All Stories by Ken Croswell
- Astronomy
Distant rocky planets may have exotic chemical makeups that don’t resemble Earth’s
Elements sprinkled on white dwarf stars suggest that the mantles of faraway rocky worlds differ greatly from their counterparts in our solar system.
- Astronomy
A Jupiter-like planet orbiting a white dwarf hints at our solar system’s future
A new planet is the first ever discovered that is orbiting a white dwarf and resembles Jupiter in both its mass and its distance from its star.
- Astronomy
The fastest-spinning white dwarf ever seen rotates once every 25 seconds
A white dwarf star that spins every 25 seconds owes its record-breaking rotation rate to a companion star dumping gas onto it.
- Astronomy
A supernova’s delayed reappearance could pin down how fast the universe expands
“SN Requiem” should reappear in the 2030s and help determine the universe’s expansion rate.
- Astronomy
Here’s how cool a star can be and still achieve lasting success
The dividing line between successful stars and failed ones is a surface temperature of about 1,200° to 1,400° Celsius, a new study reports.
- Astronomy
A shadowy birthplace may explain Jupiter’s strange chemistry
Dust that blocked sunlight caused the giant planet to form in a deep freeze, a new study suggests.
- Space
Most planets on tilted orbits pass over the poles of their suns
Nearly all of the worlds on misaligned trajectories in other solar systems orbit at nearly 90 degrees to their stars’ equators.
- Astronomy
Saturn has a fuzzy core, spread over more than half the planet’s diameter
Analysis of a wave in one of Saturn’s rings has revealed that the planet’s core is diffuse and bloated with lots of hydrogen and helium.
- Astronomy
A record-breaking, oxygen-starved galaxy may be full of gigantic stars’ shrapnel
The newly discovered galaxy may have once been home to stars more than 300 times as massive as the sun — a peek at conditions in the early universe.
- Astronomy
The ‘USS Jellyfish’ emits strange radio waves from a distant galaxy cluster
The unusual pattern of radio waves dubbed the USS Jellyfish tells a story of intergalactic gas meeting black hole by-products.
- Astronomy
A gargantuan supernova remnant looks 40 times as big as the full moon
New observations confirm that a cloud in the constellation Antlia really is a supernova remnant and the largest ever seen from Earth.
- Astronomy
The number of Milky Way nova explosions per year has been pinned down
Knowing how frequently these stellar eruptions occur will help determine their contribution to the galaxy’s chemical makeup.
