As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

astronomy

SPACE: Are There Glowing Aliens?

by
glowing alien - deposit photos

Alien life-forms could glow in spectacular reds, blues and greens to shield themselves from stellar bursts of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. And that glowing light could be how we find them, according to a new study. Most of the potentially habitable exoplanets we know of orbit red dwarfs — the most common type of star in our galaxy and the smallest, coolest stars in the universe. And thus red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri or TRAPPIST-1, are at the forefront of the search for life. But if extraterrestrial life does exist on these planets, they have a major problem. Red dwarfs … Read more

SPACE: Could This Exoplanet Support Life?

by
exoplanet - Credit: Jack Madden/Cornell University

Astronomers have found a nearby “super-Earth” exoplanet that may be capable of supporting life as we know it. An international group of astronomers discovered the planet using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) earlier this year in the constellation Hydra, about 31 light-years from Earth, according to a statement by NASA. (One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion kilometers.) The exoplanet, named GJ 357 d, is believed to be around twice the size of Earth and harbor six times Earth’s mass. Located in the outer edge of its host star’s … Read more

SCIENCE: Are Aliens Flashing Laser Beams At Us?

by

Are aliens using super powerful flashlights to get our attention? Astronomers think there’s a chance they are. Since the invention of the radio, humans have been silently listening to the stars, wondering if we are alone in the universe. But if intelligent alien life does exist, the extraterrestrials could be using other forms of technology to communicate. Astronomers are beginning to not only listen to the cosmos but also gaze toward it for other signs of alien tech: laser beams. Breakthrough Listen, the most extensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program in history, announced that its team will begin looking … Read more

SPACE: Why A Star is Winking at Us

by
star - pixabay

Once or twice a day, a strange object in the Milky Way blinks at us. Now, astronomers think they know why. The object is called NGTS-7, and to most telescopes it looks like a single star. Researchers at the University of Warwick in England started watching because it seemed to be emitting flares, but on closer examination they noticed that its starlight dims briefly every 16.2 hours. When the astronomers zoomed in, they realized there are actually two similarly sized stars in the system, and that only one of them is dimming briefly in that way — suggesting that there’s … Read more

SPACE: The Moon is Flashing Us

by
moon - pixabay

There’s something flashing us on the moon, and we don’t know what it is. But that might be about to change. We have known about the mysterious flashes since at least the late 1960s, when the astronomers Barbara Middlehurst and Patrick Moore reviewed the scientific literature and found nearly 400 reports of strange events on the moon. Small regions of the lunar surface would get suddenly brighter or darker, without obvious explanation. The scientists’ survey of the flashes and dimming, which they called “lunar transient phenomena,” was published in the journal Science on Jan. 27, 1967. (Later, astronomers flipped the … Read more

SPACE: Astronomers Identify “Chimneys” in the Galactic Center

by
Milky Way Chimneys

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is a bit like the hearth at the center of a cozy pub. It’s a bright, warm gathering place around which all the quotidian life of the Milky Way swirls — and, according to a new study published today (Mar. 20) in the journal Nature, it might even have a chimney or two. In a recent study of the X-ray emissions seething out of the Milky Way’s galactic center, researchers noticed two unusual structures that have never been described before. Twin columns of superhot, X-ray-emitting plasma appeared to be billowing … Read more

SPACE: Astronomers Find Clue to Missing Matter

by

Astronomers think they’ve found a new clue in their continuing quest to solve one of the most substantial mysteries of the cosmos: where about a third of the universe’s matter is hiding. That missing matter isn’t dark matter (a whole different head-scratcher), it’s perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill matter that scientists simply can’t find. And that makes it a massive cosmic annoyance for astronomers. But a team of researchers may have figured out a clue that will help them track down this missing matter, thanks to the NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. “If we find this missing mass, we can solve one of … Read more

SPACE: Scientists Spot a Medium-Sized Black Hole Wandering the Galaxy

by
black hole - pixabay

Scientists think that they’ve spotted a rare, Jupiter-size black hole casually strolling through the Milky Way galaxy. Of course, scientists can’t see any black holes directly — but new research tracking a celestial cloud structure saw strange behavior that may have been caused by just such an invisible object. That data came courtesy of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a set of 66 telescopes scattered across the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. “When I checked the ALMA data for the first time, I was really excited because the observed gas showed obvious orbital motions, which strongly suggest an invisible … Read more

SPACE: Star Births Its Own Twin – Live Science

by
a star is born

A close-up look at the birth of a star has revealed a surprise: Not one new stellar body, but two. In 2017, scientists using a new array of radio telescopes in the Chilean desert were observing a massive young star named MM 1a in an active star-forming region of the galaxy more than 10,000 light-years away. As they analyzed the data, they realized that MM 1a was accompanied by a second, fainter object, which they dubbed MM 1b. This, they found, was the first star’s smaller sibling, formed from the spray of dust and gases it holds in its gravitational … Read more

SPACE: We’re Not Looking Hard Enough for Aliens. Really.

by
radio telescope - pixabay

Where are all the aliens? For decades, humans have searched for artificial signals, yet the skies above remain silent. But new research suggests that researchers’ investigations have so far not been particularly exhaustive; if the total possible search space were equivalent to the all the water in Earth’s oceans, we have examined only a hot tub’s worth of volume. In many movies, the galaxy teems with intelligent life-forms who zip around on spaceships and produce other obvious signs of their existence. In reality, programs like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have encountered no noticeable transmissions from another species. That … Read more