Category Astronomy/Space

An artist’s conception of a radio jet spewing out fast-moving material from the newly discovered quasar. Artwork by Robin Dienel, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science.

Quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early universe. Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados led a team that found a quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early universe, due to it spewing out a jet of extremely fast-moving material.

Bañados’ discovery was followed up by Emmanuel Momjian of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which allowed the team to see with unprecedented detail the jet shooting out of a quasar that formed within the universe’s first billion years of existence...

Botswana meteorite. Credit: Peter Jenniskens

On Saturday, June 23, 2018, a team of experts from Botswana, South Africa, Finland and the United States of America recovered a fresh meteorite in Botswana´s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). The meteorite is one of the fragments of asteroid 2018 LA which collided with Earth on June 2, 2018 and turned into a meteor fireball that detonated over Botswana a few seconds after entering the atmosphere. The incident was witnessed by a number of spectators in Botswana and neighbouring countries and was captured on numerous security cameras.

Asteroid 2018 LA was detected in space 8 hours before hitting Earth...

New research by a trans-Atlantic team of scientists suggests that bacteria could survive in briny chemicals that exist on Mars, Enceladus, Europa, Pluto and possibly elsewhere. The discovery of plumes and subsurface oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa, organic materials on Mars, and the likelihood of hydrothermal vents in the oceans of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, inches humanity closer to discovering life elsewhere. Such life would have to withstand extreme environments, and previous studies indicate that various types of bacteria can.

Liquid oceans on some bodies far from the Sun have lower freezing points because of chemicals and salts that amount to antifreeze, so microbial life would have to survive both the temperatures and the elements...

This is an artist impression of the triple star system PSR J0337+1715, which is located about 4,200 light-years from Earth. This system provides a natural laboratory to test fundamental theories of gravity. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello

Einstein’s understanding of gravity, as outlined in his general theory of relativity, predicts that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass or composition. This theory has passed test after test here on Earth, but does it still hold true for some of the most massive and dense objects in the known universe, an aspect of nature known as the Strong Equivalence Principle? An international team of astronomers has given this lingering question its most stringent test ever...