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The Filamentary Funnels That Form Stars The universe is full of fascinating structures, and some of the most striking take shape inside the giant clouds where stars are born. There, streams of gas appear to converge from all directions toward a dense central hub, like spokes meeting at the center of a wheel. New simulations show why this is, and why star formation overall is so inefficient. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

How Heavy Can a Neutron Star Get? The physics of neutron stars are almost too fantastic to believe. Something the weight of two Suns compacted to a sphere the size of a city. Each teaspoon of its material would weigh billions of tons. If you’ve done any reading on the topic, you’ve heard these facts before. But despite the intense interest these extreme objects hold, we are still actively learning lots about them. One of the most pertinent outstanding questions is where is the line between becoming a neutron star and becoming a black hole when a star dies. A new paper by researchers atRead More →

Jupiter Created the Birthplace of Rocky Bodies in the Early Solar System Jupiter helped create the different rocky bodies in the Solar System. The massive gas giant created a planet-induced pressure bump in the gas in the disk surrounding the young Sun. This pressure bump filtered different types of dust at different times, leading to the formation of planetesimals with different compositions at different times. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

How a Giant Moon and a Steam Atmosphere Built the Recipe for Life 4.5 billion years ago was an interesting time for the Earth. The atmosphere was thick and what we would now think of as toxic. The Moon, which was freshly formed, looks much more massive than it does today and faintly glows with the residual heat from its own creation. And the floor was literally lava. Everywhere. If there were any children alive at the time, they would have no chance of winning that game. But for a long time, scientists had thought this molten phase of the Earth didn’t last long. ButRead More →

A Faster Way To Forecast Alien Weather The TRAPPIST-1 system, located about 41 light years from Earth, has been a focal point of much exoplanetary discussion – mainly because it has 7 confirmed planets orbiting a dim M-dwarf star. Two of those planets – TRAPPIST-1e and -1f – are thought to be in the star’s habitable zone. However, the habitable zone of M-dwarfs is so close to the star itself the planets are likely tidally locked to it, meaning they have a permanent day and night side, with a “twilight terminator” in between. Armed with that knowledge, scientists have been attempting to model the climateRead More →

Longest-period young transiting exoplanets discovered It’s 2234, you’re on your annual class field trip touring exoplanets, and your teacher informs everyone they can pick one more exoplanetary system to explore before heading back to Earth. You and your classmates are exhausted from the day’s activities and you’re hungry. However, you get really excited because you already know what everyone will want. You and your classmates all shout in unison, “The young and far away puffy ones!” Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Longest-period young transiting exoplanets discovered It’s 2234, you’re on your annual class field trip touring exoplanets, and your teacher informs everyone they can pick one more exoplanetary system to explore before heading back to Earth. You and your classmates are exhausted from the day’s activities and you’re hungry. However, you get really excited because you already know what everyone will want. You and your classmates all shout in unison, “The young and far away puffy ones!” Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Roman Telescope’s massive infrared mirror is ready to fly It’s June 2027, and you’re fresh off defending your PhD studying the direct imaging of exoplanets while starting your postdoctoral journey at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The trauma of eating ramen and living off a sub-living wage for the last five years of your life is still fresh in your brain. But you’re excited to finally get your real career started with funding you received for viewing time on the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman for short). You begin to download the first set of data as your eyes tear up knowing your entireRead More →

JWST Finds Methane Atmosphere on Temperate Exoplanet It’s 2165, and methane is in high demand, especially after the Titan Treaty of 2145 made it illegal to harvest methane from Saturn’s moon, Titan. But the advent of interstellar travel has made exoplanetary exploration far easier, enabling corporations to identify and harvest methane from exoplanets. However, it’s far cheaper and easier to harvest methane from exoplanets with reasonable (also called temperate) temperatures, because it means higher quantities of methane. The Exoplanet Exploration Corporation decides to send its first ship to one such exoplanet loaded with methane that could bring their quarterly financial statements back into the green.Read More →

Blue Origin’s Lunar Lander Just Passed Its Toughest Test Yet Before any spacecraft can survive the Moon, it has to survive something almost as brutal, a giant metal chamber in Houston that strips away every molecule of air and swings temperatures from scorching to freezing in minutes. Blue Origin’s lunar lander just spent time in exactly that chamber and it came out the other side ready for the real thing. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The Loudest Planet Wins We are closer than ever to detecting signs of life on another world. The James Webb Space Telescope is already ‘sniffing’ alien atmospheres, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory is being built specifically to find biology beyond Earth. But a new paper raises an uncomfortable question; when we do find that first biosignature, will it actually tell us anything meaningful about life in the universe? The answer, it turns out, might be no. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A Brief-ish History of SETI. Part VIII: Paradox? What Paradox? In recent decades, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has seen a revival, and future surveys will benefit from new technologies. Similarly, our perception of what technologies an advanced civilization might use has expanded. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The Galaxy That Forgot to Spin Every galaxy we know of spins. It’s one of those rules of the universe so fundamental that astronomers barely think about it anymore. So when the James Webb Space Telescope pointed at one of the most massive galaxies in the early universe and found…well nothing. No spin, just stillness. They had to look twice. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Did We Invent Dark Energy for Nothing? For nearly thirty years, dark energy has been cosmology’s great get out of jail free card, the invisible, mysterious force we invented to explain why the universe is expanding faster than it should be. Now a team of mathematicians says we may never have needed it at all. And the implications are stranger than you might think. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

It Took a Cosmic Village to Shape Early Galaxies An early galaxy cluster named after an Indian lake is teaching astronomers about influences on galaxy evolution in the infant Universe. Astronomer Ronaldo Laishram of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) used the Subaru Telescope’s wide-field camera, Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), to conduct a large sky survey to look for early galaxies with active star formation. The result was the discovery of a massive protocluster of galaxies that existed some 12.6 billion years ago, very early in cosmic time. Detailed study of this region could give new insight into how galaxies and their clusters form andRead More →

Lasers at the Lunar Poles Could Help Astronauts Navigate A team of scientists is exploring ways to use dark craters at the lunar poles as sites for ultrastable lasers to aid in surface and near-lunar navigation. The group, led by Physicist Jun Ye, an expert on lasers and precision measurements, were discussing the types of instruments that Artemis astronauts could install and use during their time on the Moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →