilizing high-resolution three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations and a detailed supernova physics model run on supercomputers, a research team led by Dr. Ke-Jung Chen from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA) has revealed that the physical properties of the first galaxies are critically determined by the masses of the first stars. Their study is published in The Astrophysical Journal. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Four new DAQ white dwarfs discovered Astronomers from the University of Oklahoma and their colleagues report the detection of four white dwarf stars of a recently discovered rare DAQ spectral subclass. The newfound white dwarfs are slightly more massive than the sun. The finding was detailed in a research paper published March 13 on the preprint server arXiv. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

The Mars Science Helicopter Could be an Airborne Geologist on Mars After over 70 successful flights, a broken rotor ended the remarkable and groundbreaking Ingenuity helicopter mission on Mars. Now, NASA is considering how a larger, more capable helicopter could be an airborne geologist on the Red Planet. For the past several years scientists and engineers have been working on the concept, proposing a six-rotor hexacopter that would be about the size of the Perseverance rover. Called the Mars Science Helicopter (MSH), it would not only serve as an aerial scout for a future rover, but more importantly, it could also carry up to 5Read More →

NASA is Planning to Shut Down One of the Great Observatories to Save Money The US Government budget announcement in March left NASA with two billion dollars less than it asked for. The weeks that followed have left NASA with some difficult decisions forcing cuts across the agency. There will be a number of cuts across the agency but one recent decision came as quite a shock to the scientific community. NASA have just announced they are no longer going to support the Chandra X-Ray Observatory which has been operational since 1999 and made countless discoveries.  Chandra was launched back in 1999 and has becomeRead More →

It’s Time to Study Lunar Lava Tubes. Here’s a Mission That Could Help The Moon is practically begging to be explored, and the momentum to do so is building. The Artemis Program’s effort to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions captures a lot of attention. But there are other efforts underway. In 2023, the ESA put out a call for small lunar missions. The call was associated with their Terra Novae exploration program, which will advance the ESA’s exploration of the Solar System with robotic scouts and precursor missions. “Humankind will benefit from the new discoveries, ambitions, science,Read More →

Scientists find one of the most ancient stars that formed in another galaxy The first generation of stars transformed the universe. Inside their cores, simple hydrogen and helium fused into a rainbow of elements. When these stars died, they exploded and sent these new elements across the universe. The iron running in your veins and the calcium in your teeth and the sodium powering your thoughts were all born in the heart of a long-dead star. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers discover a rare eclipsing X-ray binary An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a rare eclipsing Be/X-ray binary system as part of the Swift Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Survey (S-CUBED). The finding was detailed in a research paper published March 12 on the preprint server arXiv. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Citizen Scientists Find Fifteen “Active Asteroids” Nature often defies our simple explanations. Take comets and asteroids, for example. Comets are icy and have tails; asteroids are rocky and don’t have tails. But it might not be quite so simple, according to new research. That nice, clean definition took a hit in 1996 when a pair of astronomers discovered that what was thought to be a main-belt comet was actually an asteroid. The object is named 7968 Elst–Pizarro after the two scientists. It displayed a comet-like dust tail at perihelion. These images from the La Silla Observatory show the active asteroid 7968 Elst–Pizarro. Its tail isRead More →

Astronomers Find the Most Massive Supercluster to Date The Earth’s place in space is a fairly familiar one with it orbiting an average star. The star – our Sun – orbits the centre of our Galaxy the Milky Way. From here onwards, the story is less well known. The Milky Way is part of a large structure called the Laniakea Supercluster which is 250 million light years across! That really is a whacking great area of space and it contains at least 100,000 galaxies. There are larger superclusters though like the newly discovered Einasto Supercluster which measures an incredible 360 million light years across andRead More →

One Impact on Mars Produced More than Two Billion Secondary Craters There are plenty of craters on Mars, especially when compared to Earth. That is primarily thanks to the lack of weathering forces and strong plate tectonics that disrupt the formations of such impacts on our home planet. However, not all impact craters on Mars are directly caused by asteroid impacts. Many of them are caused by the ejecta from an asteroid impact falling back to the planet. One recent study showed how impactful this can be – it concludes that a single large impact crater on Mars created over two billion other smaller cratersRead More →

Gravity From Mars has an Effect on Earth’s Oceans We are all too familiar of the Moon’s effect on our planet. It’s relentless tug causes our tides but even Mars, which is always at least 55 million kilometres away, can have a subtle effect too. A study has revealed a 2.4 million year cycle in the geological records that show the gentle warming and cooling of our oceans. The records match the interactions between the orbits of Earth and Mars over the longest timescales. These are known as the ‘astronomical grand cycles’ but to date, not much evidence has been found.  The rhythmical rising andRead More →