constellation Aquarius tagged posts

Astrophysicists studying a popular exoplanet in its star’s habitable zone have found that electric currents in the planet’s upper atmosphere could create sufficient heating to expand the atmosphere enough that it leaves the planet, likely leaving the planet uninhabitable.

Until now, planetary scientists have thought that a habitable planet needs a strong magnetic field surrounding it to act as a shield, directing ionized particles, X-rays and ultraviolet radiation in the stellar wind around and away from its atmosphere.
That’s what happens on Earth, preventing dangerous radiation from reaching life on the surface, and what does not occur on Mars, which now lacks a global magnetic field, meaning any initial inhabitants of the red planet will probably need to live in underground caves...

Example of Monstrous Galaxies. On the left is the image taken at sub-millimeter wavelengths with ASTE. It looks like there is one bright monstrous galaxy. In the center is an image taken at the same sub-millimeter wavelengths, but this time using the new radio telescope facility ALMA. With 60 times better resolution and 10 times better sensitivity, we can see that actually there are 3 monstrous galaxies close together. On the right is the same region photographed in visible light by the Subaru Telescope. We can see that not all of the monstrous galaxies show up in this picture, or at the least that some of them must be very faint. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NAOJ, H. Umehata (The University of Tokyo)

Astronomers discovered a nest of monstrous baby galaxies 11...