Category Astronomy/Space

How did Earth get its Water?

How did Earth get its water?
An illustration showing how some Earth’s signature features, such as its abundance of water and its overall oxidized state could potentially be attributable to interactions between the molecular hydrogen atmospheres and magma oceans on the planetary embryos that comprised Earth’s formative years. Credit: Edward Young/UCLA and Katherine Cain/Carnegie Institution for Science.

Earth’s water could have originated from interactions between the hydrogen-rich atmospheres and magma oceans of the planetary embryos that comprised Earth’s formative years, according to new work from Carnegie Science’s Anat Shahar and UCLA’s Edward Young and Hilke Schlichting. Their findings, which could explain the origins of Earth’s signature features, are published in Nature.

For decades, what researchers...

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Astronomers discover Fast Radio Bursts that Skewer Nearby Galaxy

Astronomers discover fast radio bursts that skewer nearby galaxy
Three new Fast Radio Bursts discovered by the Westerbork telescope were shown to have pierced the halo of our neighbouring Triangulum Galaxy. Invisible electrons in that galaxy deform the FRBs. From sharp, new, live images, astronomers could estimate the maximum number of invisible atoms in the Triangulum Galaxy for the first time. Credit: ASTRON/Futselaar/van Leeuwen

After upgrading the radio telescope array at Westerbork, The Netherlands, astronomers have found five new fast radio bursts. The telescope images, much sharper than previously possible, revealed that multiple bursts had pierced our neighboring Triangulum galaxy. This allowed the astronomers to determine the maximum number of otherwise invisible atoms in this galaxy for the first time...

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New findings that Map the Universe’s Cosmic Growth support Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

A group of five galaxies: The galaxy at the top has a bright reddish core surrounded by swirls of blue and purple. The galaxy on the left is a mass of purple gas surrounding a dim red core.
A view of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies from the James Webb Telescope.
Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Significant breakthrough in understanding the evolution of the universe. Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has culminated in a groundbreaking new image that reveals the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across a quarter of the entire sky, reaching deep into the cosmos. Findings provide further support to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has been the foundation of the standard model of cosmology for more than a century, and offers new methods to demystify dark matter.

For millennia, humans have been fascinated by the mysteries of the cosmos.

Unlike ancient philosophers imagining the universe’s origi...

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Scientists Map Gusty Winds in a far-off Neutron Star System

In black space, the accretion disk is represented as a flat swirling disk with blue, pink red colors, and in the middle of it is tiny, glowing white sphere, the neutron star. Behind the accretion disk is a large teal sphere, the sun-like star. A teal noodle flows from the star to the accretion disk, representing the material drawn away from the star.
Caption: MIT astronomers mapped the “disk winds” associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star, represented as the teal sphere. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.
Credits:Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT. Based on an image of Hercules X-1 by D. Klochkov, European Space Agency

The 2D map of this ‘disk wind’ may reveal clues to galaxy formation.

Astronomers have mapped the ‘disk winds’ associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.

An accretion disk is a colossal whirlpool o...

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