Category Astronomy/Space

Astronomers have found the home address for the universe’s ‘missing’ matter

Universe’s Missing Matter Found by FRBs
A landmark study led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has pinpointed the Universe’s “missing” matter using Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)— brief, bright radio signals from distant galaxies— as a guide. This artist’s conception depicts a bright pulse of radio waves (the FRB) on its journey through the fog between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. Long wavelengths, shown in red, are slowed down compared to shorter, bluer wavelengths, allowing astronomers to “weigh” the otherwise invisible ordinary matter.  
Credit: Melissa Weiss/CfA

A new landmark study has pinpointed the location of the universe’s “missing” matter, and detected the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) on record...

Read More

Planet-forming disks lose gas faster than dust, new survey finds

Revealing the lives of planet-forming disks
Artist’s concept of a planet-forming disk, like the thirty studied for the ALMA AGE-PRO survey. The lifetime of the gas within the disk determines the timescale for planetary growth. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/S.Dagnello

An international team of astronomers including researchers at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory has unveiled groundbreaking findings about the disks of gas and dust surrounding nearby young stars, using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA.

The findings, published in 12 papers in a focus issue of the Astrophysical Journal, are part of an ALMA large program called the ALMA Survey of Gas Evolution of PROtoplanetary Disks, or AGE-PRO...

Read More

Astronomers just found a giant planet that shouldn’t exist

artist's illustration of the newly discovered exoplanet and star
Star TOI-6894 is just like many in our galaxy, a small red dwarf, and only ~20% of the mass of our Sun. Like many small stars, it is not expected to provide suitable conditions for the formation and hosting of a large planet.

Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn’t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a fifth the mass of our Sun. This challenges long-standing ideas about how big planets form, especially around small stars. Current theories can’t fully explain how such a planet could have taken shape. Even more fascinating, this cold planet may have a rare kind of atmosphere rich in methane or even ammonia something we’ve never seen in an exoplanet before.

Star TOI-689...

Read More

From the andes to the beginning of time: Telescopes detect 13-billion-year-old signal

Small telescopes in Chile are first on Earth to cut through the cosmic noise. For the first time, scientists have used Earth-based telescopes to look back over 13 billion years to see how the first stars in the universe affect light emitted from the Big Bang.

Using telescopes high in the Andes mountains of northern Chile, astrophysicists have measured this polarized microwave light to create a clearer picture of one of the least understood epochs in the history of the universe, the Cosmic Dawn.

“People thought this couldn’t be done from the ground. Astronomy is a technology-limited field, and microwave signals from the Cosmic Dawn are famously difficult to measure,” said Tobias Marriage, project leader and a Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy...

Read More