Our universe is expanding, but our two main ways to measure how fast this expansion is happening have resulted in different answers. For the past decade, astrophysicists have been gradually dividing into two camps: one that ...
Astronomy
Jun 30, 2021
70
4230
Scientists have discovered one of the smallest black holes on record—and the closest one to Earth found to date.
Astronomy
Apr 21, 2021
25
14244
Have you noticed that Orion the Hunter—one of the most iconic and familiar of the wintertime constellations—is looking a little… different as of late? The culprit is its upper shoulder star Alpha Orionis, aka Betelgeuse, ...
Astronomy
Dec 27, 2019
14
1770
Proud parents chart the growth of their children, but astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have taken on a bigger task: charting the growth of our own Milky Way.
Astronomy
Jan 10, 2016
3
2406
A rare nuclear reaction that occurs in red giants has been observed for the first time at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. This result was achieved by the LUNA experiment, the world's only accelerator facility ...
General Physics
Dec 17, 2015
0
131
Betelgeuse, the bright star in the constellation of Orion, has been fascinating astronomers in the recent months because of its unusually strong decline in brightness. Scientists have been discussing a number of scenarios ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2020
3
450
Astronomers may have discovered a new kind of survival story: a star that had a brush with a giant black hole and lived to tell the tale through exclamations of X-rays.
Astronomy
Apr 24, 2020
3
5111
ESA's Integral space observatory has witnessed a rare event: the moment that winds emitted by a swollen red giant star revived its slow-spinning companion, the core of a dead star, bringing it back to life in a flash of X-rays.
Astronomy
Mar 5, 2018
2
315
In the past three decades, almost 4,000 planet-like objects have been discovered orbiting isolated stars outside the solar system (exoplanets). Beginning in 2011, it was possible to use NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to observe ...
Astronomy
Apr 9, 2019
1
1186
When our sun reaches the end of its life, it will expand to 100 times its current size, enveloping the Earth. Many planets in other solar systems face a similar doom as their host stars grow old. But not all hope is lost, ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 28, 2023
48
596
