Universe Today

The JWST found a system of at least five interacting galaxies only 800 million years after the Big Bang. The discovery adds weight to the growing understanding that galaxies were interacting and shaping their surroundings far earlier than scientists thought. There's also evidence that the collision was redistributing heavy elements beyond the galaxies themselves.

New tools unlock new discoveries in science. So when a new type of non-destructive technology becomes widely available, it's inevitable that planetary scientists will get their hands on it to test it on some meteorites. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Estrid Naver of the Technical University of Denmark and her co-authors, describes the use of two of those (relatively) new tools to one of the most famous meteorites in the world - NWA 7034 - also known as Black Beauty.

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy.

When I say that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, it sounds rather authoritative.

Astronomers haven't found many gas giants orbiting white dwarfs. But is that because they're so difficult to spot? Or is it because their survival rate is so low? New research probes the issue.

Magnetism on the Moon has always been a bit confusing. Remote sensing probes have noted there is some magnetic signature, but far from the strong cocoon that surrounds Earth itself. Previous attempts to detect it in returned regolith samples blended together all of the rocks in those samples, leading to confusion about the source - whether they were caused by a strong inner dynamo in ages past, or by powerful asteroid impacts that magnetized the rocks they hit. A new study from Yibo Yang of Zhejiang University and Lin Xing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published recently in the journal Fundamental Research, shows that the right answer seems to be - a little of both.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he’s making space-based artificial intelligence the “immediate focus” of a newly expanded company that not only builds rockets and satellites, but also controls xAI’s generative-AI software and the X social-media platform. That’s the upshot of Musk's announcement that SpaceX has acquired xAI.

Arp 220 is a well-known pair of galaxies that are merging. New ALMA observations of polarized light reveal the complex and powerful magnetic fields that shape the process.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 7722, a lenticular galaxy about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. This “lens-shaped” galaxy sits in between more familiar spiral alaxies and elliptical galaxies in the galaxy classification scheme. The dark, dramatic dust lanes are the fingerprints of an ancient galaxy merger.

For the first time, a complex, ring-shaped molecule containing 13 atoms—including sulfur—has been detected in interstellar space, based on laboratory measurements. The discovery closes a critical gap by linking simple chemistry in space with the complex organic building blocks found in comets and meteorites. This represents a major step toward explaining the cosmic origins of the chemistry of life.

The search for life-supporting worlds in the Solar System includes the Jovian moon Europa. Yes, it's an iceberg of a world, but underneath its frozen exterior lies a deep, salty ocean and a nickel-iron core. It's heated by tidal flexing, and that puts pressure on the interior ocean, sending water and salts to the surface. As things turn out, there's also evidence of ammonia-bearing compounds on the surface. All these things combine to provide a fascinating look at Europa's geology and potential as a haven for life.

Red Geysers are an unusual class of galaxy that contain only old stars. Despite having plenty of star-forming gas, Red Geysers are quenched. Astronomers have mapped the flow of gas in these galaxies and figure out why they're dormant.

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is a tantalizing target in the search for habitability in our Solar System. Its thick, global ice sheet overlies a warm, salty, chemically-rich ocean. But for life to exist in that ocean, nutrients need to find their way from the surface to the ocean. New research says that may be very difficult.

The light, rare element boron, better known as the primary component of borax, a longtime household cleaner, was almost mined to exhaustion in parts of the old American West. But boron could arguably be an unsung hero in cosmic astrobiology, although it's still not listed as one of the key elements needed for the onset of life.

When the rover now named Perseverance landed in Jezero crater in early 2021, scientists already knew they had picked an interesting place to scope out. From space, they could see what looked like a bathtub ring around the crater, indicating there could once have been water there. But there was some debate about what exactly that meant, and it’s taken almost five years to settle it. A new paper from PhD student Alex Jones at Imperial College London and his co-authors has definitively settled the debate on the source of that feature - part of it was once a beach.

Researchers at KAIST have developed a breakthrough technology that could dramatically improve our ability to image black holes and other distant objects. The team created an ultra precise reference signal system using optical frequency comb lasers to synchronise multiple radio telescopes with unprecedented accuracy. This laser based approach solves long standing problems with phase calibration that have plagued traditional electronic methods, particularly at higher observation frequencies.

It’s 2050 and you’re living on Venus. This might come as a surprise due to the planet’s crushing surface pressures (~92 times of Earth) and searing surface temperatures (~465 degrees Celsius/870 degrees Fahrenheit), which is equivalent to ~900 meters (3,000 feet) underwater and hot enough to melt lead, respectively. But you’re not living on the surface. Instead, you’re safe and sound inside a lava tube habitat scanning data from the latest orbiter images while sipping on some habitat-made espresso.

Solar flares are one of the most closely watched processes in solar physics. Partly that’s because they can prove hazardous both to life and equipment around Earth, and in extreme cases even on it. But also, it’s because of how interestingly complex they are. A new paper from Pradeep Chitta of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and his co-authors, available in the latest edition of Astronomy & Astrophysics, uses data collected by ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft to watch the formation process of a massive solar flare. They discovered the traditional model used to describe how solar flares form isn’t accurate, and they are better thought of as being caused by miniaturized “magnetic avalanches.”

A new study led by researchers from Aarhus University showed that amino acids spontaneously bond in space, producing peptides that are essential to life as we know it. Their findings suggest that the building blocks of life are far more common throughout space than previously thought, with implications for astrobiology and SETI.

Astronomers have solved a bit of a mystery that had them questioning whether one of the most extreme stars ever observed was about to explode. WOH G64, a massive red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, began behaving so strangely that researchers suspected it had evolved into a rare yellow hypergiant on the brink of supernova. But new observations from the Southern African Large Telescope reveal the star is still very much a red supergiant, yet still exhibiting strange behaviour.