Universe Today

Could the Clues to Ancient Alien Civilizations Be Hiding in a Bucket of Moon Dust? Most of our experience with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been focused on capturing radio signals that alien species have sent out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. That creates a huge “synchronicity” problem – what if there aren’t any alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals now, but there were a billion years ago? The Milky Way is around 13 billion years old – hoping that we exist at the same time as an alien civilization that happens to be actively messaging is a huge leap of faith. But, according toRead More →

A New Catalog of Close to 3,000 Supernova Challenges Theories on Dark Energy The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Earth From Orbit Is Unpredictable and Messy. Could ‘Liquid’ AI Clear the View? Monitoring Earth from above is a messy, inconsistent business. Clouds can block a satellite view, the angle of the Sun can create huge shadows, and orbital paths might not take a system across the same general area for weeks. That inconsistency is hard to deal with for traditional software, and can even confuse standard deep learning algorithms. But, according to a new review paper by researchers Raul-Alexandru Gorgan and Dorian Gorgan of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, there’s a new type of frontier AI that could be able to help – bio-inspiredRead More →

A New Design For A Plasma Engine Fuels On Only Thin Air Choosing what orbit to put a satellite in always comes with trade-offs. When it comes to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 100-450 km, there are distinct advantages. Remote sensing cameras can take better pictures, comms and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag will automatically clean up dead satellites. But there’s also a cost – air friction requires any satellite in this orbit to use an engine near constantly to stay in orbit, which in turn requires fuel – typically in the form of expensive gases like Xenon. So, as part ofRead More →

Venus Moon Would Have Been Doomed From The Start, Says New Paper Venus likely never had a moon and even if it did, it would have soon been torn asunder by the planet’s own gravity, says prominent planetary astrophysicist. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Dense Galaxies Are Carving Out A Bubble in the Early Universe Light could only travel freely in the Universe after cosmic reionization. Before that, neutral hydrogen stopped photons from travelling. The JWST has found evidence of an overdensity of galaxies carving out a bubble of reionization. Is this how it all started? Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

How Big Can The Universe’s First Starbursts Get? As our telescopes have improved and we’ve been able to peer farther back in time, we’ve begun finding more fascinating features of the universe. But one thing we definitely haven’t found yet is Population III (Pop III) stars. These were the earliest stars in the universe, formed completely from pristine hydrogen and helium, with no “metals” (i.e. elements heavier than those two) polluting their processes. They are also theorized to be absolutely massive, and “die with passion” as Bill Wurtz once put it in a famous YouTube video. A new paper, available in pre-print form on arXivRead More →

What’s Carving Active Gullies on Mars? It’s Not Water Scientists were shocked when they received the first images of Martian gullies. They were even more shocked as those gullies appeared to change over time. Their similarities to gullies seen on Earth were uncanny, but all of Earth’s gullies are formed by the water run-off, and Martian is too cold and has too sparse an atmosphere to have liquid water on its surface. Whatever has been causing those changing gullies couldn’t have been water, so what was it? A new paper from Apolline Leclef of the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale at Université Paris-Saclay and her colleagues, availableRead More →

NASA’s Next Great Observatory Could Spot Oceans on Distant Worlds We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets so far. Dozens of them have been in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where, at least in theory, they could host an ocean. But we’ve never definitively found a liquid ocean on another planet. A new paper from researchers Eleanor Cornish and Tyler Robinson of the University of Arizona, available in pre-print on arXiv and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, looks at a unique way we might be able to find one – by looking for its “glint”. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

eROSITA’s Second Data Release Catalog Delivering the Most Comprehensive High-Energy Census of the Cosmos to Date The eROSITA Consortium has issued the survey’s second data release (DR2), nearly doubling the previously known eROSITA X-ray sources to two million. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Unexplained Gamma-Rays from the Galactic Center Could be from Self-Annihilating Dark Matter Over a decade ago, the Fermi satellite detected an excess of gamma-ray emissions in the galactic center. Potential explanations included Sgr. A*, the Milky Way’s SMBH, pulsars, and even self-annihilating dark matter. There’s no clear answer yet, since the region is so difficult to observe. But recent research shows that dark matter can’t be ruled out. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A New Surface Atlas of Phobos Will Help JAXA’s MMX Mission Collect its Samples JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) will be on its way to Mars and Phobos next month. It will collect samples from Phobos and return them to Earth. A new morphodynamic atlas of the small moon will help scientists collect and understand the samples. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A New Surface Atlas of Phobos Will Help JAXA’s MMX Mission Collect its Samples JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) will be on its way to Mars and Phobos next month. It will collect samples from Phobos and return them to Earth. A new morphodynamic atlas of the small moon will help scientists collect and understand the samples. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

JWST Ruled Out Finding Tiny Moons Around An Exoplanet – That’s Great News The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened up many wonders of the cosmos to scientists since it began its science operations a few years ago. But one thing that it hasn’t done is find an “exomoon”. These, as yet still theoretical, moons orbit exoplanets in other star systems, and JWST was supposed to find a plethora of them. However, so far it has found precisely none. It seems the cause is noise in the telescope’s instrumentation or noise from the star itself. But a new paper, available in pre-print form onRead More →

Ancient Swedish Goths Had Surprisingly Accurate Calendars Ancient Swedish pagans had surprisingly accurate calendars and the ability to measure phases of the Moon to an incredible precision. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

New Revelations About the Origin of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/Atlas – only the third known object from beyond our Solar System ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

New Research Says that Early Galaxies Could be Sending us Neutrinos Those “Little Red Dots” discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, galaxies that existed during the very early Universe, could be sending neutrino particles that are reaching us today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers Unmask a Supernova Impostor Astronomers observe faint light signals from stellar objects, study it intently, and try to understand what’s behind these signals. In one case, the signals they detected masqueraded as an imminent supernova explosion. But more observations revealed a different reality. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Widespread Turbulence is Upsetting Star Formation in Stephan’s Quintet Stephan’s Quintet contains the most well-studied compact galaxy group. Japanese researchers have mapped star forming gas in the Quintet, along with its turbulence. The results show that the Quintet is an evolved group of interacting galaxies where gas struggles to settle down and form stars. Even where gas is concentrated, turbulence from interactions throttles star formation. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

If Alien Civilizations Use Hyper-Efficient Computers, They Will Have A Distinct Energy Signal We Can Detect Astronomers have long searched for Dyson spheres as a sign of advanced alien civilizations. But if an alien civilization is dependent on advanced computing, we may be better served by looking for a Slysh halo. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →