Category Astronomy/Space

A unique new instrument, coupled with a powerful telescope and a little help from nature, has given researchers the ability to peer into galactic nurseries at the heart of the young universe.

After the big bang some 13.8 billion years ago, the early universe was filled with enormous clouds of neutral diffuse gas, known as Damped Lyman-α systems, or DLAs. These DLAs served as galactic nurseries, as the gasses within slowly condensed to fuel the formation of stars and galaxies. They can still be observed today, but it isn’t easy.

“DLAs are a key to understanding how galaxie...

Traces of Long-Ago Climate Change Could Foretell Earth’s Own Climate Troubles. A seasonal imbalance in the amount of solar energy absorbed and released by the planet Mars is a likely cause of the dust storms that have long intrigued observers, a team of researchers reports.

Mars’ extreme imbalance in energy budget (a term referring to the measurement of solar energy a planet takes in from the sun then releases as heat)...

New chemistry ‘forensics’ indicate that the stone named Hypatia from the Egyptian desert could be the first tangible evidence found on Earth of a supernova typeIa explosion. These rare supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the universe.

This is the conclusion from a new study published in the journal Icarus, by Jan Kramers, Georgy Belyanin and Hartmut Winkler of the University of Johannesburg, and others.

Since 2013, Belyanin and Kramers have discovered a series of highly unusual chemistry clues in a small fragment of the Hypatia Stone.

In the new research, they eliminate ‘cosmic suspects’ for the origin of the stone in a painstaking process...

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)...