3+ day, 15+ hour ago   (556+ words) A brilliant X-ray source is not automatically a black hole. Matter falling toward a neutron star can also become intensely luminous, and some neutron stars have surprised astronomers by producing far more radiation than expected. Identifying the object requires evidence…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (373+ words) Researchers have completed one of the largest computer simulations of cosmic history yet assembled. Called ASTRID, it follows the growth of galaxies and black holes from the universe’s early days to the present, giving astronomers a virtual laboratory for testing…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (447+ words) Two stars once considered promising Dyson sphere candidates have now been removed from the list. Follow-up observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope showed that the infrared glow did not come from enormous artificial structures around the stars. It came…...

2+ week, 15+ hour ago   (266+ words) Before your next upload Clean image metadata before you share. Remove EXIF, GPS and common AI metadata before you share. Your file stays in your browser. Free · no account Carbon dioxide is also unevenly distributed. Solid CO2 is enhanced around the…...

2+ week, 20+ hour ago   (583+ words) The signal is extraordinarily small. The star may be thousands or millions of times brighter than the planet, and the atmosphere is only a narrow rim around a moving world. Astronomers observe repeated transits, calibrate the telescope and compare the…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago   (699+ words) Planets are assembled inside broad disks of gas and dust around young stars, but those disks do not last forever. A new James Webb Space Telescope survey shows that winds from young, Sun-like stars can remove the gas while planets…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (758+ words) Black holes are invisible until something gives them away. A disk of hot gas can light up around one. A jet can cross a galaxy. And, in the most violent cases, a black hole can tear apart a star and…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago   (546+ words) The James Webb Space Telescope has found the clearest example yet of an object that looks like a star but is powered by a black hole. Before your next upload Clean image metadata before you share. Remove EXIF, GPS and…...

3+ week, 6+ day ago   (771+ words) The Milky Way is not the center of the universe. No observation has placed Earth or our galaxy in a privileged position, and the large-scale universe looks broadly the same in every direction. Avi Loeb recently explored a stranger possibility:…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago   (758+ words) Look up on a clear night and the sky between the stars is mostly black. That seems obvious until you ask a deceptively simple question: if the universe contains an enormous number of stars, why is every direction not filled…...