Using Gamma-Ray Bursts to Probe Large Scale Structures

By Matthew Williams April 16, 2025
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful events in the Universe, briefly outshining the combined light of their entire galaxies. A team of astronomers has figured out a clever technique to use the light from gamma-ray bursts to map out the large-scale structure of the Universe at different ages after the Big Bang. They found that the Universe might be less uniform at large scales than previously thought.
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It's Time to Build a Space Telescope Interferometer. This Could be the First Step

By Brian Koberlein April 16, 2025
The dream of finding life on an alien Earth-like world is hampered by a number of technical challenges. Not the least of which is that Earth is dwarfed by the size and brightness of the Sun. We might be able to discover evidence of life by studying the molecular spectra of a planet's atmosphere as it passes in front of the star, but those results might be inconclusive. The way to be certain is to observe the planet directly, but that would take a space telescope with a mirror 3–4 times that of Webb.
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Roadmap for Obtaining First Sample Returns from Mercury and Venus

By Laurence Tognetti, MSc April 15, 2025
How can we successfully collect and return samples from Mercury and Venus to Earth? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discussed how future missions could successfully conduct sample return missions from the two innermost planets in our solar system. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners better understand new methods for conducting sample returns throughout the solar system, and specifically from hard-to-reach destinations.
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The Most Metal Poor Stars are Living Fossils from the Beginning of the Universe

By Brian Koberlein April 15, 2025
Our Sun, like all stars, is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. They are by far the most abundant elements, formed in the early moments of the Universe. But our star is also rich in other elements astronomers call "metals." Carbon, nitrogen, iron, gold, and more. These elements were created through astrophysical processes, such as supernovae and neutron star collisions. The dust of long-dead stars that gathered together into molecular clouds and formed new, younger stars such as the Sun. Stars rich in metals. But there are still stars out there that are not metal rich. These extremely metal-poor stars, or EMPs, hold clues to the origin of stars in the cosmos.
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Astronomers Push Webb to its Limits to Visualize the Most Distant Galaxies Of All!

By Matthew Williams April 15, 2025
When JWST launched, it found the most distant known galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0, with a redshift of 14.32, and seen about 290 million years after the Big Bang. Now, a team of astronomers has gone even deeper, searching for galaxies in the redshift 15-30 range, which would be galaxies from 270 to 100 million years after the beginning of the Universe. They've found a few candidates in the 15-20 range, but these could be closer, low-mass dusty galaxies.
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Preserving Life’s Blueprint Beyond the Earth

By Mark Thompson April 14, 2025
It’s no surprise that the future of humanity and even Earth’s biodiversity hangs in the balance and so the race to preserve life on our planet has never been more urgent. Species and ecosystems are vanishing at alarming rate so teams of scientists are turning to cutting-edge solutions to safeguard the natural world for future generations. A new paper explores cryopreservation as one solution, a technology that allows living cells to be frozen and stored for centuries, preserving genetic material and even entire organisms. This approach comes with its own challenges but as we explore this innovative frontier, it becomes clear that reimagining how and where we protect life is essential to securing the planet’s biological legacy.
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Frozen Lava Domes on Europa Might Provide Future Habitats!

By Mark Thompson April 14, 2025
Jupiter’s moon Europa is a fascinating target for study. Data from the Galileo spacecraft’s Solid State Imager showed that Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, has a geologically young and varied surface featuring formations like pits, spots, and cryolava domes. A new study has revealed more about the composition of the cryovolcanoes and their domes but also and more excitingly perhaps that they may even provide some form of habitation as we explore the Solar System!
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Failing to Find Life Tells Us a Lot About Life in the Universe

By Carolyn Collins Petersen April 14, 2025
Illustration of a hypothetical planet covered in water. Such worlds would be welcoming to life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The search for life involves the most sophisticated observational machines known to humanity. They peer out across the light-years, looking for some proof - any proof - that other life exists, out there. What if, despite all our efforts, those observations turn up NO evidence of life elsewhere in our Milky Way Galaxy?
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