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Recent Articles

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  The Galactic Center Struggles to Form Massive Stars

  June 11, 2025

  Gas clouds in the Milky Way's Galactic Center contain copious amounts of star-forming gas. But for some reason, few massive stars form there, even though similar gas clouds elsewhere in the galaxy easily form massive stars. The clouds also form fewer stars overall. Are they a new type of molecular cloud?

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  Surviving the Neptunian Desert

  June 10, 2025

  As astronomers found more and more exoplanets in recent years, they've discovered an unusual gap in the population. It's called the Neptunian Desert, a curious scarcity of Neptune-sized exoplanets orbiting close to their stars. Researchers just discovered an exoplanet in the Neptunian Desert around a Sun-like star. Can it help explain the Desert?

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  This Map of the Cosmic Web Reaches Back in Time

  June 09, 2025

  The COSMOS scientific collaboration has released the largest map of the Universe ever created. It contains almost 800,000 galaxies, some from the Universe's earliest times. The map challenges some of our ideas about the early Universe.

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  This Massive Gas Giant Orbiting a Tiny Red Dwarf Tests Our Planet Formation Theories

  June 05, 2025

  The discovery of a Saturn-sized gas giant orbiting a small red dwarf is urging astronomers to reconsider their theories of planet formation. Core accretion theory is the most widely accepted explanation for planetary formation. It describes how planet formation begins with tiny dust grains gathering together and forming planetary cores that grow larger through accretion. It explains much of what we see in our Solar System and others. This discovery introduces some doubt.

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  Astronomers Find a Hidden Planet Partly in the Habitable Zone of its Star

  June 04, 2025

  Astronomers have found another super-Earth. It's about 10 times more massive than Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star about 2475 light-years away. These massive Earth-like planets hold key information about how planets form and evolve.