Fragmenting planets sweeping extremely close to their stars might be the cause of mysterious cosmic blasts of radio waves. Milliseconds-long fast radio bursts, or FRBs, erupt from distant cosmic locales.…
Category: Astronomy
A newly discovered planet renews debate about how some giant worlds form
A young, massive planet is orbiting in an unusual place in its star system, and it’s leading researchers to revive a long-debated view of how giant planets can form. The…
A star nicknamed ‘Earendel’ may be the most distant yet seen
A chance alignment may have revealed a star from the universe’s first billion years. If confirmed, this star would be the most distant one ever seen, obliterating the previous record…
Binary stars keep masquerading as black holes
As astronomy datasets grow larger, scientists are scouring them for black holes, hoping to better understand the exotic objects. But the drive to find more black holes is leading some…
When the Magellanic Clouds cozy up to each other, stars are born
Like two great songwriters working side by side and inspiring each other to create their best work, the Magellanic Clouds spawn new stars every time the two galaxies meet. Visible…
Here’s the best timeline yet for the Milky Way’s big events
A new analysis of nearly a quarter million stars puts firm ages on the most momentous pages from our galaxy’s life story. Far grander than most of its neighbors, the…
Levitating plastic beads mimic the physics of spinning asteroids
Some asteroids can barely hold it together. Rather than solid lumps of rock, ‘rubble pile’ asteroids are loose collections of material, which can split apart as they rotate (SN: 3/16/20).…
NASA’s exoplanet count surges past 5,000
It’s official: The number of planets known beyond our solar system has just passed 5,000. The exoplanet census surpassed this milestone with a recent batch of 60 confirmed exoplanets. These…
The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected
Even when you remove the bright stars, the glowing dust and other nearby points of light from the inky, dark sky, a background glow remains. That glow comes from the…
Some of the sun’s iconic coronal loops may be illusions
Coronal loops, well-defined hot strands of plasma that arch out into the sun’s atmosphere, are iconic to the sun’s imagery. But many of the supposed coronal loops we see might…
