Watch the stars and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, Each in its track, without a sound, Forever tracing Newton's ground

— Albert Einstein

Astronomy

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It came from outer space.


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Why is there a spiral around the North Pole of Mars?


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Face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 and open star cluster NGC 6939 share


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If you know where to look, you can see a thermonuclear explosion from a white dwarf star.


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Does the Milky Way always rise between these two rocks?


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If you have looked at the sky and seen a group of


Categories: Astronomy, NASA

Two Powerful Space Telescopes are Better Than One

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

When the JWST was being built, some labelled it as the Hubble's successor. In some ways it is, even though the Hubble is still performing important science observations. When the two telescopes team up, we get the best of both.

Categories: Astronomy

Could Bioplastics be the Solution to Living Beyond Earth?

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

An international team of scientists led by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) proposed a new method for living beyond Earth. Their experiment demonstrated how bioplastic structures can be grown using algae, which would be rugged enough to survive the hostile Martian environment.

Categories: Astronomy

Dark Matter Could Create Dark Dwarfs at the Center of the Milky Way

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

Although dark matter doesn't seem to interact with regular matter or itself, if it has particle-like properties, it could self-annihilate if packed into a tight space. In a new paper, researchers have proposed that dark matter could make its way into brown dwarfs near the Galactic Center, where everything is packed more closely together. The dark matter could annihilate inside the brown dwarfs, creating Dark Dwarfs that could be detected.

Categories: Astronomy

High Frequency Gravitational Waves Could Be Detect By Changing The Angle Of A Mirror

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

Gravitational waves come in all shapes and sizes - and frequencies. But, so far, we haven’t been able to capture any of the higher frequency ones. That’s unfortunate, as they might hold the key to unlocking our understanding of some really interesting physical phenomena, such as Boson clouds and tiny block hole mergers. A new paper from researchers at Notre Dame and Caltech, led by PhD student Christopher Jungkind, explores how we might use one of the world’s most prolific gravitational wave observatories, GEO600, to capture signals from those phenomena for the first time.

Categories: Astronomy

Planets Can Trigger Damaging Flares

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

We all know what it's like when Earth is on the receiving end of a solar flare. Things get spicy in the upper atmosphere, and the outbursts have the potential to disrupt technology here at home. Catastrophic flares of radiation devastate planets around other stars, too. Now it looks like scientists have found that planets orbiting close to their stars can trigger the flares that threaten to harm them.

Categories: Astronomy

How the Chemistry of Mars Both Extended and Ended Its Habitability

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

NASA's Curiosity Rover has been exploring Gale Crater and found that carbonate materials make up to 11% of rocks in the region. These are important because carbonates formed by pulling CO2 out of Mars's atmosphere. A new paper suggests that Mars once had a self-regulating climate system that created oases of liquid water on its surface over billions of years, keeping the planet barely habitable with alternating wet and dry periods. The atmosphere is thin because its CO2 was locked away in rocks.

Categories: Astronomy

What if you Threw a Paper Airplane from the Space Station?

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

Here's a thought experiment. What would happen if you were on the International Space Station, folded up a paper airplane, and threw it from the station? According to a new paper, it would fall from orbit in just 3.5 days, but still keep aerodynamic stability until about 120 km. Then it would heat up and combust at about 90-110 km altitude. It's a fun idea, but there are actual practical uses to probe the density of the atmosphere or test thin-film space technologies.

Categories: Astronomy

Quaoar's Atmosphere Doesn't Exist And Its Rings Shouldn't

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can tell us a lot about the subjects of its observations if it spends enough time with them. That includes lonely rocks on the edges of our solar system, such as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) Quaoar. Recent observations using the NIRCam on JWST and pre-published on arXiv by researchers at the University of Central Florida, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Kyoto University add a plethora of new data to our understanding of this enigmatic object, including insights into what might be causing its ring system and its hydrocarbon atmosphere.

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Globular Clusters: The Vera Rubin Observatory is Just Getting Started

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

The long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory has delivered some preliminary observations of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae field. 47 Tuc is the Milky Way's second-brightest globular cluster, second to Omega Centauri. The Rubin Observatory's data demonstrates the telescope's promising scientific potential.

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The JWST Shows Us How Galaxies Evolve

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

The Milky Way and other similar galaxies have two distinct disk sections. One is the thin disk section, and it contains mostly younger stars with higher metallicity. The second is the thick disk, and it contains older stars with lower metallicity. The effort to study these disks in more galaxies and in greater detail has been stymied. But now we have the JWST, and researchers used it to examine more than 100 distant, edge-on galaxies.

Categories: Astronomy

When Theia Struck Earth, it Helped Set the Stage for Life to Appear

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

Earth life is carbon-based, and without carbon, there would be no life. New research shows how Earth got its carbon from impactors, including a boost from Theia, the impactor that created the Moon. Jupiter also pitched in to help.

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Primordial Black Holes Could Have Accelerated Early Star Formation

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

The search for dark matter requires all of the best models, theories, and ideas we can throw at it. A new paper from Julia Monika Koulen, Stefano Profumo, and Nolan Smyth from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) tackles the implications of the sizes and abundance of one of the more interesting dark matter candidates - primordial black holes (PBHs).

Categories: Astronomy

How To Use Fusion To Get To Proxima Centauri's Potentially Habitable Exoplanet

Universe Today - Tue, 07/08/2025 - 5:25pm

Proxima Centauri b is the closest known exoplanet that could be in the habitable zone of its star. Therefore, it has garnered a lot of attention, including several missions designed to visit it and send back information. Unfortunately, due to technological constraints and the gigantic distances involved, most of those missions only weigh a few grams and require massive solar scales or pushing lasers to get anywhere near their target. But why let modern technological levels limit your imagination when there are so many other options, if still theoretical, options to send a larger mission to our nearest potentially habitable neighbor? That was the thought behind the Master’s Thesis of Amelie Lutz at Virginia Tech - she looked at the possibility of using fusion propulsion systems to send a few hundred kilogram probe to the system, and potentially even orbit it.

Categories: Astronomy