Items tagged with astronomy
A revised asteroid calculation may have opened a new expressway to Mars and back; experts believe that we could shrink a round trip to the Red Planet from 14-20 months to more than half of that. The idea comes from a paper published in...
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Astronomers may have finally put a number on one of our galaxy’s slipperiest questions: where the Milky Way’s physical boundary really ends. New analysis suggests the active star-forming disk stops around 35,000 to 40,000 light-years from...
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NASA has tested a lithium-fed thruster that could become a workhorse for future Mars missions, and the key milestone is not just that it fired, but that it did so at power levels no previous electric thruster test in the United States ever...
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A global citizen science project is inviting you to scour through the Euclid space telescope's massive DR1 (Data Release 1) mission. The aim is to uncover possibly thousands of strong gravitational lenses that could aid in our...
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NASA's little busy-bee, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), just delivered another treasure giving scientists an unprecedented infrared look at the interior of the Tc 1 planetary nebula, located some 10,000 light-years away where...
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The Big Bang narrative has had its fair share of detractors. Lately, two theoretical models have gained traction in suggesting equally crazy-sounding yet plausible origins to the birth of our universe. While the standard model assumes all...
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A groundbreaking study has finally quantified the kinetic energy of a black hole’s relativistic jets, and TL:DR, they're far more powerful than previously theorized. By observing the Cygnus X-1 binary system in our galaxy, a team from...
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DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) has, in just five years, completed the largest and most comprehensive 3D map of the universe ever constructed, cataloging over 47 million galaxies and quasars plus 20 million nearby stars. This...
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The White House has issued a sweeping National Space Policy that establishes a rigorous framework for the development and deployment of nuclear power and propulsion systems in orbit and beyond. The more immediate goal is to have...
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One of the oldest recorded celestial displays, the Lyrids meteor shower is set to reach its peak next week. While Lyrids are known for unpredictable surges that can produce up to 100 meteors per hour, this year's peak arrives with specific...
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The universe is stretching apart faster than our current theories of physics can explain, and a new study has just confirmed that the discrepancy is not a fluke. By funneling decades of data into the most precise measurement of the local...
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Deep in the heart of the galaxy Markarian 501 some 460 million light-years away, scientists have found two supermassive black holes locked in a gravitational dance that could end in a final, violent collision.
Astronomers have long...
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As the spring air turns crisp, the evening of April 1 will host the first major celestial event of the season. On Wednesday, the Pink Moon will reach peak illumination at 10:12 p.m. EDT, serving as a traditional herald of the changing...
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New data from NASA’s almost-retired Juno orbiter has revealed that lightning bolts on Jupiter are significantly more powerful than previously thought, frequently discharging over 100 times the energy of a typical flash on Earth.
While...
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Rock sample analysis from the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu (collected in 2018) has confirmed that the entire library of the chemical code for DNA and RNA exists in space.
The space-delivery theory for life’s origins has been missing...
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A team of astronomers led by the University of Oxford has identified a new class of liquid planet, a world defined not by oceans of water, but by a global reservoir of molten magma thousands of miles deep and a volatile atmosphere.
The...
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Astronomers have just discovered TOI-1080 b, a rocky super-Earth located approximately 83 light-years away. Spearheaded by a team from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, follow-up monitoring could reveal even more planets around...
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A bright meteoric fireball streaked across the European sky this week, providing a rare and dramatic six-second-long display for onlookers with their phones and cameras. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), however, at least one...
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By merging the razor focus of the Hubble Space Telescope with the wide-field perspective of the Euclid mission, two of the world’s most powerful space telescopes have captured a new look at the Cat’s Eye Nebula, the famous sprawling...
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Tonight, as well as into early tomorrow morning, a total lunar eclipse will sweep across the globe, plunging the full Moon into the Earth’s shadow for nearly an hour. Visible to over 3 billion people across the Americas, East Asia, and...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled a striking new photo of the "Exposed Cranium" Nebula, a celestial structure that, as the nickname implies, bears a strong resemblance to a human brain encased in a translucent...
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Astronomers have captured the largest and most detailed image of the Milky Way’s core to date, revealing a chaotic web of cosmic filaments at our galaxy's center. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a...
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