Chinese Astronauts Return After a Delay Imposed by Space Junk The Shenzhou-20 mission’s three-person crew has returned home after more than a week of delays caused by damage to their spacecraft, allegedly caused by an impact with a tiny piece of space debris. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Seven Sisters Have Thousands of Hidden Siblings Astronomers have discovered that the famous Pleiades star cluster, otherwise known as the “Seven Sisters” is actually the bright core of a sprawling family of stars spread across nearly 2,000 light years. By combining stellar spin measurements with precise motion tracking, researchers identified over 3,000 related stars and revealed the Pleiades is twenty times larger than previously thought. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The Solar System Is Racing Through Space Far Faster Than Expected Astronomers have discovered that our Solar System is moving through the universe more than three times faster than cosmological models predict, a finding that challenges fundamental assumptions about how the universe works. By analysing the distribution of distant radio galaxies using advanced statistical methods, the team detected motion so unexpectedly rapid it earned the rare five sigma statistical significance that scientists consider definitive evidence. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
What an Artimess! In our second episode of the month we chat about the weird mess that is now the Artemis Programme, whether there is even a new space race and what strange shenanigans rogue planets are up to! Produced by Paul, Jen, John, Damien & Dustin Awesome Astronomy Go to SourceRead More →
Life Might Show Up As Pink And Yellow Clouds On Distant Worlds Carl Sagan, along with co-author Edwin Salpeter, famously published a paper in the 70s about the possibility of finding life in the cloud of Jupiter. They specifically described “sinkers, floaters, and hunters” that could live floating and moving in the atmosphere of our solar system’s largest planet. He also famously talked about how clouds on another of our solar system’s planets – Venus – obfuscated what was on the surface, leading to wild speculation about a lush, Jurassic Park-like world full of life, just obscured by clouds. Venus turned out to be theRead More →
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 →
