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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Warped planet nurseries rewrite the rules of how worlds are born

    September 6, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Visualisation of the warped disc around the young star MWC 758, with warping exaggerated by a factor four to make it visible. Both panels show properties of the disc inferred from CO emission. On the left-hand side, we see deviations in the line-of-sight velocity from the expected rotation if the disc were flat. The variations in velocity can be used to infer the warp structure. On the right-hand side we see variations in the gas temperature, from which we can see evidence of shadowing in areas of the disc. Credit: A. Winter

    New ALMA observations reveal that the discs where planets form are often slightly warped, challenging long-held assumptions and offering clues about the subtle misalignments seen in our own Solar System.

    Astronomers using ALMA have discovered that planet-forming...

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    Solar flares may be 6.5 times hotter than previously thought

    September 4, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    New research from the University of St Andrews has proposed that particles in solar flares are 6.5 times hotter than previously thought. The research provides an unexpected solution to a 50-year-old mystery about our nearest star.

    Solar flares are sudden and huge releases of energy in the sun’s outer atmosphere that heat parts of it to greater than 10 million degrees. These dramatic events greatly increase the solar X-rays and radiation reaching Earth and are hazardous to spacecraft and astronauts, as well as affecting our planet’s upper atmosphere.

    The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, looks at evidence of how flares heat solar plasma to greater than 10 million degrees. This solar plasma is made up of ions and electrons...

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    NASA finds Titan’s alien lakes may be creating primitive cells

    September 4, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A stitched image of a mountainous formation on Titan
    Huygens captured this aerial view of Titan from an altitude of 33,000 feet.
    ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

    Saturn’s moon Titan may be more alive with possibilities than we thought. New NASA research suggests that in Titan’s freezing methane and ethane lakes, simple molecules could naturally arrange themselves into vesicles—tiny bubble-like structures that mimic the first steps toward life. These compartments, born from splashing droplets and complex chemistry in Titan’s atmosphere, could act like primitive cell walls.

    NASA research has shown that cell-like compartments called vesicles could form naturally in the lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan.

    Titan is the only world apart from Earth that is known to have liquid on its surface...

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    Habitable planet potential increases in the outer galaxy

    September 2, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Longstanding model of the Galactic habitable Zone, which is estimated to exist between 7-9 kiloparsecs from the center of the galaxy. However, recent research calls this into question. (Credit: NASA/Caltech)
    Longstanding model of the Galactic habitable Zone, which is estimated to exist between 7-9 kiloparsecs from the center of the galaxy. However, recent research calls this into question. (Credit: NASA/Caltech)

    What can the galactic habitable zone (GHZ), galactic regions where complex life is hypothesized to be able to evolve, teach scientists about finding the correct stars that could have habitable planets?

    This is what a recent study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated a connection between the migration of stars, commonly called stellar migration, and what this could mean for finding habitable planets within our galaxy...

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