How Grains of Dust Can Grow Into the Seeds of New Planets
By amassing in high-density regions, dust grains avoid drifting toward the star they are orbiting. A key step in the formation of new planets may…
By amassing in high-density regions, dust grains avoid drifting toward the star they are orbiting. A key step in the formation of new planets may…
Astronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered…
What Is an Atmosphere? An atmosphere is a layer (or several layers) of gas that surrounds a planet, or other celestial body. If a celestial…
Researchers from the UAB, IFAE, and University College London propose using the variations in distance between the Earth and the Moon, which can be measured…
What Is an Active Galactic Nucleus? An active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is an extremely bright central region of a galaxy that is dominated by…
Evidence suggests surface minerals of outer main-belt asteroids, proposed to have sourced building blocks of Earth’s water and life, are only stable at low temperatures….
Experiments point the way to solving mystery that keeps clusters hot. Galaxies rarely live alone. Instead, dozens to thousands are drawn together by gravity, forming…
What Is a Spiral Galaxy? A spiral galaxy typically has a rotating disc with spiral ‘arms’ that curve out from a dense central region. The…
A mathematical analysis helps illuminate the puzzle over how information escapes from a black hole. A RIKEN physicist and two colleagues have found that a…
Astronomers may have detected a “sonic boom” from a powerful blast known as a kilonova. This event—called GW170817—is a result of a merger of two…
This week the Webb team continued to make progress in aligning the telescope to the NIRCam instrument. Between taking the data to understand the optical…
Pulsars, a class of neutron stars, are extremely predictable stars. They are formed from the hearts of massive stars that have since collapsed in on…
Gamma ray observatory H.E.S.S. reveals a cosmic particle acceleration process in unprecedented detail. With the help of special telescopes, researchers have observed a cosmic particle…
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have for the first time detected dimethyl ether in…
Because the effects of observing a galaxy at an angle are complex, spiral galaxies are much easier to study if their orientation is just right…
Researchers provide the first plausible explanation to why one of the most massive black hole pairs observed to date by gravitational waves also seemed to…
In 2020, the X-ray telescope eRosita took images of two enormous bubbles extending far above and below the center of our galaxy. Since then, astronomers…
An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum — produced by an extremely…