Evan Gough

Planetary Exploration With Four-Legged Rovers Carrying Only Two Instruments

April 15, 2026

European researchers tested four-legged semi-autonomous rovers that carry only two instruments. These capable and agile robots could be part of the future exploration of Mars and the Moon. Their autonomy means they can do more with fewer instructions.

The Zhamanshin Impact Event Was Likely Much More Destructive Than Thought

April 14, 2026

Around 900,000 years ago, an impactor slammed into modern-day Kazakhstan and excavated a crater about 14 km in diameter. It was the most recent hypervelocity impactor powerful enough to trigger a nuclear winter, but not an exinction. New research suggests the crater is almost twice as large, showing that the energy released by the impact was much greater than thought.

It's Not Supposed To Be Like This: A Giant Planet Orbits A Small Star

April 10, 2026

According to theory and models of planet formation, large gas giants should form around massive stars. That's because massive stars have more massive protoplanetary disks. But astronomers have the opposite arrangement in some cases. New research highlights a massive gas giant on a close-in orbit around a low-mass M-dwarf, and it poses another challenge to our understanding planet formation.

A Baby Star Blows A Giant Gaseous Ring

April 09, 2026

Observing the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a research team led by Kyushu University has found that during the early growth period of a baby star, the protostellar disk blows magnetic flux 1,000 au in size and creates a giant, relatively warm ring. Describing these phenomena as a baby star’s “sneezes,” these expulsions of energy and gas help the star to properly develop.

A New Class of Star: Merger Remnant

April 08, 2026

In the vastness of the Universe, any new object with interesting properties can spur the search for similar objects, potentially establishing a new class of stars. In a paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and an arXiv preprint, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) describe two stellar remnants that share five properties, including X-ray emission, despite being isolated objects. According to the team, these two remnants are sufficient to define a new class of stars.

The Outer Solar System Contributed Nothing To Earth

April 07, 2026

New research shows that Earth formed from inner Solar System material. Isotopic geochemistry analysis found no evidence that material from beyond Jupiter contributed to Earth's bulk composition. The results also support the idea that Earth's water wasn't delivered by comets.

Why Are Supermassive Black Holes Growing So Slowly?

April 02, 2026

About 10 billion years ago, the growth rate of supermassive black holes began to slow dramatically. To this day, the SMBH growth rate still appears to be low. There are three potential explanations for this, and researchers think they've figured out which explanation fits best.

Scouring TESS Data With AI Reveals A Hundred New Exoplanets

April 01, 2026

New AI tool validates over 100 new planets, finds thousands of candidates, and gives our best estimate for how likely it is to find certain planets around Sun-like stars.

Jupiter's Lightning Could Be Almost Unbelievably Powerful

March 26, 2026

Juno observations show that Jupiter's lightning, already known to be powerful, is far more energetic than thought. Lightning triggered by a stealth superstorm in 2021-22 could be up to one million times more powerful than terrestrial lightning.

Direct Confirmation Of Two Baby Planets Forming Around A Young Sun-like Star

March 25, 2026

Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2. Having previously detected one planet, the team have now employed European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes to confirm the presence of another. These observations, and the unique structure of the disc around the star, indicate that the WISPIT 2 system could resemble our young Solar System.

The JWST Finds More Overmassive Black Holes. This Time In Dwarf Galaxies

March 25, 2026

The JWST has shown us that supermassive black holes were much larger in the early Universe than we thought. New research has extended this understanding to more intermediate redshifts, and to dwarf galaxies. Could the often-invoked Super-Eddington accretion be responsible?

Extragalactic Archaeology: A New Method To Understand Galaxy Growth and Evolution

March 24, 2026

Galactic archaeology uses chemical fingerprints in the Milky Way to trace its formation and evolution. Now a team of researchers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian have employed it for the first time in a distant galaxy. This is the first example of extragalactic archaeology, and it relies on help from the powerful Illustris TNG simulations.

Watching 25 Years of Expansion in the Crab Nebula With the Hubble

March 24, 2026

A quarter-century after its first observations of the full Crab Nebula, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken a fresh look at the supernova remnant. The result is an unparalleled, detailed look at the aftermath of a supernova and how it has evolved over Hubble’s long lifetime. A paper detailing the new Hubble observation was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

This Ancient Star In A Low-Mass Galaxy Is A Precious Find

March 23, 2026

To understand the Universe we see around us today, we have to understand its past. Some hard-to-find ancient stars, called Population II stars, preserve evidence from the ancient Universe. Astronomers finally found one.

This Pair Of Brown Dwarfs Can't Get Enough Of Each Other

March 20, 2026

Astronomers have found the first case of a brown dwarf binary pair experiencing mass transfer. The pair are very close to one another, with an orbital period of only 57 minutes. The pair will eventually merge into one, brighter star, or the accretor will become massive enough to trigger fusion. At only 1,000 light-years away, the system is a strong candidate for more detailed, follow-up observations.

This Super-Puff Planet is Hiding its True Nature Behind Thick Haze

March 20, 2026

Super-puff planets have extremely low densities, and exoplanet scientists aren't sure why. They seem to defy our understanding of how planets form. Researchers used the JWST to observe the atmosphere of Kepler-51d, one of the puffiest of the super-puffs. Unfortunately, even the powerful space telescope found a featureless spectrum. What does it mean?

The Crab Pulsar's Puzzling Emissions Finally Explained.

March 19, 2026

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. The Crab Pulsar, an often studied supernova remnant, is known for its unusual radio emission patterns. New researchs says it's because of a "tug-of-war" between magnetism and gravity. Gravity acts as a focusing lens and plasma in the magnetosphere acts as a defocusing lens.

Sometimes You Get Lucky, Just Like the Hubble Did When It Caught This Comet Disintegrating

March 19, 2026

A team of astronomers were fortunate when their original comet target couldn't be observed with the Hubble. They quickly pivoted to a different target, and caught Comet K1 in the process of breaking apart. This gave them an excellent opportunity to learn more about the doomed object.

A New Type of Exoplanet Has a Magma Ocean That's Lasted 5 Billion Years

March 18, 2026

A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The magma ocean has lasted 5 billion years so far, while Earth's magma ocean likely lasted only tens of millions of years.

Are Rogue Exomoons the Newest Frontier in the Search for Habitability?

March 16, 2026

There may be as many rogue planets or free-floating planets in the Milky Way as there are stars. If there are billions of these worlds, some of them have likely held onto their moons. New research reveals a pathway to habitability for these rogue exomoons.

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