Assistant Professor Marta Bryan is studying the properties of exoplanets to better understand how our planet and species fit into the larger universe. It wasn’t that long ago that astronomers…
Category: Astronomy
Webb Detects Water Vapor in Rocky Planet-Forming Zone
Water is essential for life as we know it. However, scientists debate how it reached the Earth and whether the same processes could seed rocky exoplanets orbiting distant stars. New…
Novel Algorithm Improves Understanding of Plasma Shock Waves in Space
Frontera and Stampede2 supercomputers help scientists resolve and analyze challenging plasma shock wave structures. Imagine the explosive disturbance caused by a jet going supersonic. A similar shock wave occurs when…
Stellar Demolition Derby Generates a Powerful Gamma-Ray Burst
While searching for the origins of a powerful stellar gamma-ray burst (GRB), an international team of astrophysicists may have stumbled upon a new way stars might be destroyed. Astronomers studying…
Future Ultra-Precise Timing Links to Geosynchronous Satellites
Between mountains in Hawai‘i, innovative scientists show precision timing at the quantum limit. Last year, scientists drove up Mauna Loa volcano on Hawai‘i, aimed a laser at a reflector positioned…
What Keeps Venus Looking so Young? A Powerful Jolt Early on, Perhaps
A new study suggests that higher-energy bolide impacts created a superheated core and extended volcanism on Venus — leading to its younger surface appearance. Researchers at Yale and the Southwest…
What Spinning, Flashing Stars Reveal About Gravitational Waves and Galaxies?
The Stanford physicist and astrophysicist Roger Blandford discusses new findings related to gravitational waves observed with the help of spinning, flashing stars – and what it could reveal about how…
When Extraterrestrials Call, Are We Not Spoofed?
Scientists have devised a new technique for finding and vetting possible radio signals from other civilizations in our galaxy — a major advance in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)…
Studying Solar Flares, Sunspots Can Protect Earth
A USC Dornsife physicist explains how the Earth’s future is tied to the star it orbits. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on Oct. 2,…
Mysterious Action of Ghost Stars in Our Galaxy
A now iconic collage showing 22 individual well-known PNe, artistically arranged in a spiral pattern by order of approximate physical size. Image credit: University of Manchester The alignment of planetary…
