An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way

Our galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets, gravitationally unbound to any star. An international team of scientists, led by Polish astronomers, has announced the discovery of the smallest Earth-sized free-floating planet ...

Global Gaia campaign reveals secrets of stellar pair

A 500-day global observation campaign spearheaded more than three years ago by ESA's galaxy-mapping powerhouse Gaia has provided unprecedented insights into the binary system of stars that caused an unusual brightening of ...

Quantum gravity's tangled time

The theories of quantum mechanics and gravity are notorious for being incompatible, despite the efforts of scores of physicists over the past fifty years. However, recently an international team of researchers led by physicists ...

X-rays spot spinning black holes across cosmic sea

Like whirlpools in the ocean, spinning black holes in space create a swirling torrent around them. However, black holes do not create eddies of wind or water. Rather, they generate disks of gas and dust heated to hundreds ...

Improving measurements by reducing quantum noise

If you want to measure something very precisely, such as slight variations of a length, then you are very likely to use light waves. However, many effects, such as variations of gravity, or surface forces, can only be measured ...

Possibly the most distant object known

The most distant objects in the universe are also the oldest -- or at least that is how they appear to us, because their light has had to travel for billions of years to get here. They are also extraordinarily faint since ...

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