Category Astronomy/Space

Professor Emeritus Unto K. Laine of Aalto University has made recordings of auroral sounds, showing that the phenomenon is much more common than previously believed and occurs even in the absence of visible northern lights. “This cancels the argument that auroral sounds are extremely rare and that the aurora borealis should be exceptionally bright and lively,” Laine says.

Laine has been studying sounds associated with the northern lights for many years. In 2016, he published a paper linking recordings of crackling and popping sounds during an auroral event with temperature profiles measured by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)...

A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with a colleague from the University of Copenhagen, has found evidence that water was present on Mars more recently than has been thought. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their analysis of data from China’s Zhurong rover and what it showed them about ice in hydrated minerals.

Prior research has suggested that parts of the Martian surface were covered with water up until approximately 3 billion years ago. The time since the water dried up on Mars is known as the Amazonia period. In this new effort, data from the Chinese rover Zhurong has shown the researchers evidence that water on Mars might have persisted longer than has been thought.

Rover Zhurong has been traveling ...

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies...

With the help of the world’s most powerful supercomputer and new artificial intelligence techniques, an international team of researchers has theorized how the extreme conditions in stars produce carbon-12, which they describe as “a critical gateway to the birth of life.”

The researchers’ fundamental question: “How does the cosmos produce carbon-12?” said James Vary, a professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State University and a longtime member of the research collaboration.

“It turns out it’s not easy to produce carbon-12,” Vary said.

It takes the extreme heat and pressures inside stars or in stell...