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Gaia discovers the Milky Way's last major act of galactic cannibalism was surprisingly recent, as the space telescope counts the "wrinkles" of our galaxy to retell its history."

Technicians at a Thales Alenia Space industrial plant in Turin, Italy. guide Gateway’s HALO module to its stress testing location. Thales Alenia Space

The Gateway space station’s HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost), one of four modules where astronauts will live, conduct science, and prepare for lunar surface missions, is a step closer to launch following welding completion in Turin, Italy, a milestone highlighted by NASA earlier this year.

Teams at Thales Alenia Space gently guide HALO to a new location in the company’s facility for a series of stress tests to ensure the module’s safety. Upon successful completion, the future home for astronauts will travel to Gilbert, Arizona, where Northrop Grumman will complete final outfitting ahead of launch to lunar orbit with Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element.

NASA and its international partners will explore the scientific mysteries of deep space with Gateway, humanity’s first space station in lunar orbit supporting the Artemis campaign to return humans to the Moon and chart a path for the first human missions to Mars.

Learn more about Gateway at: https://nasa.gov/gateway.

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When bacteria were put in alternating environments, some became better at evolving to cope with the changes – evidence that “evolvability” can be gained through natural selection

When bacteria were put in alternating environments, some became better at evolving to cope with the changes – evidence that “evolvability” can be gained through natural selection

Tiny 'supercharged' black holes born just after the Big Bang may have been brief companions to primordial black holes, dying before the universe was a second old.

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Drought is facilitating the devastating spread of spongy moth caterpillars across U.S. forests

Teens are sending deepfake nude images of classmates to each other, disrupting lives. Schools, technology developers and parents need to act now

Starlink satellites can flare as brightly as Venus, confusing ground observers and airline pilots alike.

The post Starlink Flares Can Fool Anyone — Even Airline Pilots appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The protective bubble around the sun retreated dramatically after colliding with a freezing interstellar cloud, leaving much of the solar system exposed to radiation that may have shaped our evolution, a study suggests

The protective bubble around the sun retreated dramatically after colliding with a freezing interstellar cloud, leaving much of the solar system exposed to radiation that may have shaped our evolution, a study suggests

A number of whole-body deodorants are coming to market. But are they safe and effective?

The ESA website is a key tool to help us communicate about our activities. We want to make sure that our website meets the needs and expectations of our audience. That's why we are launching a survey to collect your feedback and suggestions on how to improve the esa.int website.

Baked-in news practices cover only the worst moments of protests and neglect telling people what protesters are asking for, extensive research shows

The meaning of the word "bot" on Twitter/X seems to have shifted over time, with people originally using it to flag automated accounts, but now employing it to insult people they disagree with

The meaning of the word "bot" on Twitter/X seems to have shifted over time, with people originally using it to flag automated accounts, but now employing it to insult people they disagree with

The Hubble Space Telescope’s woes, moon rocks and antibiotic candidates discovered with AI are all in this week’s news roundup.

Type Ia supernovas erupt when white dwarf "dead stars" vampirically feast on a companion star. Researchers are turning to AI to better understand why.

PLAYMOBIL's little robot space explorer ROBert was reunited with ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and ESA Kids mascot Paxi as they teamed up to meet young space fans at ESA's Space Days. Children had an absolute blast at ESA's Space Days, held at the PLAYMOBIL FunPark in Zirndorf, Germany from 30 May to 2 June 2024.

To date, astronomers have confirmed the existence of 5638 extrasolar planets in 4,199 star systems. In the process, scientists have found many worlds that have defied expectations. This is certainly the case regarding “hot Neptunes,” planets that are similar to the “ice giants” of the outer Solar System but orbit much closer to their stars. But when a Johns Hopkins University-led team of astronomers discovered TIC365102760 b (aka. Pheonix), they observed something entirely unexpected: a Neptune-sized planet that retained its atmosphere by puffing up.

Sam Grunblatt, an astrophysicist with JHU’s William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, led the research. He was joined by an international team that included NSF Graduate Research Fellow Nicholas Saunders, 51 Pegasi b Fellows Shreyas Vissapragada, Steven Giacalone, Ashley Chontos, and Joseph M. Akana Murphy, as well as researchers from many prestigious institutes and universities. The paper that describes their findings (which recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal) is part of a series titled “TESS Giants Transiting Giants.”

Artist’s impression of JG436b, a hot Neptune located about 33 light years from Earth. Credit: STScI

Puff planets are a new class of incredibly rare exoplanets, accounting for an estimated 1% of planets in our galaxy. The team discovered Pheonix by combining data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) with radial velocity measurements obtained by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) at the Keck Observatory. Their data indicated that Pheonix is 0.55 times the size of Jupiter but only 0.06 times as massive, which orbits a red giant star with a period of 4.21285 days (about six times closer to its star than the distance between Mercury and the Sun).

Based on the age and temperature of its star and the planet’s remarkably low density, the team expected that Pheonix’s gaseous envelopes should have been stripped away billions of years ago. Based on its density, the team also estimates that the planet is the puffiest “puff planet” discovered to date (roughly 60 times less dense than the densest “hot Neptune”) and that it will begin spiraling into its star in about 100 million years. As Grunblatt explained in a JHU HUB press release:

“This planet isn’t evolving the way we thought it would. It appears to have a much bigger, less dense atmosphere than we expected for these systems. How it held on to that atmosphere despite being so close to such a large host star is the big question.”

“It’s the smallest planet we’ve ever found around one of these red giants, and probably the lowest mass planet orbiting a [red] giant star we’ve ever seen. That’s why it looks really weird. We don’t know why it still has an atmosphere when other ‘hot Neptunes’ that are much smaller and much denser seem to be losing their atmospheres in much less extreme environments.”

Artist’s impression of Pheonix, the “hot Neptune” orbiting a red giant star 8 billion light-years from Earth. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/JHU

These findings could have implications for new insight into the late-stage evolution of planetary systems and help scientists predict what will happen to the Solar System in a few billion years. According to standard models of stellar evolution, our Sun will exit its main sequence phase, expand to become a red giant, and eventually consume the inner planets. Based on these findings, they predict that Earth’s atmosphere may not evolve the way astronomers previously expected. Instead of our Sun blasting it away, our atmosphere may expand to become incredibly “puffy.”

Pheonix is the latest puffy planet examined by the international team based on TESS data. While puff planets are known to be rare, exoplanets like Pheonix are especially elusive because of their small size and low density. In the future, Grunblatt and his colleagues plan to search for more of these smaller worlds and have already identified a dozen potential candidates by combining transit and radial velocity data.

Further Reading: John Hopkins University, The Astrophysical Journal

The post Instead of Losing its Atmosphere, an Exoplanet Puffed Up and Held Onto it appeared first on Universe Today.