Recent reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope finding signs of life on a distant planet understandably sparked excitement. A new study challenges this finding, but also outlines how the telescope might verify the presence ...
Astrobiology
May 2, 2024
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76
Think of all the information we get based on how an object interacts with wavelengths of light—aka color. Color can tell us if food is safe to eat or if a piece of metal is hot. Color is an important diagnostic tool in ...
Optics & Photonics
May 2, 2024
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49
One might think that snow, of all things, is easy to describe: it is cold, white and covers the landscape like a blanket. What else is there to say about it?
Earth Sciences
Apr 25, 2024
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0
To study living organisms at ever smaller length scales, scientists must devise new techniques to overcome the so-called diffraction limit. This is the intrinsic limitation on a microscope's ability to focus on objects smaller ...
Biotechnology
Apr 22, 2024
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8
If you explore the night sky it won't be long before you realize there is a lot of dust and gas up there. The interstellar dust between the stars accounts for 1% of the mass of the interstellar medium but reflects 30% of ...
Astronomy
Mar 1, 2024
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49
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is teeming with color and activity. It features a relatively close star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959, which lies within the Milky Way about 5,900 light-years ...
Astronomy
Feb 17, 2024
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85
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope view shows the globular cluster NGC 2298, a sparkling collection of thousands of stars held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are typically home to older ...
Astronomy
Feb 14, 2024
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90
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy—examining the wavelengths ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 18, 2023
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13
Using 3D printing and porous silicon, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed compact, visible wavelength achromats that are essential for miniaturized and lightweight optics. These high-performance ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 9, 2023
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536
Astronomers have known for decades that the universe is expanding. When they use telescopes to observe faraway galaxies, they see that these galaxies are moving away from Earth.
Astronomy
Nov 15, 2023
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