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Categories: Geoscience: Geology, Space: Astrophysics

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The majority of stars in our galaxy are home to planets. The most abundant are the sub-Neptunes, planets between the size of Earth and Neptune. Calculating their density poses a problem for scientists: depending on the method used to measure their mass, two populations are highlighted, the dense and the less dense. Is this due to an observational bias or the physical existence of two distinct populations of sub-Neptunes? Recent work argues for the latter.

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Why did multicellularity arise? Solving that mystery may help pinpoint life on other planets and explain the vast diversity and complexity seen on Earth today, from sea sponges to redwoods to human society. A new article shows how specific physical conditions -- especially ocean viscosity and resource deprivation -- during the global glaciation period known as Snowball Earth could have driven eukaryotes to turn multicellular.

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Dark energy -- a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate -- was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle causing the expansion. Physicists combined an optical lattice with an atom interferometer to hold atoms in place for up to 70 seconds -- a record for an atom interferometer -- allowing them to more precisely test for deviations from the accepted theory of gravity that could be caused by dark energy particles such as chameleons or symmetrons. Though they detected no anomalies, they're improving the experiment to perform more sensitive tests of gravity, including whether gravity is quantized.

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Made famous in 1995 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula have captured imaginations worldwide with their arresting, ethereal beauty. Now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of these towering celestial structures using data from NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This is the most comprehensive and detailed multiwavelength movie yet of these star-birthing clouds.

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Scientists predict from geochemical data that Iceland is entering a new volcanic era that will last for decades, possibly centuries. Under an hour's drive from the country's capital city, the ongoing eruptions pose considerable risks for economic disruption, and they leave evacuated communities uncertain of a possible return.

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Solar physicists have revealed the interior structure of the sun's supergranules, a flow structure that transports heat from the sun's hidden interior to its surface. The researchers' analysis of the supergranules presents a challenge to the current understanding of solar convection.

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For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to directly image has been captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In this stunning image of the Serpens Nebula, the discovery lies in the northern area of this young, nearby star-forming region.

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Astronomers uncovered that a well-known X-ray binary, whose exact nature has been a mystery to scientists until now, is actually a hidden ultraluminous X-ray source.

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The history of how stars and galaxies came to be and evolved into the present day remains among the most challenging astrophysical questions to solve yet, but new research brings us closer to understanding it. New insights about young galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization have been revealed. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD) have confirmed that the light of the galaxy was emitted 460 million years after the big bang. What makes this galaxy unique is that it is magnified through an effect called gravitational lensing, which has not been observed in other galaxies formed during that age.

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Iron meteorites are remnants of the metallic cores of the earliest asteroids in our solar system. Iron meteorites contain refractory metals, such as iridium and platinum, that formed near the sun but were transported to the outer solar system. New research shows that for this to have happened, the protoplanetary disk of our solar system had to have been doughnut-shaped because the refractory metals could not have crossed the large gaps in a target-shaped disk of concentric rings. The paper suggests that the refractory metals moved outward as the protoplanetary disk rapidly expanded, and were trapped in the outer solar system by Jupiter.

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Supermassive black holes pose unanswered questions for astronomers around the world, not least 'How do they grow so big?' Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a powerful rotating, magnetic wind that they believe is helping a galaxy's central supermassive black hole to grow. The swirling wind, revealed with the help of the ALMA telescope in nearby galaxy ESO320-G030, suggests that similar processes are involved both in black hole growth and the birth of stars.

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New simulations show that hot neutrinos created at the interface of merging binary neutron stars are briefy trapped and remain out of equilibrium with the cold cores of the stars for 2 to 3 milliseconds.

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In late 2019 the previously unremarkable galaxy SDSS1335+0728 suddenly started shining brighter than ever before. To understand why, astronomers have used data from several space and ground-based observatories, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), to track how the galaxy's brightness has varied. In a study out today, they conclude that they are witnessing changes never seen before in a galaxy -- likely the result of the sudden awakening of the massive black hole at its core.

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In a breakthrough discovery that challenges the conventional understanding of cosmology, scientists have unearthed new evidence that could reshape our perception of the cosmos. New research shows that rotation curves of galaxies stay flat indefinitely far out, corroborating predictions of modified gravity theory as an alternative to dark matter.

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Using a specially designed 3D printed vacuum system, scientists have developed a way to 'trap' dark matter with the aim of detecting domain walls, this will be a significant step forwards in unravelling some of the mysteries of the universe.

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Astronomers have discovered a double-record-breaking pair of quasars. Not only are they the most distant pair of merging quasars ever found, but also the only pair confirmed in the bygone era of the Universe's earliest formation.

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A team of scientists used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

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Scientists have clocked the speed of Cepheid stars -- 'standard candles' that help us measure the size of the universe -- with unprecedented precision, offering exciting new insights about them.

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Researchers have experimentally generated high-density relativistic electron-positron pair-plasma beams by producing two to three orders of magnitude more pairs than previously reported.

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The new study provides unambiguous evidence that the inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010, moving slower than the Earth's surface.