Category Astronomy/Space

Charged cosmic rays, high-energy clusters of particles moving through space, were first described in 1912 by physicist Victor Hess. Since their discovery, they have been the topic of numerous astrophysics studies aimed at better understanding their origin, acceleration and propagation through space, using satellite data or other experimental methods.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) collaboration, a large research group analyzing data collected by a large magnetic spectrometer in space, recently gathered new insight about the properties and composition of specific types of cosmic rays...

A scorching hot world where metal clouds rain drops of titanium is the most reflective planet ever observed outside of our Solar System, astronomers said on Monday.

This strange world, which is more than 260 light years from Earth, reflects 80 percent of the light from its host star, according to new observations from Europe’s exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope.

That makes it the first exoplanet comparably shiny as Venus, which is the brightest object in our night sky other than the Moon.

First discovered in 2020, the Neptune-sized planet called LTT9779b orbits its star in just 19 hours.

Because it is so close, the side of the planet facing its star is a sizzling ...

Researchers have discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed about 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe.

In addition to the black hole in CEERS 1019, the researchers identified two more black holes that are on the smaller side and existed 1 billion and 1.1 billion years after the big bang...

Result sheds new light on how climate change will affect the length of the day and validity of climate modelling tools. A team of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) has revealed how the slow and steady lengthening of Earth’s day caused by the tidal pull of the moon was halted for over a billion years.

They show that from approximately two billion years ago until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the sun countered the effect of the moon, keeping Earth’s rotational rate steady and the length of day at a constant 19.5 hours.

Without this billion-year pause in th...