Space News & Blog Articles

How did life begin on Earth? Based on studies of fossilized bacteria, scientists theorize that life first emerged on Earth over 4 billion years ago as simple, single-celled organisms. Over time, these organisms evolved to incorporate photosynthesis and sexual reproduction, eventually giving rise to more complex multicellular organisms, plants, and, eventually, mammals. Despite this scientific consensus, the question of how inorganic chemicals came together to form organic molecules that gradually evolved into self-replicating systems remains unclear.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are irregular dwarf galaxies and satellites of the Milky Way. The LMC is about 163,000 light-years away and the SMC is about 206,000 light-years away, and their close proximity makes them excellent laboratories for the study of galaxies in general. The Clouds are the focus of a new research group being formed at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP).

How to see the best meteor shower of the year.

Imagine trying to spot a single firefly orbiting a lighthouse from hundreds of kilometres away. That's essentially the challenge astronomers face when attempting to study Proxima b, an Earth sized exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. The star shines 10 million times brighter than its planet, drowning out any hope of detecting the faint light reflected from that distant world. Now scientists at the University of Geneva have successfully tested key components of an instrument designed specifically to solve this seemingly impossible problem.

Looking at an X-ray image of a galaxy cluster is like watching fireworks frozen in time. You see swirls and arcs, bubbles and filaments, structures that hint at past violence but don't explain what actually happened. Astronomers have puzzled over these features for decades, trying to determine which came from shock waves, which from cooling gas, and which from bubbles blown by black holes. Now a team led by Hannah McCall at the University of Chicago has developed a technique that answers these questions directly, creating images that classify the structures by their physics rather than their appearance.

There are already tens of thousands of pieces of large debris in orbit, some of which pose a threat to functional satellites. Various agencies and organizations have been developing novel solutions to this problem, before it turns into full-blown Kessler Syndrome. But many of them are reliant on understanding what is going on with the debris before attempting to deal with it. Gaining that understanding is hard, and failure to do so can cause satellites attempting to remove the debris to contribute to the problem rather than alleviating it. To help solve that conundrum, a new paper from researchers at GMV, a major player in the orbital tracking market in Europe, showcases a new algorithm that can use ground-based telescopes to try figure out how the debris is moving before a deorbiter gets anywhere near it.

(This is Part 4 of a series on primordial black holes. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!)