Universe Today
This 3D Simulation of a Supernova Needed 5 Million Hours of Supercomputing
We Can't See the First Stars Yet, but We Can See Their Direct Descendants
The first stars in the Universe were enormous, made of primordial hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang. They lived short lives, exploded as supernovae, and seeded nearby nebulae with heavier elements that began the next generation of stars. Our telescopes aren't powerful enough to see them yet, but have astronomers found their direct descendants? The metal-poor stars in the galactic halo seem to show the imprints from those first stars and could offer valuable clues about the first stars in the Universe.
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Gluttonous Black Holes Eat Faster Than Thought. Does That Explain Quasars?
Dark Photons Could Be the Key to Both Dark Matter and the Muon Anomaly.
Dark matter might have its own force, mediated by dark photons similar to the way electromagnetism is mediated by photons. A new study shows that not only are dark photons consistent with experiments in particle physics, they could also solve the g-2 anomaly for muons.
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This Exoplanet is Probably a Solid Ball of Metal
We Should Be Looking for Small, Hot Dyson Spheres
A new study recommends looking for Dyson Spheres that are smaller, orbit closer to their suns, and might still be under construction.
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Curiosity Has Spent Three Years Trying to Reach This Spot on Mars
First Contact Could Turn Out Well for Humanity
Most science fiction portrays the first contact between humanity and alien civilizations as a disaster. That's probably because our history hasn't turned out so well. But does it have to end poorly for us? A new paper looks at the game theory of first contact. It shows that the rational response to another civilization is to be cautious, with both groups understanding the other before taking decisive action. Communication would be difficult but not impossible. Since we share a physical Universe and have reached a technology level that allows us to detect each other, we could assume some of their characteristics in advance.
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Introducing Magic: Analog Sky's New 3D Printed Binoculars for Astronomy
A new project promises to bring back the magic to night sky observing.
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The Race to Find the Farthest Galaxy Continues
Galaxies Breathe Gas, and When They Stop, No More Stars Form
Polar Ring Galaxies Are Bizarre and Rare. Astronomers Just Found Two More
Many galaxies resemble the Milky Way, with billions of stars organized into a rotating, rotating spiral. There are other irregular galaxies and giant elliptical galaxies with less defined structures, but one of the most bizarre types of galaxies is called "polar rings." In these galaxies, the central core is surrounded by a ring of gas and a star perpendicular to the central spiral disk. It's believed they're formed when a larger galaxy swallows a smaller one, extruding its stars into a ring. A recent survey revealed two previously unknown polar ring galaxies, which could be more common than previously believed.
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Spacecraft Could be Equipped With Tiny Thrusters That Use Water for Propellant
A Collision Between Gigantic Galaxy Clusters. Too Big, Too Early
An Ambitious New Technology Might be Needed to See Other Earths
NASA and its partners are starting to develop plans for the Habitable Worlds Observatory flagship mission that's due to launch in the late 2030s or 2040s. Its primary goal will be to observe other Earth-sized worlds orbiting Sun-like stars within the habitable zone. To do this requires blocking the light from the star with an internal coronagraph and a separate starshield. A new paper suggests that NASA should consider a "photonic chronograph" that could be twice as effective in revealing faint planets beside bright stars.
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When did the First Continents Appear in the Universe?
It's Like Looking at the Infant Sun: Webb Captures Image of an Energetic Young Star
SpaceX Test Fires a Raptor Engine, Simulating a Lunar Landing
Helicopters Could Map the Magnetic Fields on Mars
A Collection of New Images Reveal X-Rays Across the Universe
The Milky Way's Disk is Warped. Is That Because our Dark Matter Halo is Tilted?
Astronomers have measured the Milky Way's shape and found that the disk is warped and not a flat spiral like many of the galaxies we see in the Universe. It was assumed a collision with another galaxy in the ancient past caused this warping. Observations have shown that the galactic stellar halo is tilted concerning the galactic plane, and a new theory proposes that the dark matter halo is tilted, too. This tilt might be torquing the galaxy, causing the warp that astronomers have observed.
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Tiny Swarming Spacecraft Could Establish Communications with Proxima Centauri
New research from the Institute for Interstellar Studies explains how swarms of thousands of tiny spacecraft could maintain communications with Earth while exploring nearby stars.
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A New Technique Confirms the Universe is 69% Dark Energy, 31% Matter (Mostly Dark)
A New Observatory Will Spot Core-Collapse Supernovae Before They Explode
Although we haven't had a supernova explode nearby in a few hundred years, it's just a matter of time before it happens. Astronomers want to be ready. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory is being built in China and should be gathering its first data by the end of 2023. If all goes well, it can detect a burst of neutrinos coming from a core-collapse supernova before we can see the flash of radiation. As the star is imploding, energy piles up inside the star, but the neutrinos can freely escape, arriving seconds earlier than the radiation. It'll have a range of 3,000 light-years for pre-supernova neutrino detections and 1.2 million light-years for post-supernova detection.
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If Astronomers See These Chemicals in a Planet's Atmosphere, There's Likely an Advanced Civilization There
NASA Confirms That 2023 was the Hottest Summer on Record
Strong Evidence that Supermassive Black Holes Affect Their Host Galaxy's Chemistry
Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air
A 2022 Gamma Ray Burst Was So Powerful, it was Detected by Spacecraft Across the Solar System
Gamma-ray bursts are some of the most powerful explosions ever detected, emitting more radiation than the rest of their host galaxy combined. In October 2022, a gamma-ray burst struck the Solar System and interacted with the heliosphere. This set off charged particle detectors in spacecraft, from Mars to Earth, to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point. These separate detections allowed astronomers to track the motion of the radiation as it moved through the Solar System and allowed them to determine the location of the explosion.
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Stunning New Images from the 2023 'Astronomy Photographer of the Year' Competition
The Moon's Southern Ice is Relatively Young
According to new research from the PSI, water ice found within permanently-shadowed craters on the Moon is younger than previously thought.
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Mini-Subs Could One Day Ply the Seas Under Europa's Ice
Following Up on Report, NASA Takes On a Bigger Role in UFO Research
If Neutron Stars Have Mountains, They Should Generate Gravitational Waves
Astronomers have discovered the gravitational waves released by colliding black holes, neutron stars, and even the background waves from merging supermassive black holes. A new paper proposes that advanced gravitational wave observatories might be able to detect the presence of "mountains" on spinning neutron stars. Although they're incredibly dense, neutron stars have layers, and as they cool, their solid crusts might deform into regions farther from the central core. This would create a wobble that would release gravitational waves.
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How Can We Bring Down the Costs of Large Space Telescopes?
The Seasons on Saturn are Changing. It's Time to Say Goodbye to Its North Pole for a Few Years
Some Lunar Regolith is Better for Living Off the Land on the Moon
In a recent study, a geology professor developed a classification scheme for lunar regolith that could inform everything from base construction to living on the Moon.
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Planning is Underway for NASA's Next Big Flagship Space Telescope
Quasars Have Always Had Dark Matter Halos
Could We Find Aliens Terraforming Other Worlds?
Whether Saturn's Rings are Young or Old, its Moons are as Ancient as the Planet Itself
A team of researchers has obtained new estimates on the age of Saturn's irregular satellites, which range from 4.1 and 4,4 billion years.
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Astronomers Observe Blobs of Dark Matter Down to a Scale of 30,000 Light-Years Across
Lucy Has its First Asteroid Target in the Crosshairs
The Hubble Imaged Some Globular Clusters in an Unusual Place: Near the Milky Way's Centre
Do The Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks Really Indicate Newly Forming Planets?
Modern instruments like ALMA have revealed newly forming stars surrounded by accretion disks. These images are so sensitive you can even see the gaps in the disk where new planets form, right? Maybe not. According to a new paper, systems with many newly forming planets are inherently unstable, so they can't all indicate new worlds. Some gaps and rings around the stars might just indicate collections of pebbles that can never accrete into actual planets. The challenge will be to figure out which is which.
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JWST Accidentally Found 21 Brown Dwarfs
JWST Might Have Imaged a Hycean World for the First Time, With a Hydrogen-Rich Atmosphere and a Deep Planet-Wide Water Ocean
Astronomers have directed JWST to examine the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18 b, which orbits a cool dwarf star about 120 light-years from Earth. The planet is 8.6 times as massive as Earth, and the observations have revealed methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This opens up the intriguing possibility that this exoplanet is an example of a theorized "hycean world," a planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean covering its surface that extends deeper than anything we have on Earth.
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Polaris is the Closest, Brightest Cepheid Variable. Very Recently, Something Changed.
A new study has revealed that Polaris' pulsating behavior may be caused by its binary companion, resolving a long-standing mystery in astronomy.
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The Closest Black Holes to Earth are Probably Hidden in This Nearby Star Cluster
The Hyades cluster is the closest open star cluster to Earth, located at a distance of about 150 light-years. Although black holes haven't been directly seen in the cluster, it's an excellent place to search for them because the largest stars would have detonated as supernovae and collapsed in neutron stars and black holes. Astronomers have simulated the motions of stars in the cluster with black holes lurking around and then compared them to the motions of the actual stars. They only matched with the presence of black holes near the center of the cluster.
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The Case for a Small Universe
Astronomers don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite. Whatever the case, it's larger than the Observable Universe, which measures 93 billion light-years across. A new paper proposes that the actual Universe is comparatively tiny, not much bigger than its observed size - just a few orders of magnitude larger. A smaller Universe solves some problems with other theories of cosmology, including inflation and the amount of dark energy in the Universe.
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