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Recent Articles
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Webb Directly Observes a Frigid Exoplanet
June 10, 2025Most exoplanets have been detected indirectly through the transit or radial velocity method. But here's an image of the exoplanet 14 Herculis c captured by Webb. It has been described as a "chaotic" and "abnormal" planetary system and is about 7 Jupiter masses, but with a surface temperature of only -3°C. The discovery offers new insights into how planetary systems can develop in dramatically different ways from our own Solar System.
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The Sun's Identity Crisis Solved
June 10, 2025The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.
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The Nuclear Option: Europe's Plan for Faster Space Travel.
June 10, 2025Whilst NASA funding has been slashed by the Trump administration with no allocation for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion or and Nuclear Electric Propulsion, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have been studying nuclear propulsion.
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New Measurements for M87's Supermassive Black Hole: Spin and Accretion Rate
June 06, 2025The monster black hole lurking at the center of galaxy M87 is an absolute beast. It is one of the largest in our vicinity and was the ideal first target for the Event Horizon Telescope. Scientists have taken a fresh look at the supermassive black hole using those iconic Event Horizon Telescope images and have now figured out just how fast this monster is spinning and how much material it's devouring.
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ispace's Resilience Lander Proves the Moon is Still a Tough Customer
June 06, 2025Japan's private space company ispace experienced another setback on Thursday 5th June when its Resilience lunar lander crashed into the surface of the Moon, marking the company's second consecutive failed landing attempt in just over two years.
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A Terrifying Simulation of a Black Hole Gobbling Up a Neutron Stars
June 05, 2025Across the universe, dramatic events occur when a black hole meets a neutron star. A neutron star is the ultra-dense remains of a massive star that exploded — imagine all the mass of our Sun compressed into a sphere just a few tens of kilometres wide. When a black hole and neutron star spiral toward each other, the result is one of nature's most violent spectacles.
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Is the Hubble Tension Starting to Go Away?
June 05, 2025For years, scientists have been scratching their heads over the "Hubble Tension,” the mismatch between how fast the cosmos was expanding in its youth versus how fast it's expanding today. But now, armed with the most precise data ever captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found the perceived gap is starting to narrow! In fact, the expansion rate measured by Cepheid variables versus the cosmic background has overlapping error bars again. Will the tension mystery finally be resolved?