Astronomy

Many of the team behind NASA’s Artemis II mission were children 40 years ago, when the space shuttle Challenger disaster reshaped spaceflight

BepiColombo is slowly uncovering more and more fun facts about Mercury as it continues its preliminary mission. One of the more interesting things found so far is a magnetic “chorus” that appears similar to a phenomenon found in Earth’s much larger magnetic field. A new paper in Nature Communications from the researchers responsible for the probe’s Mio instrument that is studying Mercury’s magnetic field describes what could be thought of as a form of magnetic birdsong.

Clumps of cells known as organoids are helping us to understand the brain, and the latest version comes equipped with realistic blood vessels to help the organoids live longer

Clumps of cells known as organoids are helping us to understand the brain, and the latest version comes equipped with realistic blood vessels to help the organoids live longer

Beneath fancy perfumes and deodorants, our food choices may be quietly shaping our natural scent in unexpected ways

Using a superconducting quantum computer, physicists created a large and complex version of an odd quantum material that has a repeating structure in time

Using a superconducting quantum computer, physicists created a large and complex version of an odd quantum material that has a repeating structure in time

It's 2041 and an astronaut on Mars Station 1 orbiting the Red Planet is inspecting life support systems in the bowels of the habitat. They open a compartment and are aghast to discover a mysterious goop clinging to the walls in microgravity that definitely shouldn't be there. In their shock, they immediately have flashbacks from every alien-based science fiction movie they've ever seen, and are convinced they not only just discovered the first signs of alien life, but they won't live to tell about it. After telling the rest of the crew in a heated panic, they calmly explain it's not an alien menace, but a substance called biofilm, which has been present on Earth for billions of years.

An international team of astronomers has uncovered the first definitive evidence that at least some fast radio bursts (FRBs) originate in binary stellar systems.

Supermassive black holes grow larger by accreting matter. When they're actively accreting matter they're called active galactic nuclei (AGN). AGN are the most luminous sources of persistent radiation in the Universe, yet they turn on and off as the SMBH passes through quiet and active phases. Astronomers have found one that is just turning on its powerful jets after a long period of dormancy.

Using the South Pole Telescope, astronomers have detected powerful stellar flares erupting from stars near the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Operating at millimetre wavelengths that can penetrate the dust obscuring our view of the core of the Galaxy, the telescope caught these dramatic magnetic energy releases in one of the most extreme environments in our Galaxy. The discovery opens a new observational window for studying stellar behaviour in regions previously hidden from view and provides insights into how stars survive and behave in the intense gravitational and radiation environment surrounding the Milky Way's central black hole.

The comet bearing Edmond Halley's name may have been misnamed! New research from Leiden University reveals that an 11th Century English monk recognised the famous comet's periodicity centuries before the British astronomer. Eilmer of Malmesbury witnessed the comet's appearances in both 989 and 1066, linking the two observations and understanding they represented the same celestial visitor returning after decades, a realisation documented by the medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury but overlooked by scholars until now. The discovery challenges whether history's most famous comet should continue bearing Halley's name when a Benedictine monk beat him to the discovery by more than 600 years.

Dark matter remains invisible to our telescopes, yet its gravitational fingerprints pervade the universe. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have produced one of the most detailed dark maps ever created, revealing with unprecedented clarity how dark matter and ordinary matter have grown up together. The map shows that wherever galaxies cluster in their thousands, equally massive concentrations of dark matter occupy the same space, a close alignment that confirms dark matter's gravity has been shepherding regular matter into stars, galaxies, and ultimately the complex planets capable of supporting life.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb

AI faces strong skepticism due to its potential for misuse, its drain on resources, and even its potential dumbing down of students. But new results illustrate its uses. A team of astronomers have used a new AI-assisted method to search for rare astronomical objects in the Hubble Legacy Archive. The team sifted through nearly 100 million image cutouts in just two and a half days, uncovering nearly 1400 anomalous objects, more than 800 of which had never been documented before.

The final release of data from the Dark Energy Survey widens tensions in our understanding of the cosmic evolution.

The post The Dark Energy Survey Weighs in on Cosmic Tensions appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Scientists analyzed more than 100 million image cutouts from a Hubble Space Telescope archive and found hundreds of previously undiscovered objects

Why are SMBH in the early Universe so massive? According to astrophysical models, these extraordinarily large SMBH haven't had time to become so massive. Super-Eddington accretion might explain it, but can it explain a very unusual early SMBH recently discovered?

The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation

The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation