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    Category Astronomy/Space

    NASA’s TESS mission finds its Smallest Planet yet

    July 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The three planets discovered in the L98-59 system by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) are compared to Mars and Earth in order of increasing size in this illustration.
    Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the tiniest discovered by TESS to date.

    Two other worlds orbit the same star. While all three planets’ sizes are known, further study with other telescopes will be needed to determine if they have atmospheres and, if so, which gases are present...

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    ALMA pinpoints the Formation site of Planet around Nearest Young Star

    June 30, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    ALMA image of the protoplanetary disk around the young star TW Hydrae. A small clump of dust was found in the southwestern (bottom right) part of the otherwise highly symmetric disk. Original size (344KB)

    Researchers using ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) found a small dust concentration in the disk around TW Hydrae, the nearest young star. It is highly possible that a planet is growing or about to be formed in this concentration. This is the first time that the exact place where cold materials are forming the seed of a planet has been pinpointed in the disk around a young star.

    The young star TW Hydrae, located194 light-years away in the constellation Hydra, is the closest star around which planets may be forming...

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    Cosmic Cat and Mouse: Astronomers Capture and Tag a Fleeting Radio Burst

    June 29, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Host galaxy of FRB 180924.(A)
    VLT/FORS2 gʹ-band image showing the host galaxy of FRB 180924, labeled A. The burst location uncertainty is shown by the black circle. Two background faint background galaxies, labeled B and C, can be seen to the right and upper left are also visible (see supplementary text). (B) Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) spectrum (17) of the FRB 180924 host, showing the detection of forbidden-line ionized oxygen emission [O II], and Calcium absorption which set the FRB redshift z = 0.3214. fλ is relative flux. The oxygen emission is attributed to gas ionized by a hard ionizing spectrum. The absorption lines are stellar. (C) Section of Gemini Multi Object Spectrograph (GMOS) spectrum...
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    The first AI Universe Sim is Fast and Accurate and its creators don’t know how it works

    June 27, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A comparison of the accuracy of two models of the universe. The new model (left), dubbed D3M, is both faster and more accurate than an existing method (right) called second-order perturbation theory, or 2LPT. The colors represent the average displacement error in millions of light-years for each point in the grid relative to a high-accuracy (though much slower) model. S. He et al./Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2019

    For the first time, astrophysicists have used artificial intelligence techniques to generate complex 3D simulations of the universe. The results are so fast, accurate and robust that even the creators aren’t sure how it all works...

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