Astronomy

During sleep, your brain cleans itself by flushing through cerebrospinal fluid to prevent damage to brain cells. If you're lacking in sleep, this happens when you are awake – and seems to cause momentary lapses in attention

During sleep, your brain cleans itself by flushing through cerebrospinal fluid to prevent damage to brain cells. If you're lacking in sleep, this happens when you are awake – and seems to cause momentary lapses in attention

During sleep, your brain cleans itself by flushing through cerebrospinal fluid to prevent damage to brain cells. If you're lacking in sleep, this happens when you are awake – and seems to cause momentary lapses in attention

During sleep, your brain cleans itself by flushing through cerebrospinal fluid to prevent damage to brain cells. If you're lacking in sleep, this happens when you are awake – and seems to cause momentary lapses in attention

TikTok’s U.S. spin-off could reshape its algorithm and the way culture is curated online.

The European Space Agency’s upcoming Henon mission will be the first ever CubeSat to independently venture into deep space, communicate with Earth and manoeuvre to its final destination without relying on a bigger spacecraft. Once in its orbit around the Sun, the carry-on luggage-sized CubeSat will observe the Sun’s emissions to demonstrate technologies capable of providing advanced warnings of solar storms hours before they reach Earth.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is slated to be the next Great Observatory for the world. Its main focus has been searching for biosignatures in the atmospheres of at least 25 Earth-like exoplanets. However, to do that, it will require a significant amount of effort with only a coronagraph, the currently planned primary instrument, no matter how powerful that coronagraph is. As new paper from Fabien Malbet of the University of Grenoble Alpes and his co-authors suggest an improvement - add a second instrument to HWO’s payload that will be able to astrometrically track planets down to a precision of .5 micro-arcseconds (µas). That would allow HWO to detect Earth-size planets around hundreds of nearby stars - dramatically increasing the number of potential candidates for atmospheric analysis.

Can water-rich exoplanets survive orbiting white dwarf stars, the latter of which are remnants of Sun-like stars? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the likelihood of small, rocky worlds with close orbits to white dwarfs could harbor life. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for finding life as we know it, or don’t know it, and where to find it.

Combining a quantum-inspired algorithm and quantum information processing technologies could enable researchers to measure masses of cosmic objects that bend light almost imperceptibly

Combining a quantum-inspired algorithm and quantum information processing technologies could enable researchers to measure masses of cosmic objects that bend light almost imperceptibly

Two recent discoveries of black hole mergers add to the evidence that such mergers happen over and over again.

The post Gravitational Wave Detectors Spot Merging Black Holes That Have Merged Before appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The Trump administration has laid off government workers integral to major public health surveys, meaning the country will lack crucial information on births, deaths and illnesses nationwide

The Trump administration has laid off government workers integral to major public health surveys, meaning the country will lack crucial information on births, deaths and illnesses nationwide

These images of Hurricane Melissa show the Category 5 storm in all its power

A team of scientists has released a new survey mapping massive galaxy clusters, some of the largest structures in the universe, to test whether our fundamental understanding of the laws of the universe need revision. The analysis, using six years of Dark Energy Survey data, addresses an ongoing debate about whether the universe has more structure than our best models predict, ultimately reinforcing that our current rules remain accurate while demonstrating that galaxy clusters provide a powerful independent method for probing the universe's deepest mysteries.

Astronomers have created the first large scale map of dark molecular gas in the Milky Way, revealing vast networks of invisible star forming material that have so far have remained undetected. Using the Green Bank Radio Telescope to observe faint signals from carbon, the research team has finally started to uncover one of astronomy's biggest mysteries. Their discovery uncovers turbulent flows of gas moving faster than expected and show how raw galactic matter transforms into the molecular clouds where stars are born.

A new study has reviewed how space habitat designs have evolved from inflatable bubbles to 3D-printed structures built from Martian dust. The research traces how engineers have wrestled with extreme temperatures, the bombardment of radiation, and the challenge of building on worlds without breathable air, transforming each obstacle into solved problems with innovative ideas and designs that could soon house the first permanent residents of the Moon and Mars.

Albert H. Nagler, a pioneer of telescope optics, passed away at the office of his company Tele Vue Optics on Monday, October 27th. He was 90 years old.

The post Al Nagler (1935–2025) appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Everyone’s favorite interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS isn’t really hiding near perihelion this week, as amateur astronomers reveal. Don’t believe the breathless ballyhoo that you’re currently reading around the web about interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS. In a clockwork Universe, comets are the big wildcard, and interstellar comets doubly so. This particular comet is scientifically interesting enough in its own right, no alien interlopers needed.

A nearly perfect alignment of factors has enabled Hurricane Melissa to become one of the most intense Atlantic storms ever recorded