Category Astronomy/Space

Scientists have finally confirmed a powerful coronal mass ejection from another star, using LOFAR radio data paired with XMM-Newton’s Xray insights. The eruption blasted into space at extraordinary speeds, strong enough to strip atmospheres from close-orbiting worlds. This suggests planets around active red dwarfs may be far less hospitable than hoped.

Astronomers working with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory and the LOFAR radio telescope have obtained clear evidence of a violent burst of material hurled into space by a distant star. The outflow was strong enough that any nearby planet in its path would likely have its atmosphere stripped away.

This burst was identified as a coronal mass ejection (CME), a typ...

A nearby super-Earth may be one of the best chances yet to search for life beyond our solar system. A newly detected super-Earth just 20 light-years away is giving scientists one of the most promising chances yet to search for life beyond our solar system. The discovery of the exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star was made possible by advanced spectrographs designed at Penn State and by decades of observations from telescopes around the world.

A possible “supe...

Cloud cover is bad for picnics and for viewing stars through a telescope. But an exoplanet with dense or even total cloud cover could help astronomers search for signs of life beyond our planet.

Cornell researchers have created the first reflectance spectra—a color-coded key—of diverse, colorful microorganisms that live in the clouds floating above Earth’s surface. Astronomers don’t know if these bacteria exist elsewhere in the universe and in enough abundance to be detected by telescopes; on Earth they are not. But now, astronomers can use the color key in the search for life outside our world—making an exoplanet’s clouds, in addition to its surface and air, a promising realm for finding signs of life.

“There is a vibrant community of microorganisms in our atmosphere that...

The new big thing in magnetics is altermagnetism, a form of magnetism that promises to power the next-generation of electronics. Unlike ferromagnets, like a fridge magnet, where all internal atomic spins align to create a strong magnetic field, altermagnets have no net magnetic pull (strongly magnetic on the inside, but appears non-magnetic on the outside). This is similar to antiferromagnets where internal spins cancel each other out...