The Webb telescope has opened a new window into the universe, but it builds on missions going back 40 years, including Spitzer and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Scientists have been…
Category: Astronomy
A New Way to Characterize Habitable Planets
For decades, science fiction authors have imagined scenarios in which life thrives on the harsh surfaces of Mars or our Moon, or in the oceans below the icy surfaces of…
Rare Six-Planet Star System Discovery is Music to Astronomers’ Ears
A rare star system with six exoplanets has been discovered with an architecture unchanged for billions of years. Exoplanet – illustrative photo. Image credit: Pixabay (Free Pixabay license) The star,…
New Project Will Take a Step Towards Answering Whether Gravity is Quantum
Scientists are developing an experiment to test whether gravity is quantum – one of the deepest questions about our universe. Gravity – illustrative photo. Image credit: Pixabay (Free Pixabay license)…
Hubble Sights a Galaxy with ‘Forbidden’ Light
This whirling image features a bright spiral galaxy known as MCG-01-24-014, which is located about 275 million light-years from Earth. In addition to being a well-defined spiral galaxy, MCG-01-24-014 has an extremely energetic…
The Case of the Missing Phosphorus: Astronomers Find Life Ingredient at Galaxy’s Edges
An artist’s illustration of the Milky Way galactic plane, believed to span just over 100,000 light-years. The discovery of phosphorus, a critical ingredient of life on Earth, in a far-away…
Southampton Set to Support Development of Next-gen Gravitational Wave Detectors
University of Southampton researchers are set to play a key role in developing the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, which could help astronomers probe the furthest reaches of the…
Asteroid Samples Reveal Origins of Organic Molecules in the Early Solar System
Carbon is the building block of biological life on Earth. The element is present in many compounds, such as sugars, proteins, and carbohydrate molecules, that comprise everything from animals to…
The Goldmine of a Neutron Star Collision
International research team models the different signatures of a kilonova explosion simultaneously for the first time. Neutron stars are the end products of massive stars and gather together a large…
Webb Rings in the Holidays With the Ringed Planet Uranus
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on weird and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that orbits on its side. Webb found a dynamic world with rings,…
