By Paul Scott Anderson, on June 29th, 2017
Artist’s conception of the two supermassive black holes in orbit around each other. Image Credit: Joshua Valenzuela/UNM
Black holes are some of the most bizarre and mysterious phenomena in the Universe – they have captivated the imaginations of scientists and the public alike, and have been featured in many science fiction movies and […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 26th, 2016
Artist’s conception of a Breakthrough Starshot spacecraft, a tiny circuit board-like “wafer” attached to a lightsail. Image Credit: Breakthrough Initiatives
Now that we know the closest star system to us has at least one planet, an Earth-mass and potentially habitable one at that, there is one big question a lot of people are […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 24th, 2016
Artist’s conception of what Proxima b might look like. It is just slightly more massive than Earth and orbits in its star’s habitable zone. Temperatures might allow liquid water to exist on its surface. A potentially habitable world, it is also now the closest known exoplanet. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Astronomers today announced […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 17th, 2016
The newly discovered object called Niku is a real oddity (artist’s conception). It is also part of a group of many such objects far past Neptune in the outer Solar System. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger
For the most part, the Solar System seems to be a rather well-ordered place; the planets, dwarf […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on July 12th, 2016
Artist’s conception of the star system HD 131399, with the planet HD 131399Ab in the foreground. Image Credit:ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser
Over the past couple decades, astronomers have been discovering a seemingly endless variety of exoplanets orbiting other stars. Some are rather similar to planets in our own Solar System, while others are more […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on April 28th, 2016
Mars’ atmosphere is thin, dry, and cold now, but it used to be thicker and contained a lot more oxygen. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Mars’ atmosphere is thin and cold, composed primarily of carbon dioxide along with other trace gases and some water vapor. Evidence has continued to mount, however, that the rarified […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 6th, 2016
Methane “snow” on mountain peaks in the Cthulhu region of Pluto. The enhanced color version of the inset image is on the left and the false color version is on the right. The image covers an area 280 miles (450 kilometers) long by 140 miles (225 kilometers) wide. Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
As the […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on October 19th, 2015
Are the unusual objects around KIC 8462852 a giant swarm of comets or something else? Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
There has been a lot of discussion during the past several days regarding a discovery by the Kepler Space Telescope, which, according to some, might be the first evidence for advanced extraterrestrial intelligence, […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on October 9th, 2015
Hubble and VLT images of the “ripples” within the debris disk surrounding the young star AU Microscopii. Image Credit: ESO/NASA/ESA
Planetary debris disks, or protoplanetary disks, are some of the most interesting phenomena in astronomy – these giant clouds of dust and gas surrounding young stars are the birthplaces of new planets. Now, […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on September 2nd, 2015
Mars used to have a thicker atmosphere and water on its surface, but what happened to that atmosphere has been a mystery. New research may finally help answer that question. Image Credit: M. Kornmesser/ESO
The question of how Mars changed from a once wet world to the much colder and drier one we […]
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