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Astronomy news
Earth's magnetosphere might not protect us from superstorms after all
Science seems like a straightforward endeavor. You come up with a hypothesis, collect data to prove or disprove it, and analyze that data to see whether the hypothesis is right. But anyone who actually does science will tell ...
Astronomy
Aug 22, 2026
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Stellar eruptions in the laboratory: First experimental evidence for their suppression in strong magnetic fields
An international team of astrophysicists and plasma physicists has provided the first experimental evidence that strong magnetic fields surrounding active stars can completely suppress coronal mass ejections. This offers ...
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2026
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Stellar spin may explain why repeated black hole flares grow dimmer
At the center of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, with a mass millions to billions of times that of our sun and some of the most extreme gravity in the universe.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2026
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Interstellar travel IV: Solar, magnetic, & directed-energy sails
Welcome back to our series on interstellar travel! In our first installment, we examined attempts to realize nuclear propulsion and how the technology could be used to reach the nearest star. In our second, we examined how ...
Astronomy
Aug 20, 2026
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ALMA uncovers sulfur for the first time around a rare class of supergiant star
Astronomers have discovered a chemically rich collection of sulfur-bearing molecules surrounding the rare massive star HD 87643. The observations include the first detection of sulfur monoxide and sulfur dioxide around a ...
Racing to build a radio telescope on the moon
Remember the "Wow!" signal? That high-energy radio signature occurred in 1977, when Earth was much "quieter" in the radio band. If it happened today, it probably wouldn't even move the needle on the background noise of human ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2026
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Dark Stars may have left gravitational-wave echoes across the universe
A mysterious background of extremely low-frequency gravitational waves detected by networks of pulsars may carry information about events that began more than 13 billion years ago—including the formation of some of the first ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2026
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Fastest known Milky Way star offers new test of supermassive black hole's spin
Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, orbiting the black hole at its center. The star, named S301, was detected with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2026
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Astronomers catch hot birth of galaxy cluster more than 11 billion light-years away
Astronomers have detected an enormous cloud of gas tens of millions of degrees hot surrounding one of the most extreme structures known in the early universe. The study offers one of the clearest views yet of a galaxy cluster ...
Dying radio galaxies suggest a shorter, more dynamic afterlife for black hole jets
Astronomers have uncovered a previously underexplored population of faint, rapidly fading remnant radio galaxies, offering new insights into what happens after supermassive black holes stop powering their enormous radio jets.
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2026
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'Hidden stars' suggest that distant galaxies are much more massive than they appear
Astronomers have discovered that the most massive galaxies in the early universe contain far more small stars than expected. As a result, these early galaxies were likely much more massive than initial measurements suggested. ...
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2026
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Webb captures clearest image yet of the Lion Nebula
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged NGC 2392 (also known as the Lion Nebula), named for its distinctive appearance, which resembles a lion's face seen head-on.
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2026
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Nuking an asteroid on short notice could save us
Readers of a certain age will remember a golden era of asteroid films, capped by two with very different endings. "Deep Impact" drove home the devastating consequences of letting a large piece of rock hit our planet, whereas ...
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2026
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Hubble solves merger mystery from Milky Way's early years
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way ...
Astronomy
Aug 17, 2026
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Stellar explosions come into focus with new nuclear reaction measurements
In two separate papers published in Physical Review Letters, researchers investigated the nuclear reactions that take place inside supernovae and X-ray bursts—two of the universe's most powerful explosions. Together, the ...
Astronomy
Aug 17, 2026
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Mega-Earth GJ 523b is 23 times as massive as our planet—but only 2.5 times as wide
It's nearly 170 million years old. It's more than 2.5 times the size of Earth. And it's the first exoplanet discovered and cataloged by researchers with the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR).
Astronomy
Aug 17, 2026
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First pair of feeding supermassive black holes found in a Green Pea galaxy
Astronomers have discovered the first confirmed dual active galactic nucleus in a Green Pea galaxy, revealing two supermassive black holes growing at the same time inside a compact, intensely star-forming system. X-ray observations ...
Dark matter may be gravitationally lensing a likely source of cosmic neutrinos
Astronomers have discovered that the jet of a distant blazar has been gravitationally lensed by an unseen source of dark matter. Led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, the team's ...
The brightened night sky nobody actually wanted
A new paper has put hard numbers on a plan that's been rattling around the astronomy community for a while now—a California company called Reflect Orbital wants to put giant mirrors in orbit and beam sunlight down to Earth ...
Astronomy
Aug 17, 2026
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Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form
You may have heard the phrase "we are made of star-stuff." This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of the first stars. But how ...
Astronomy
Aug 16, 2026
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Laser-cut aluminum foil could replace costly terahertz polarizers
