computer modeling
New Supercomputer Simulation Explains How Mars Got Its Moons
One mystery in planetary science is a satisfying origin story for Mars's moons, Phobos and Deimos. Were they chunks of…
A Dwarf Galaxy That's Almost All Dark Matter
Thanks to new techniques, astronomers are mapping the Universe with more precision, finding galaxies with more and less dark matter.…
The Milky Way's Disk is Warped. Is That Because our Dark Matter Halo is Tilted?
Astronomers have measured the Milky Way's shape and found that the disk is warped and not a flat spiral like…
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…
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…
A New Simulation Reveals One Entire Stage of a Star's Life
Stars begin as giant clouds of gas and dust that pull together through mutual gravity into a dense protostar. At…
New Simulation Reveals the Churning Interiors of Giant Stars
Stellar fusion happens at a star's core, where the enormous temperatures and pressures fuse hydrogen atoms into helium, releasing radiation.…
JWST Fails to Disprove the Big Bang
The James Webb Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to see deeper into cosmic history than ever before, but it doesn't…
A Supercomputer Climate Model is so Accurate it Predicted the Weather Patterns Seen in the Famous 1972 “Blue Marble” Image of Earth
The "Blue Marble" was one of the most iconic pictures of the Apollo era. Taken by the astronauts of Apollo…
A Fast-Moving Star is Colliding With Interstellar gas, Creating a Spectacular bow Shock
A star speeding through gas and dust has much to teach us about interstellar dynamics.