Astronomers Predict the Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Comets From Meteor Showers

By Brian Koberlein - October 31, 2024 11:32 AM UTC | Planetary Science
Long-period comets can have orbits that can take hundreds of years before they return to the inner Solar System and sometimes come dangerously close to Earth. To search for potentially hazardous comets, astronomers have used meteor showers as a historical record. When the Earth passes through a meteoroid stream left by a comet, we see a meteor shower. From these showers, they can calculate the orbit of the comet and predict when it will come back to our neighborhood.
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Could Life at TRAPPIST-1 Survive the Star's Superflares?

By Brian Koberlein - October 26, 2024 12:20 PM UTC | Astrobiology
The TRAPPIST-1 system is exciting because of several Earth-sized worlds within the habitable zone of a red dwarf star, but it's also a dangerous environment, with powerful superflares sweeping past the planets. How would the hardiest Earth life handle that kind of environment? Researchers exposed two types of hardy Earth bacteria to TRAPPIST-1 level flares and found that both could handle it, even without any protective shielding. Life is surprisingly durable.
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Here are Some Potentially Habitable World Targets for the Upcoming LIFE Mission

By Brian Koberlein - October 25, 2024 10:50 AM UTC | Astrobiology
There are a few telescopes under development that could reveal evidence of life on exoplanets. One is the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets, under consideration by the European Space Agency. This constellation of telescopes should be able to detect atmospheric biosignatures on nearby terrestrial planets. Recently, mission planners developed a preliminary database of targets that LIFE could point to, with the best chances of finding inhabited worlds.
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The First Triple Star System Found Containing a Black Hole

By Brian Koberlein - October 24, 2024 10:56 AM UTC | Black Holes
Triple star systems are very common in the universe, but now astronomers have found a system where one of the stars is a black hole. They're located in the V404 Cygni system, about 8,000 light-years away. At the center is a black hole consuming a small star, while a third star is orbiting the black hole every 70,000 years or so. Astronomers had spotted this third star a long time ago, but only recently discovered that it's part of the system thanks to Gaia.
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There's a Particle Accelerator at the Center of the Milky Way

By Brian Koberlein - October 23, 2024 12:05 PM UTC | Milky Way
Astronomers have detected ultra-high-energy gamma rays coming from the center of the Milky Way, with nearly 100 events of more than 100 teraelectron volts of energy. Researchers aren't sure what's generating so many of these extreme events, but it's where the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, which is surrounded by neutron stars and white dwarfs that strip material from nearby stars, is located. And all of this is surrounded by dense gas reaching millions of degrees.
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