Category Astronomy/Space

Scientists release newly Accurate Map of all the Matter in the Universe

Two views of the sky side-by-side with dark and lighter spots
By comparing maps of the sky from the Dark Energy Survey telescope (at left) with data from the South Pole Telescope and the Planck satellite (at right), the team could infer how the matter is distributed.
Image courtesy Yuuki Omori

Analysis combines Dark Energy Survey, South Pole Telescope data to understand evolution of universe. A group of scientists have released one of the most precise measurements ever made of how matter is distributed across the universe.

When the universe began, matter was flung outward and gradually formed the planets, stars and galaxies that we know and love today. By carefully assembling a map of that matter today, scientists can try to understand the forces that shaped the evolution of the universe.

A group of scientists, including several with the Uni...

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Will Machine Learning help us find Extraterrestrial Life?

Will machine learning help us find extraterrestrial life?
Examples showing the four types of training data. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01872-z

Researchers have applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest.

When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, “if they’re out there, why haven’t we found them yet?” And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Further, algorithms developed decades ago for the earliest digital computers can be outdated and inefficient when applied to modern petabyte-scale datasets...

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Solar System formed from ‘Poorly Mixed Cake Batter,’ Isotope Research shows

Meteorite thin section courtesy Nicole Xike Nie.
Caption:  A meteorite thin section under a microscope. Different colors represent different minerals, because light travels through them in different ways. The round mineral aggregates are chondrules, which are a major component in primitive meteorites. Credit: Nicole Xike Nie.

Earth’s potassium arrived by meteoritic delivery service finds new research led by Carnegie’s Nicole Nie and Da Wang. Their work, published in Science, shows that some primitive meteorites contain a different mix of potassium isotopes than those found in other, more-chemically processed meteorites. These results can help elucidate the processes that shaped our solar system and determined the composition of its planets.

“The extreme conditions found in stellar interiors enable stars to manufacture elements usi...

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NASA’s Fermi Detects First Gamma-Ray Eclipses from ‘Spider’ Star Systems

Streams of material blow off an orange-yellow in the foreground. In the distance, a pulsar rotates like a lighthouse, emitting beams of magenta light. The background is black, purple, and speckled with stars.
An orbiting star begins to eclipse its partner, a rapidly rotating, superdense stellar remnant called a pulsar, in this illustration. The pulsar emits multiwavelength beams of light that rotate in and out of view and produces outflows that heat the star’s facing side, blowing away material and eroding its partner.
Credits: NASA/Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet

Scientists have discovered the first gamma-ray eclipses from a special type of binary star system using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. These so-called spider systems each contain a pulsar—the superdense, rapidly rotating remains of a star that exploded in a supernova—that slowly erodes its companion.

An international team of scientists scoured over a decade of Fermi observations to find seven sp...

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