Universe Today
Devastating Clouds of Dust Helped End the Reign of the Dinosaurs
A Collapsed Martian Lava Chamber, Seen From Space
Next Generation Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect 100-600 Solar Mass Black Hole Mergers
White Dwarfs Could Support Life. So Where are All Their Planets?
Can There Be Double Gravitational Lenses?
Three Planets Around this Sunlike Star are Doomed. Doomed!
New Telescopes to Study the Aftermath of the Big Bang
The NSF just awarded researchers at UChicago to start developing the CMB-S4 experiment, which will map the earliest moments of the Universe!
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Satellites Make up to 80,000 Flashing Glints Per Hour. It's a Big Problem for Astronomers
Telescopes searching for brief flashes like supernovae and asteroids have to contend with a rising number of glints from satellites. These glints can last for a fraction of a second, but they're bright enough to be recorded as a starlike object in the field of view of a survey like the Vera Rubin Observatory. In a new study, astronomers identified tens of thousands of these glints captured by a survey telescope, and there could be 80,000/hour happening across the sky.
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Vera Rubin Observatory Could Find Up to 70 Interstellar Objects a Year
The Crab Reveals Its Secrets To JWST
Balloon Animals and Bouncy Castles on the Moon. The Case for Inflatable Habitats
NASA's 2024 BIG Ideas Challenge is seeking innovative ideas for building inflatable habitats on the lunar surface!
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JWST Searches for Planets in the Fomalhaut System
Want to Find Life? Compare a Planet to its Neighbors
Astrobiologists have difficulty finding a single chemical that proves conclusive life on an exoplanet. A new paper suggests that studying a planet's atmosphere in context with its neighbors might be the way. You could measure carbon compared to other planets in the same system. A low amount of carbon could indicate oceans, plate tectonics, or life itself. The good news is that JWST is sensitive enough to make the observations in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
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A New Superconducting Camera can Resolve Single Photons
China Set Up a Tiny Farm on the Moon in 2019. How Did it Do?
China's Chang'e-4 mission grew the first plants on the Moon, and the results of the experiment could lead to lunar greenhouses someday!
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Uranus Has Infrared Auroras, Too
An Asteroid Came Uncomfortably Close to Earth in July. Could we Have Stopped it?
On July 15th, 2023, astronomers discovered an asteroid 43 meters across, two days before it passed within a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. If it had struck the Earth, it would have impacted with 1.5 megatonnes of energy and caused significant local damage. Is there anything we could do to stop asteroids this size from causing damage, even if we have just hours or days of notice? Surprisingly, yes, with the "pulverize it" method.
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Environmental Concerns Could Drive Asteroid Mining
China Showcases its Lunar Exploration Plans
In a recent bootlegged video, China provided a detailed look at their plans for the future of lunar exploration.
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The Largest Simulation of the Universe Ever Made
Misaligned Binary Star Systems are Rogue Planet Factories
Astronomers are discovering that free-floating, rogue planets are common in the Milky Way. Hundreds were recently found in the Orion Nebula. Discovering the mechanism for these rogue planets is still a challenge. A new paper suggests that misaligned binary star systems are unstable shortly after formation, with more massive planets kicking out the smaller worlds. They predict that there should be many more low-mass planets out there to find as instruments improve.
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A New Map Shows Where Mars is Hiding all its Ice
JWST Sees Four Exoplanets in a Single System
Venus Might Have Had Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth
What's the Best Way to Find Planets in the Habitable Zone?
Everything in the Universe Fits in This One Graph. Even the Impossible Stuff
The Milky Way's Black Hole is Spinning as Fast as it Can
Is the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way (SagA*) spinning? And how fast? It's tricky to know how fast a black hole is spinning without an accretion disk, but astronomers can estimate using polar outflows of material streaming from the black hole. Researchers observed the region around SagA* with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and estimated that it is spinning. In fact, it's spinning as quickly as the laws of physics will permit.
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JWST Confirms the Formation of Heavy Elements in a Kilonova
What a Mess. When the Milky Way and Andromeda Merge, it'll Look Like This
JWST Takes a Detailed Look at Jupiter's Moon Ganymede
Mars Still Has Liquid Rock Near its Core
An Exo-Neptune Beat the Odds and Kept its Atmosphere
What's Inside the Carina Pillars? Massive Protostars and Newly-Forming Planets!
Io has 266 Active Volcanic Hotspots Linked by a Global Magma Ocean
After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos?
This Photonic Crystal Bends Light Like a Black Hole
Civilizations are Probably Spreading Quickly Through the Universe
New research shows how intelligent life might expand in an ever-expanding Universe, which has serious implications for SETI and the fate of our civilization.
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Astronomers Want JWST to Study the Milky Way Core for Hundreds of Hours
Catch a 'Pac-Man' Partial Lunar Eclipse for Europe and Africa This Weekend
Checking out the October Hunter's Full Moon this coming weekend? This Full Moon is also special, as it features the final eclipse of 2023. The eclipse is a partial lunar, and occurs on the night of Saturday/Sunday, October 28th/29th.
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Sit on the Toilet while you Gaze at the Earth from the Edge of Space
'Her Space, Her Time' Reveals the Hidden Figures of Physics
Lunar Astronauts Will Need Easy Walking Trails Around the Moon's South Pole
An international team of scientists used topographical data of the Moon's southern polar region to determine the optimal routes for Artemis and other astronauts to follow during EVAs.
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A Fast Radio Burst Took 8 Billion Years to Reach Us
A newly discovered fast radio burst (FRB) absolutely smashed the record for the most distant ever discovered. The burst was found in June 2022 at Australia's ASKAP radio telescope after it had spent 8 billion years crossing the Universe. The FRB released the equivalent of 30 years of solar radiation in milliseconds. The burst could also help astronomers weigh the Universe, measuring how much gas it had to pass through on its long journey to reach Earth.
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The Moon is 40 Million Years Older Than We Thought
"The Big One": The Most Powerful Marsquake Ever Detected
A new paper in the Geophysical Research Letters explains how the largest recorded seismic event on Mars provided evidence for a different sort of tectonic origin -- the release of stress within the Martian crust.
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How Close is Too Close to a Kilonova?
A Kilonova Simulated in 3D
An Unusual Crater on Pluto Might be a Supervolcano
JWST Looks at the Debris Disc Around a White Dwarf
White dwarfs are the ultimate fate of stars like our Sun, and one of the most exciting examples is located 95 light-years from Earth. In 2018, astronomers saw it suddenly flare up, suggesting that an exoasteroid was disrupted, leading to observations of dust and debris around the star. Astronomers think the star is surrounded by the remnants of its planetary system, crushed into a debris disk. Now, JWST has made its first observations of this intriguing star.
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Now Astronomers have Discovered "Ultra-Fast Radio Bursts" Lasting Millionths of a Second
