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An artist’s impression of the newly-discovered Kuiper Belt object. Image credit: Ko Arimatsu.

Astronomers Discover Kilometer-Sized Object in Kuiper Belt

Jan 29, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Japan has discovered a 2.6-km (1.6 mile) wide object in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond...

This striking image combines data gathered with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. It shows just a part of the spectacular tail emerging from the spiral galaxy D100. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Cramer et al.

Hubble Finds Spiral Galaxy with Ram Pressure-Stripped Tail in Coma Cluster

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

A long streamer of hydrogen gas is being stripped from a spiral galaxy called D100 as it plunges toward the center of the Coma cluster (also known as Abell...

A 30,000 light-year region from the Renaissance Simulation centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating the surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset) each over 1,000 times the mass of our Sun that will quickly collapse into massive black holes and eventually supermassive black holes over billions of years. Image credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Early Universe’s Massive Black Holes Born in Rapidly-Growing Dark Matter Halos: Study

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

When the Universe was less than 1 billion years old, some of its stars turned into supermassive black holes. A key mystery in astronomy has been: why are...

This image from NASA’s New Horizons probe shows a Kuiper Belt object called Ultima Thule. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Sends Detailed Image of Ultima Thule

Jan 25, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back the most detailed image yet of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (2014 MU69). This image from NASA’s...

An artist’s impression of an extrasolar submoon. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Can Moons Have Submoons?

Jan 25, 2019 by News Staff

Saturn’s moons Titan and Iapetus, Jupiter’s moon Callisto, Earth’s Moon, and the recently-discovered extrasolar moon Kepler 1625b-i are capable of...

Greenwood et al discovered that water was present on Earth at an early stage in its evolution and survived the giant impact, which formed the Moon. This is an artist’s depiction of a catastrophic collision between two celestial bodies; such an impact between the proto-Earth and Theia likely formed the Moon. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Earth’s Essential Elements for Life Probably Came from Another Planet

Jan 24, 2019 by News Staff

Planetary researchers believe that our Moon was created more than 4.4 billion years ago in a catastrophic collision between proto-Earth and a hypothetical...

An artist’s concept of a dust storm on Titan. Image credit: NASA / ESA / IPGP / Labex UnivEarthS / University Paris Diderot.

‘Cooking’ of Ancient Organics Created Titan’s Mysterious Atmosphere

Jan 24, 2019 by News Staff

New research tackles one of the greatest mysteries about Saturn’s moon Titan: the origin of its present-day nitrogen atmosphere. Published in the Astrophysical...

Trans-Cortical Vessels: Scientists Discover New Type of Blood Vessel in Long Bones

Jan 23, 2019 by News Staff

The newly-discovered ‘trans-cortical vessels’ connect the bone marrow with the periosteal circulation, according to new research published in the journal...

Saturn’s Great Northern Storm churning through the atmosphere in the planet’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This picture, captured on February 25, 2011, was taken about 12 weeks after the storm began, and the clouds by this time had formed a tail that wrapped around the gas giant. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Length of Saturn’s Day Revised: 10 Hours 33 Minutes and 38 Seconds

Jan 22, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed Saturn’s ring system in unprecedented detail, and a team of planetary researchers from the University of California...

Rocky Super-Earth Found Orbiting Solar-Type Star

Jan 21, 2019 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers has found a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet orbiting HD 285181, a 3.7-billion-year-old solar-type star approximately 294...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Saturn’s Rings are 10 to 100 Million Years Old, Much Younger than Planet

Jan 18, 2019 by News Staff

In the final phase of NASA’s Cassini mission, the spacecraft dived between Saturn and its innermost ring, at altitudes 1,616-2,423 miles (2,600-3,900...

Messier 61 is aligned face-on towards Earth, thus presenting us with a breathtaking view of its structure. The gas and dust of the intricate spiral arms are studded with billions of stars. Image credit: ESO.

VLT Captures Incredible Image of Messier 61

Jan 17, 2019 by News Staff

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured an amazing new photo of the spiral galaxy Messier 61. Messier 61 is...

It’s raining on Titan. Image credit: David A. Hardy, AstroArt / NASA.

Cassini Team Finds Evidence of Summer Rainfall at Titan’s North Pole

Jan 17, 2019 by News Staff

Observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provide evidence of rainfall on the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan. The rainfall would be the first...

Two seeds of Chenopodium berlandieri spp. jonesianum adhering along one side showing truncate cross section as well as variation in seed coat thickness and margin configuration that varies from flattened to slightly rounded. Image credit: Gary Crawford.

Archaeologists Find 2,900-Year-Old Seeds of Domesticated Goosefoot in Canada

Jan 16, 2019 by News Staff

A team of Canadian archaeologists has found a cache of charred seeds of the pitseed goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri spp. jonesianum), a form of quinoa...

An artist’s impression of a view of the HD 98800BaBb binary star system and the surrounding disk. Image credit: Mark Garlick, University of Warwick.

ALMA Discovers Binary Star System with Polar Protoplanetary Disk

Jan 15, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted the first example of a binary system that has flipped its protoplanetary...

Photons emitted near rotating black holes encode quantum information that can be measured by actual quantum information technology. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Spacetime Geometry near Rotating Black Holes Acts Like Quantum Computer, Physicist Says

Jan 15, 2019 by News Staff

According to a theoretical paper published in the Annals of Physics, by Dr. Ovidiu Racorean from the General Direction of Information Technology in Bucharest,...

Massive Exoplanet Found within Binary Star System

Jan 11, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have discovered a planet roughly twice the size of Earth orbiting a star in the low-mass binary...

Less than a billion years after the Big Bang, a supermassive black hole began devouring anything within its gravitational grasp; this triggered a firestorm of star formation around the black hole; a galaxy was being born; a blowtorch of energy blazed across the Universe. Now, 12.8 billion years later, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured the beacon from this event. But the telescope needed help to spot it: the gravitational warping of space by a comparatively nearby intervening galaxy greatly amplified and distorted the quasar’s light, making it the brightest such object seen in the early Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Find Brightest Quasar of Early Universe

Jan 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have spotted the brightest quasar ever seen in the early Universe. Less than a billion years after...

The globally distributed dishes of the European VLBI Network are linked with each other and the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, www.artsource.nl.

Second Repeating Fast Radio Burst Detected

Jan 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophysicists from the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) Collaboration have spotted 13 new fast radio bursts (FRB) — powerful...