The final components of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO), including its foundation, silver geodesic dome, and on-site buildings, have been removed from a valley atop Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and the land at…
Category: Astronomy
Cosmic Simulation Reveals How Black Holes Grow and Evolve
A team of astrophysicists led by Caltech has managed for the first time to simulate the journey of primordial gas dating from the early universe to the stage at which…
Moon ‘swirls’ could be magnetized by unseen magmas
Mysterious, light-colored swirls on Moon’s surface could be rocks magnetized by magma activity underground, Washington University laboratory experiments confirm. Lunar swirls are light-colored, sinuous features on the Moon’s surface, bright…
Astronomers are helping to build the world’s largest telescope
In 2014, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) began constructing the world’s largest telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), in Chile’s Atacama Desert, 3,000 metres above sea level. The giant eye on…
Small, cool and sulfurous exoplanet may help write recipe for planetary formation
A surprising yellow haze of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas “dwarf” exoplanet about 96 light years away from our own solar system makes the planet a prime…
New habitable Earth-sized planet only 40 lightyears away with the same temperature as the 2022 UK heatwave
Scientists from the University of Warwick have helped discover a new habitable Earth-sized planet– only a short 40 light years away. In this artist’s concept, Gliese 12 b is shown…
Shocked quartz reveals evidence of historical cosmic airburst
Shocked quartz and amorphous silica The researchers are particularly interested in the presence of shocked quartz, indicated by a pattern of lines, called lamellae, that shows stress great enough to…
Webb captures star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc
An international team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first…
With a new, incredibly precise instrument, researchers narrow search for dark energy
Dark energy — a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate — was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new…
Telltale greenhouse gases could signal alien activity
If aliens modified a planet in their solar system to make it warmer, we could tell. A new UC Riverside study identifies the artificial greenhouse gases that would be giveaways…