Space and astronomy news
The Universe’s very first stars had an important job. They formed from the primordial elements created by the Big Bang, so they contained no metals. It was up to them to synthesize the first metals and spread them out into the nearby Universe. The JWST has made some progress in finding the Universe’s earliest galaxies. …
Continue reading “Can Webb Find the First Stars in the Universe?”
In the quest to understand how and where life might arise in the galaxy, astronomers search for its building blocks. Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are some of those blocks, and they include things like formaldehyde and acetic acid, among many others. The JWST has found some of these COMs around young protostars. What does this …
NASA’s Psyche mission began eight weeks ago when it launched from the Kennedy Space Center. While it won’t reach its objective, the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, until 2029, the spacecraft has already travelled 26 million km (16 million miles.) During that time, it’s already had its share of success as it ticks off items on its …
Continue reading “Psyche Gives Us Its First Images of Space”
NASA and its commercial partners are working on deformable mirrors (DM) that will allow next-generation telescopes to directly observe exoplanets.
Astrophysicists working with the JWST have found a surprising amount of metal in a galaxy only 350 million years after the Big Bang. How does that fit in with our understanding of the Universe?
In a recent study, a pair of researchers from the Carl Sagan Institute developed a model for finding exoplanets similar to Earth – when the dinosaurs still roamed!
NASA’s Psyche mission just launched on a six year journey to explore a metal world in the Asteroid Belt.
Nature is stingy with its secrets. That’s why humans developed the scientific method. Without it, we’d still be ignorant and living in a world dominated by superstitions. Astrophysicists have made great progress in understanding how stars form, thanks to the scientific method. But there’s a lot they still don’t know. That’s one of the reasons …
Continue reading “Feast Your Eyes on this Star-Forming Region, Thanks to the JWST”
A new study estimates that there could be 11,000 habitable planets within 100 parsecs of our Sun, the nearest being 20 parsecs away.
On Earth, continents are likely necessary to support life. Continents ‘float’ on top of the Earth’s viscous mantle, and heat from the planet’s core keeps the mantle from solidifying and locking the continents into place. The core is hot because of the presence of radioactive elements that came from neutron star collisions. It should be …
Continue reading “When did the First Continents Appear in the Universe?”