Oumuamua: It’s a Comet, It’s an Asteroid, No, wait, It’s a Comet
An odd rocky cigar-shaped object called Oumuamua made news late last year when it was determined to be of interstellar origin. It was touted as the solar system’s first visitor from another star system. Some scientists first pegged Oumuamua as a comet soon after its discovery. A few months later studies indicated that it was […]
Galaxy Megamergers 1.4 – 1.5 Billion Years after the Big Bang
Two teams of astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), in Chile, to observe dense concentrations of so-called “starburst” galaxies. With these galaxies packing together so closely, the scientific teams realized that they were getting ready to violently collide and merge with each other, which would eventually […]
Einstein Proven Correct; Gravitational Waves Detected; Super Hot Planet
Einstein Theory Confirmed Again In his 1915 Theory of General Relativity, physicist Albert Einstein proposed that mass can bend space time. And he predicted that when a distant star’s light passed by a large object en route to the observer, the object’s gravity can bend and brighten the starlight like a magnifying lens. This effect, called […]
Insight Into Planetary Evolution – Dark Matter Rare in Old Galaxies
Scientists Gain New Insight into Planetary Evolution Scientists recently gained new insight into the evolution of planet formation by creating and studying a model of a fairly young solar system 300 light years from Earth. The nearly 13 million year-old planetary system circles a star known as HD 106906. The system features a surrounding planet […]
July 2016 Science Images
Ancient Oxygen Found; Biggest Tatooine-Like Planet Spotted; 2nd Gravitational Wave Detected
Astronomers Find Really Really Old Oxygen in Distant Galaxy Astronomers say they have spotted some of the oldest oxygen in the universe. Using the European Southern Observatory’s ALMA or Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of radio telescopes, the scientists say they’ve picked up a strong signal that indicates oxygen in a galaxy about 13.1 billion light-years […]
Trio of Planets Found Circling “Ultra-cool” Star Might Support Life
An international team of astronomers has discovered three exoplanets that could possibly host alien life. The trio of planets are circling an “ultra-cool” brown dwarf that’s located about 40 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Aquarius. “Ultra-cool” dwarf stars are those that that are much cooler and redder than our Sun, and only […]
Astronomers Image Birth of a Planetary Nebula in Sharp Detail
For the first time ever, a team of astronomers have captured stunning pictures of one of the universe’s most impressive sights: the birth of a bipolar ‘planetary nebula.’ The scientists gathered the images of nebula surrounding L2 Puppis using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope or VLT, in the Atacama Desert of northern […]
Science Images of the Month – January, 2015
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Early ancestors of cows and pigs had legs with five toes, just like humans. So what changed? Scientists at the University of Basel in Switzerland believe they have the answer. They’ve identified a gene regulatory switch that played an important role in the evolutionary changes in the limbs of members of a group of large […]