Researchers from the fields of astrophysics, astrochemistry and biochemistry have now determined in a novel, interdisciplinary collaboration the necessary properties that allow moons around free-floating planets to retain liquid water for a sufficiently long time and thus enable life.
Mar 20th, 2023
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It's easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organised complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge?
Mar 15th, 2023
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The largest data release of relatively nearby supernovae (colossal explosions of stars), containing three years of data from thePan-STARRS telescope is publicly available via the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE).
Mar 15th, 2023
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Researchers have found the earliest evidence of parts of the universe that were heated to temperatures more characteristic to the intergalactic gas medium where most atoms reside in the universe today.
Mar 15th, 2023
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The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star - among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known - was one of the first observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments.
Mar 14th, 2023
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Robotic parts could be assembled into nimble spider bots for exploring lava tubes or heavy-duty elephant bots for transporting solar panels.
Mar 14th, 2023
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Scientists detected radio recombination lines of ions heavier than helium for the first time. These lines were assigned to carbon and/or oxygen ions.
Mar 6th, 2023
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Astronomers offer new insight into how deflection missions can protect the planet from future Earth-bound asteroids and comets.
Mar 1st, 2023
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Astronomers spectroscopically surveyed more than 1000 bright stars that potentially host exoplanets.
Feb 28th, 2023
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New observations have revealed a spiral pattern in a disk of material around a still forming, but already high-mass, baby star. This indicates that there is gravitational instability in the disk, which has important implications for how high-mass stars form.
Feb 28th, 2023
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While analyzing data from the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers discovered a companion galaxy previously hidden behind the light of the foreground galaxy - one that surprisingly seems to have already hosted multiple generations of stars despite its young age, estimated at 1.4 billion years old.
Feb 27th, 2023
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Astronomers think the object, X7, might be debris cloud from a stellar collision
Feb 25th, 2023
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Scientists say the unusual atom - made up of an ordinary caesium atom and an elementary particle called a muon - may prove essential in better understanding the Universe's fundamental building blocks.
Feb 24th, 2023
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Using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have observed massive candidate galaxies at the beginning of time, up to 100 billion times the mass of the Sun which, if confirmed, would contain more mass than was thought to exist in the whole Universe at that time.
Feb 22nd, 2023
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Scientific instruments currently deployed on Mars may lack the sensitivity to identify possible traces of life in this environment.
Feb 21st, 2023
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New astronomical measurements in the infrared range have led to the identification of a heretofore unknown class of asteroids. They are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are - similar to the dwarf planet Ceres - rich in water.
Feb 20th, 2023
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When neutron stars collide, they produce an explosion that, contrary to what was believed until recently, is shaped almost like a perfect sphere. Although how this is possible is still a mystery, the discovery may provide a new key to measuring the age of the Universe.
Feb 20th, 2023
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Scientists try to unravel the birth, growth and power of black holes, some of the most forceful yet difficult-to-detect objects in our Universe.
Feb 18th, 2023
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