How was the Moon formed? The most-widely-accepted theory suggests that billions of years ago, our young planet was struck by a body as large as Mars, forming the Moon. However, new observations of the levels of metals on our companion world suggest this origin story may need updating. Roughly 4.5 billion years ago, Theia — […]
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Astrophysicians have used AI to discover 250 new stars in the Milky Way, which they believe were born outside the galaxy. Caltech researcher Lina Necib named the collection Nyx, after the Greek goddess of the night. She suspects the stars are remnants of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way many moons ago. To develop the AI, […]
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A new study released today makes a compelling case for the development of “NEMO”—a new observatory in Australia that could deliver on some of the most exciting gravitational-wave science next-generation detectors have to offer, but at a fraction of the cost.
Read MoreIf ever a documentary was in tune with the spirit of lockdown it is this very absorbing film about Biosphere 2 – a colossal eco-experimental project in the Arizona desert in the early 90s, which had its roots in 60s counterculture and which I knew nothing about before this. My ignorance was so complete, in […]
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Existing in the universe means that you are regularly rocked by ripples in the fabric of spacetime, which imperceptibly warp your corporeal form as they pass through you. These ripples, known as gravitational waves, are caused by catastrophic cosmic events, such as the explosions of stars or the unions of black holes. They are extremely […]
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How we will find extraterrestrial life is just as important of a question as to when we will find the first alien life. Finding extraterrestrial life is not just a question of WHEN we will find the first life off the Earth, but HOW we will find it. We already know of more than 4,000 […]
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Many great movies and television shows, including the Lost in Space reboot, show various versions of interstellar travel. SpaceX and the new space race are making space geeks salivate at the thought. To those like myself who’ve cherished the idea since the debut of the Starship Enterprise, the question becomes, what is the reality that we could […]
Read MoreThe UK government has pledged to invest $500m (£400m) in bankrupt satellite company OneWeb, giving it a stake in a business that provides broadband from space. The government will receive a “significant equity share” in the firm as it seeks to make “high-risk, high-reward” investments in promising technologies. Indian telecom Bharti will also invest $500m, […]
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The origin of high-energy cosmic neutrinos observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, whose detector is buried deep in the Antarctic ice, is an enigma that has perplexed physicists and astronomers. A new model could help explain the unexpectedly large flux of some of these neutrinos inferred by recent neutrino and gamma-ray data. A paper by […]
Read MoreNasa has released a mesmerising timelapse video of the sun that condenses an entire solar cycle into an hour of footage, using images of the star taken every hour continuously over a decade. Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the sun, from its launch in February 2010 until June this […]
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Remember when I warned everyone that humans would probably destroy all life in the universe like construction workers killing ant colonies to make way for a never-ending series of cosmic strip malls? A team of researchers from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland has me concerned that we […]
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A mysterious planet — called Planet 9 or Planet X — may be hiding at the edge of our solar system. Will we ever find this world? Planet nine may be orbiting far from the Sun, at the edge of our solar system. Astronomers, seeing odd irregularities in the orbits of the outer planets suspect […]
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I am one of the few African-American aerospace engineers who helped design the Apollo spaceships that took men to the Moon. My great-grandfather was a slave in Claiborne, Alabama, who used primitive tools to work the land. My father was born in Alabama before the Wright brothers made mankind’s first flight. He lived to see […]
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Astronomers once believed that most solar systems would be much like our own, with small rocky planets near their sun, accompanied by gas giants orbiting the star at greater distances. Beginning in 1992, researchers began to find worlds orbiting alien stars, and soon found solar systems came in a wide variety of formations. Today, astronomers […]
Read MoreYou’d think that if you found the first evidence that a planet larger than the Earth was lurking unseen in the furthest reaches of our solar system, it would be a big moment. It would make you one of only a small handful of people in all of history to have discovered such a thing. […]
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Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1933, Dwight’s father, Ed Dwight, Sr, played second base for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. His mother, Georgia Baker Dwight, encouraged the boy from a young age, and Ed Jr. became an avid reader, able to work well with his hands — including creating art, a […]
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Europa clipper The Europa Clipper from NASA is scheduled to be the next spacecraft to explore Europa. Image credit: NASA Several spacecraft have, so far, ventured to the neighborhood of this enigmatic satellite of Jupiter. Pioneer 10 was the first to glimpse Europa as it passed by Jupiter, but the craft was too distant to […]
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The ExoMars mission to find life on Mars moved a step closer to take-off this week after NASA unveiled the first results of an AI system that will support the search. The former Space Race rivals of Russia and the US plan to use AI to scan rocks on the Red Planet for signs of life. Eventually, […]
Read MoreBritain has begun the process of purchasing its own satellite navigation system for defence and critical national infrastructure purposes, according to reports. The Times says Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, signed off on the purchase of a 20% stake in satellite operator OneWeb on Thursday night, after the UK was unable to access […]
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Ever wondered how fast a car could potentially go if it had rocket thrusters installed on them? We’re not sure how safe it would be, but thanks to @Pslavi on Twitter, he has put together a concept video that uses a bit of video editing to imagine how fast a Tesla Roadster could go (and […]
Read MoreChina launched the final satellite of its BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province at 9.43am local time (0243 BST) on 23 June 2020. Developed by the China Academy of Space Technology, the satellite is the 30th in the constellation, and was carried into space by a Long […]
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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Russia’s Energia space corporation said Thursday it will take the first tourist on a space walk in 2023, under the terms of a new contract with a US partner. Energia has inked a contract with Space Adventures, which promises to take two space tourists to the International Space Station that year. […]
Read More“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.” Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to […]
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To calibrate the BMX radio telescope, researchers mounted a small radio source to a quadcopter drone and then flew it over the telescope, making a zig-zag pattern over the telescope’s entire field of view. By comparing the drone’s known flight path from GPS signals to the radio signals picked up by BMX, the researchers are […]
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Sometimes nicknames turn out to be closer to reality than you might imagine.
Read MoreWhen black holes collide, the ensuing cosmic drama was assumed to play out under the cloak of darkness, given that both objects are invisible. But now astronomers believe they have made the first optical observations of such a merger, marked by a blaze of light a trillion times brighter than the sun. The flare was […]
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heic2012 — Photo Release 25 June 2020 The young star HBC 672 is known by its nickname of Bat Shadow because of its wing-like shadow feature. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has now observed a curious “flapping” motion in the shadow of the star’s disc for the first time. The star resides in a stellar […]
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Some like it hot Another quality to look for when searching for worlds with liquid water (and potentially life) is heat — needed to melt ice and drive chemical reactions. This planetary heat typically comes from two sources — radiogenic heat, driven by radioactive decay inside a planet, and tidal forces, the stretching of planets and […]
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Yesterday, China launched its 30th and last satellite to complete its own global navigation system BeiDou. The country started the program in the 1990s to launch the first phase. The latest satellite launch is part of the third phase of the program that began in 2015. The launch was initially scheduled for June 16, however it was […]
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A source of repeating radio waves seen from one point in the sky presents astronomers with numerous mysteries. The source of this signal, where radiation builds and ebbs over a period of 16 days, remains a question. The longevity of these cycles — now seen continuing for over 500 days — could either present another […]
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Pluto, along with many other dwarf planets in the outer solar system, is often thought of as dark, icy and barren – with a surface temperature of just −230°C. But now a new study, published in Nature Geoscience, suggests that the body has had a warm interior ever since it formed, and may still have […]
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