The Extremely Large Telescope Could Sense the Hints of Life at Proxima Centauri in Just 10 Hours

By Brian Koberlein March 20, 2025
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in northern Chile, will give us a better view of the Milky Way than any ground-based telescope before it. It's difficult to overstate how transformative it will be. The ELT's primary mirror array will have an effective diameter of 39 meters. It will gather more light than previous telescopes by an order of magnitude, and it will give us images 16 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. It's scheduled to come online in 2028, and the results could start flooding in literally overnight, as a recent study shows.
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Bridging the Gap Between the Cosmic Microwave Background and the First Galaxies

By Carolyn Collins Petersen March 20, 2025
One of the Holy Grails in cosmology is a look back at the earliest epochs of cosmic history. Unfortunately, the Universe's first few hundred thousand years are shrouded in an impenetrable fog. So far, nobody's been able to see past it to the Big Bang. As it turns out, astronomers are chipping away at that cosmic fog by using data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.
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A Dyson Swarm Made of Solar Panels Would Make Earth Uninhabitable

By Mark Thompson March 19, 2025
As civilisations become more and more advanced, their power needs also increase. It’s likely that an advanced civilisation might need so much power that they enclose their host star in solar energy collecting satellites. These Dyson Swarms will trap heat so any planets within the sphere are likely to experience a temperature increase. A new paper explores this and concludes that a complete Dyson swarm outside the orbit of the Earth would raise our temperature by 140 K!
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A Simulated Universe Works Better When Dark Energy Changes Over Time

By Evan Gough March 19, 2025
Dark Energy is a mystery so daunting that it stretches and strains our most robust theories. The Universe is expanding, driven by the unknown force that we've named Dark Energy. Dark Energy is also accelerating the rate of expansion. If scientists could figure out why, it would open up a whole new avenue of understanding.
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The ESA's Euclid Space Telescope Gives Glimpses of its Deep Field

By Evan Gough March 19, 2025
The ESA's Euclid Space Telescope has already wowed us with some fantastic images. After launching in July 2023, the telescope delivered some stunning first images of the Perseus Cluster, the Horsehead Nebula, and other astronomical objects. Now, the telescope has released its first images of its three Deep Fields.
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Webb Directly Observers Giant Planets, Sensing Carbon Dioxide in their Atmospheres

By Mark Thompson March 19, 2025
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has achieved groundbreaking discoveries in the field of exoplanet studies. In particular, it has made strides in the analysis of their atmospheres by studying light from the parent star as it travels through the gas surrounding the planets. JWST has recently bucked the trend and observed a some gas giant planets in the system HR 8799 and detected the presence of carbon dioxide in their atmospheres, suggesting there are similarities between the formation of this system and our own.
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Astro-Challenge: Following Venus From Dusk Til Dawn

By David Dickinson March 19, 2025
With luck and clear skies, you can spot Venus crossing between the Earth and the Sun this weekend. Up for a challenge? If skies are clear, you may be able to complete a rare feat of visual athletics this coming weekend, and follow Venus on its trek from the evening and into the morning sky.
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Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore Finally Get to Come Home to Earth

By Mark Thompson March 18, 2025
After an unexpectedly long mission in orbit, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally arrived home. Their SpaceX Dragon capsule detached from the International Space Station early Tuesday morning, beginning the de-orbiting process. Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov are also on board and, following a nail biting descent, finally at 7.58pm EDT today.
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