The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously.
Aug 30th, 2016
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Located more than 12,000 light-years from Earth, the object first stood out as peculiar when it was observed at particular radio frequencies. Several teams of astronomers studied it using ground-based telescopes and concluded that it is an oxygen-rich star about 10 times as massive as the sun. The question was: What kind of star?
Aug 29th, 2016
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Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) surveyed dozens of young stars and discovered that the larger variety have surprisingly rich reservoirs of carbon monoxide gas in their debris disks. In contrast, the lower-mass, Sun-like stars have debris disks that are virtually gas-free.
Aug 25th, 2016
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Astronomers discover a celestial body in the habitable zone around our nearest fixed star.
Aug 24th, 2016
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Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.
Aug 19th, 2016
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We have yet to identify many materials that can only be created in a microgravity environment but have serious uses elsewhere. There certainly are possibilities.
Aug 19th, 2016
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The distant planet GJ 1132b intrigued astronomers when it was discovered last year. Located just 39 light-years from Earth, it might have an atmosphere despite being baked to a temperature of around 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Aug 18th, 2016
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A novel interpretation of Raman spectra will help the 2020 Mars rover select rocks to study for signs of life.
Aug 16th, 2016
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A lot of information contained in cosmic voids, study suggests.
Aug 11th, 2016
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New theory proposes scenario for the origin of the universe.
Aug 10th, 2016
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There are over 1000 known open star clusters within the Milky Way, with a wide range of properties, such as size and age, that provide astronomers with clues to how stars form, evolve and die. The main appeal of these clusters is that all of their stars are born together out of the same material.
Aug 10th, 2016
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DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will measure light from 35M galaxies to provide new clues about dark energy.
Aug 9th, 2016
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A recent study suggests that matter might in fact survive its foray into black holes and come out the other side.
Aug 5th, 2016
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New research shows pulsars can be used to obtain position along a particular direction in space to an accuracy of 2km.
Aug 4th, 2016
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Do neutron stars contain exotic matter in the form of dense deconfined quark matter?
Aug 2nd, 2016
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The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that present-day life is actually premature from a cosmic perspective.
Aug 1st, 2016
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An international team of researchers have discovered an extremely rare, double source plane gravitational lensing system, in which two distant galaxies are simultaneously lensed by a foreground galaxy. The team dubbed the system 'Eye of Horus'. Such a rare system is a unique probe of fundamental physics of galaxies and cosmology.
Jul 26th, 2016
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Astronomers have discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.
Jul 25th, 2016
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