Category Astronomy/Space

Soil on the moon contains active compounds that can convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and fuels, scientists in China report May 5 in the journal Joule. They are now exploring whether lunar resources can be used to facilitate human exploration on the moon or beyond.

Nanjing University material scientists Yingfang Yao and Zhigang Zou hope to design a system that takes advantage of lunar soil and solar radiation, the two most abundant resources on the moon...

The system is orbited by third stellar companion and may have originated near the center of the Milky Way. The flashing of a nearby star has drawn MIT astronomers to a new and mysterious system 3,000 light years from Earth. The stellar oddity appears to be a new “black widow binary” — a rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar, that is circling and slowly consuming a smaller companion star, as its arachnid namesake does to its mate.

Astronomers know of about two dozen black widow binaries in the Milk...

Astronomers discovered eight new echoing black hole binaries in our galaxy, enabling them to piece together a general picture of how a black hole evolves during an outburst. The findings will help scientists trace a black hole’s evolution as it feeds on stellar material.

Scattered across our Milky Way galaxy are tens of millions of black holes — immensely strong gravitational wells of spacetime, from which infalling matter, and even light, can never escape. Black holes are dark by definition, except on the rare occasions when they feed...

Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) have found an alternative explanation for a mysterious gamma-ray signal coming from the centre of the galaxy, which was long claimed as a signature of dark matter.

Gamma-rays are the form of electromagnetic radiation with the shortest wavelength and highest energy.

Co-author of the study Associate Professor Roland Crocker said this particular gamma-ray signal — known as the Galactic Centre Excess — may actually come from a specific type of rapidly-rotating neutron star, the super-dense stellar remnants of some stars much more massive than our sun.

The Galactic Centre Excess is an unexpected concentration of gamma-rays emerging from the centre of our galaxy that has long puzzled astronomers.

“Our work does not throw ...