Category Astronomy/Space

The gravitational lens from LRG 3-757 galaxy taken with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

An international team of astronomers have made the most precise test of gravity outside our own solar system. By combining data taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, they show that gravity in this galaxy behaves as predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, confirming the theory’s validity on galactic scales.

In 1915 Albert Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity (GR) to explain how gravity works. Since then GR has passed a series of high precision tests within the solar system, but there have been no precise tests of GR on large astronomical scales...

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope orbits the Sun in concert with the Earth, slowly drifting away from Earth. Credit: NASA Kepler Mission/Dana Berry

Search considered successful ‘dress rehearsal’ for exoplanet hunter TESS. Scientists at MIT and elsewhere have analyzed data from K2, the follow-up mission to NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, and have discovered a trove of possible exoplanets amid some 50,000 stars. Scientists report the discovery of nearly 80 new planetary candidates, including a particular standout: a likely planet that orbits the star HD 73344, which would be the brightest planet host ever discovered by the K2 mission.

The planet appears to orbit HD 73344 every 15 days, and based on the amount of light that it blocks each time it passes in front of its star, scientists estimate ...

A simulation of the cosmic web, or diffuse tendrils of gas connecting galaxies across the universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Hallman (CU Boulder); Nicastro et al. Observations of the missing baryons in the warm–hot intergalactic medium. Nature, 2018; 558 (7710): 406 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0204-1

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have helped to find the last reservoir of ordinary matter hiding in the universe. Ordinary matter, or “baryons,” make up all physical objects in existence, from stars to the cores of black holes. But until now, astrophysicists had only been able to locate about two-thirds of the matter that theorists predict was created by the Big Bang.

In the new research, an international team pinned down the missing third, finding it in the space between galaxies...



An isolated hill in the Medusae Fossae Formation. The effect of wind erosion on this hill is evident by its streamlined shape. Credit: High Resolution Stereo Camera/European Space Agency.

Explosive volcanic eruptions that shot jets of hot ash, rock and gas skyward are the likely source of a mysterious Martian rock formation, a new study finds. The new finding could add to scientists’ understanding of Mars’s interior and its past potential for habitability, according to the study’s authors.

The Medusae Fossae Formation is a massive, unusual deposit of soft rock near Mars’s equator, with undulating hills and abrupt mesas. Scientists first observed the Medusae Fossae with NASA’s Mariner spacecraft in the 1960s but were perplexed as to how it formed...