Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer for Science News. Previously she was a news editor at New Scientist, where she ran the physical sciences section of the magazine for three years. Before that, she spent three years at New Scientist as a reporter, covering space, physics and astronomy. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from UC Santa Cruz. Lisa was a finalist for the AGU David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, and received the Institute of Physics/Science and Technology Facilities Council physics writing award and the AAS Solar Physics Division Popular Writing Award. She interned at Science News in 2009-2010.
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All Stories by Lisa Grossman
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Astronomy
200 years ago, the Milky Way’s central black hole briefly awoke
The black hole is thought to be mostly quiet and dim. Now, glowing cosmic clouds have revealed the behemoth’s last flare.
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Astronomy
A star cluster in the Milky Way appears to be as old as the universe
Globular cluster M92 is about 13.8 billion years old, a new calculation suggests. Getting the age right could help resolve a bigger cosmic conundrum.
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Astronomy
In a first, JWST detected starlight from distant galaxies with quasars
Until JWST’s sharp infrared eyes came along, it wasn’t possible to see the galaxies hosting extremely bright supermassive black holes called quasars.
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Astronomy
A supermassive black hole orbiting a bigger one revealed itself with a flash
A supermassive black hole binary system has puzzled astronomers for decades. Now they’ve finally seen direct signals from the smaller of the two.
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Planetary Science
JWST captured Enceladus’ plume spraying water nearly 10,000 kilometers into space
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals the rate at which Saturn’s moon Enceladus spews water and where that water ends up.
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Astronomy
A simulation of a dying star shows how it could create gravitational waves
Massive jets and an expanding cocoon of debris from a collapsing star could be a source of never-before-seen ripples in spacetime.
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Planetary Science
A quake on Mars showed its crust is thicker than Earth’s
Seismic data from NASA’s Insight lander reveal the crust is roughly 50 kilometers thick, with the northern crust being thinner than the south’s.
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Astronomy
The first radiation belt outside the solar system has been spotted
Encircling a Jupiter-sized body about 18 light-years from Earth, the radiation belt is 10 million times as bright as the ones around Jupiter.
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Physics
Black holes resolve paradoxes by destroying quantum states
A classic quantum experiment done near a black hole would create a paradox, physicists report. But not if the black hole collapses quantum states.
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Astronomy
Cosmic antimatter hints at origins of huge bubbles in our galaxy’s center
An excess of positrons in Earth’s vicinity supports the idea that the Fermi bubbles were burped by the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole long ago.
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Astronomy
A stream of cold gas is unexpectedly feeding the far-off Anthill Galaxy
The finding suggests that early galaxies might have gained more of their bulk from streams of cold gas instead of in violent galaxy collisions.
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Astronomy
A neutron star collision may have emitted a fast radio burst
Astronomers spotted both a fast radio burst and gravitational waves from a cosmic smashup in the same part of the sky and at about the same time.