Category Astronomy/Space

Thirty years after the discovery of the first exoplanet, astronomers have detected more than 7,000 of them in our galaxy. But there are still billions more to be discovered. At the same time, exoplanetologists have begun to take an interest in their characteristics, with the aim of finding life elsewhere in the universe. This is the background to the discovery of super-Earth HD 20794 d by an international team including the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the NCCR PlanetS.

The new planet lies in an eccentric orbit, so that it oscillates in and out of its star’s habitable zone. This discovery is the fruit of 20 years of observations using the best telescopes in the world. The results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

‘”Are we alone i...

Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves—so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs)—emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

Leung, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes eventually to understand the origins of these mysterious bursts and use them as probes to trace the large-scale structure of the universe, a key to its origin and evolution...

The low levels of gravity (microgravity) in space cause significant changes in astronauts’ eyes and vision after six to 12 months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), according to a study published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

Université de Montréal ophthalmologist Santiago Costantino found that at least 70% of astronauts on the ISS have been affected by spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, or SANS.

In the biophotonics research unit he runs at the UdeM-affiliated Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, Costantino assembled a group of researchers to identify the biomechanical changes responsible for this disorder.

They analyzed data collected by the Canadian team at NASA on 13 astronauts who spent between 157 and 186 days on the I...

Scientists have detected cosmic waves that sound like birds chirping in an unexpected place.

These bursts of plasma, called chorus waves, ripple at the same frequency as human hearing. When converted to audio signals, their sharp notes mimic high-pitched bird calls.

Researchers have captured such sounds in space before, but now they have sensed the chirping waves from much farther away: over 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth, where they’ve never been measured before.

“That opens up a lot of new questions about the physics that could be possible in this area,” said Allison Jaynes, a space physicist at the Unive...