Universe Today
Strong Evidence that Supermassive Black Holes Affect Their Host Galaxy's Chemistry
Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air
A 2022 Gamma Ray Burst Was So Powerful, it was Detected by Spacecraft Across the Solar System
Gamma-ray bursts are some of the most powerful explosions ever detected, emitting more radiation than the rest of their host galaxy combined. In October 2022, a gamma-ray burst struck the Solar System and interacted with the heliosphere. This set off charged particle detectors in spacecraft, from Mars to Earth, to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point. These separate detections allowed astronomers to track the motion of the radiation as it moved through the Solar System and allowed them to determine the location of the explosion.
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Stunning New Images from the 2023 'Astronomy Photographer of the Year' Competition
The Moon's Southern Ice is Relatively Young
According to new research from the PSI, water ice found within permanently-shadowed craters on the Moon is younger than previously thought.
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Mini-Subs Could One Day Ply the Seas Under Europa's Ice
Following Up on Report, NASA Takes On a Bigger Role in UFO Research
If Neutron Stars Have Mountains, They Should Generate Gravitational Waves
Astronomers have discovered the gravitational waves released by colliding black holes, neutron stars, and even the background waves from merging supermassive black holes. A new paper proposes that advanced gravitational wave observatories might be able to detect the presence of "mountains" on spinning neutron stars. Although they're incredibly dense, neutron stars have layers, and as they cool, their solid crusts might deform into regions farther from the central core. This would create a wobble that would release gravitational waves.
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How Can We Bring Down the Costs of Large Space Telescopes?
The Seasons on Saturn are Changing. It's Time to Say Goodbye to Its North Pole for a Few Years
Some Lunar Regolith is Better for Living Off the Land on the Moon
In a recent study, a geology professor developed a classification scheme for lunar regolith that could inform everything from base construction to living on the Moon.
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Planning is Underway for NASA's Next Big Flagship Space Telescope
Quasars Have Always Had Dark Matter Halos
Could We Find Aliens Terraforming Other Worlds?
Whether Saturn's Rings are Young or Old, its Moons are as Ancient as the Planet Itself
A team of researchers has obtained new estimates on the age of Saturn's irregular satellites, which range from 4.1 and 4,4 billion years.
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Astronomers Observe Blobs of Dark Matter Down to a Scale of 30,000 Light-Years Across
Lucy Has its First Asteroid Target in the Crosshairs
The Hubble Imaged Some Globular Clusters in an Unusual Place: Near the Milky Way's Centre
Do The Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks Really Indicate Newly Forming Planets?
Modern instruments like ALMA have revealed newly forming stars surrounded by accretion disks. These images are so sensitive you can even see the gaps in the disk where new planets form, right? Maybe not. According to a new paper, systems with many newly forming planets are inherently unstable, so they can't all indicate new worlds. Some gaps and rings around the stars might just indicate collections of pebbles that can never accrete into actual planets. The challenge will be to figure out which is which.
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JWST Accidentally Found 21 Brown Dwarfs
JWST Might Have Imaged a Hycean World for the First Time, With a Hydrogen-Rich Atmosphere and a Deep Planet-Wide Water Ocean
Astronomers have directed JWST to examine the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18 b, which orbits a cool dwarf star about 120 light-years from Earth. The planet is 8.6 times as massive as Earth, and the observations have revealed methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This opens up the intriguing possibility that this exoplanet is an example of a theorized "hycean world," a planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean covering its surface that extends deeper than anything we have on Earth.
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Polaris is the Closest, Brightest Cepheid Variable. Very Recently, Something Changed.
A new study has revealed that Polaris' pulsating behavior may be caused by its binary companion, resolving a long-standing mystery in astronomy.
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The Closest Black Holes to Earth are Probably Hidden in This Nearby Star Cluster
The Hyades cluster is the closest open star cluster to Earth, located at a distance of about 150 light-years. Although black holes haven't been directly seen in the cluster, it's an excellent place to search for them because the largest stars would have detonated as supernovae and collapsed in neutron stars and black holes. Astronomers have simulated the motions of stars in the cluster with black holes lurking around and then compared them to the motions of the actual stars. They only matched with the presence of black holes near the center of the cluster.
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The Case for a Small Universe
Astronomers don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite. Whatever the case, it's larger than the Observable Universe, which measures 93 billion light-years across. A new paper proposes that the actual Universe is comparatively tiny, not much bigger than its observed size - just a few orders of magnitude larger. A smaller Universe solves some problems with other theories of cosmology, including inflation and the amount of dark energy in the Universe.
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Every Night and Every Morning, the Moon Rumbles With Tiny Quakes
A new study from Caltech shows that the moon experiences "moonquakes" with precise regularity, like a "lunar alarm clock."
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The Outer Space Treaty was Signed in 1967. Can it Handle the Future of Space Exploration?
A Black Hole Nibbles on a Star Every 22 Days, Slowly Consuming it
A Medieval Manuscript Likely Hides a Record of an Impending Recurrent Nova
Should the Next Big Observatories Be Built on the Moon?
As the next round of giant observatories nears completion, astronomers are starting to ponder what comes next. One exciting location to consider is the Moon. There's no atmosphere on the Moon, so a lunar telescope would act like a space telescope. Still, solid ground, lower gravity, and potentially human astronauts are available to do maintenance and make upgrades. A new paper reviews different kinds of telescopes that could be built on the Moon and their unique advantages over Earth- or space-based instruments.
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DART Had a Surprising Impact on its Target
Follow the Fall 2023 Return of Comet 103P Hartley
Catch periodic cosmic interloper 103P Hartley while you can.
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Mars Doesn't Have as Many Minerals as Earth
Did a Comet Airburst Destroy a Native American Community?
Another New Way to Measure Distance in the Universe: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
A team of astronomers have developed a new technique that relies on Baryon Acoustic Oscillations to measure cosmic distances.
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A Last-Minute Addition to the Solar Orbiter Allows it to See More Deeply into the Sun's Atmosphere
The Most Distant Galactic Field Lines Ever Seen
Galaxies are surrounded by magnetic field lines, spanning tens of thousands of light-years. These magnetic fields have previously been measured surrounding only the closest galaxies. Still, astronomers have made the map of a galaxy seen just a few billion years after the Big Bang. Astronomers discovered with ALMA, searching dust grains in the galaxy that align with the nearby magnetic fields. The light they emit becomes polarized, which can then be turned into magnetic field maps.
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China Reveals Its Lunar Lander Design
China has released artist renditions of the spacecraft and lander module that will send the first taikonauts to the Moon.
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What's the Bare Minimum Number of People for a Mars Habitat?
As Night Falls, India's Lunar Lander/Rover Goes to Sleep. Probably Forever
India Follows its Lunar Mission by Sending a Spacecraft to Study the Sun
The Space Station is Getting Gigabit Internet
NASA is upgrading the ISS communication system with the first end-to-end laser relay system.
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TESS Finds a Planet That Takes 482 Days to Orbit, the Widest it's Seen so Far
JWST Gazes into the Dark Molecular Clouds at the Heart of the Milky Way
Humanity Will Out-Communicate all Life on Earth Within 90 Years
All organisms communicate information with their cells using signaling molecules. Add up all these communications, and it's the equivalent of 10^24 bits per second, which is an incomprehensibly large amount. Humanity's digital communication only amounts to 10^15 bits per second, nine orders of magnitude less. However, humanity's information transmission is growing exponentially, and according to a new study, it should catch up within 90 years. These estimates could help astronomers search for technological civilizations more advanced than us.
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A New Telescope Could Detect Decaying Dark Matter in the Early Universe
A gap in astronomical knowledge is Cosmic Dawn, a time when the first stars in the Universe formed, ending the cosmological dark ages. If there was dark matter at this early time, its decay might have heated up the intergalactic medium, sending out a signal that could be detectable today. A new paper suggests that the newly built Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope could measure this dark matter decay with 1,000 hours of observation or constrain its presence by three orders of magnitude.
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Some Galaxies Contain Double Supermassive Black Holes
It's Going to Take More Than Early Dark Energy to Resolve the Hubble Tension
Astronomers have measured the Universe's expansion rate and found that various methods don't agree, and their error bars don't overlap. This is called the "Hubble Tension" or the "Crisis in Cosmology." Either the measurements are wrong, or new physics is waiting to be discovered. Cosmologists have proposed a period of rapid expansion early on in the Universe called "Early Dark Energy." Still, a recent paper suggests one rapid expansion event wouldn't explain other observations about the Universe. It's probably a combination of factors.
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A Bizarre Pulsar Switches Between Two Brightness Modes. Astronomers Finally Figured Out Why.
The Closest Supernova Seen in the Modern Era, Examined by JWST
In 1987, a supernova suddenly appeared in the Large Magellanic Cloud and was studied by astronomers worldwide. Although the detonating star was 165,000 light-years away, this was still the closest supernova seen in centuries. Astronomers have continued to study the expanding debris cloud over the decades, and now JWST has joined the effort, revealing new features never before seen with other observatories. The central core is so dense with gas and dust that its central neutron star remnant is still hidden, even to JWST.
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Is Humanity Ready to Realize the Dream of Interstellar Travel?
