Space
A newfound exoplanet may be the exposed core of a gas giant
A planet about 734 light-years away could be a former gas giant that lost its atmosphere or a failed giant that never finished growing.
Astronomy
More Stories in Astronomy
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SpaceLIGO and Virgo detected a collision between a black hole and a mystery object
The first evidence of an object more massive than any neutron star and more lightweight than any black hole has astronomers wondering what it is.
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SpaceBlack hole plasma jets are shaped like bell-bottoms
Jets of high-energy particles change from slightly curved sides to flared cones as they shoot away from galaxies, just like flare-legged pants.
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SpaceThe Milky Way’s giant gas bubbles were seen in visible light for the first time
Variation in the light’s wavelengths could help scientists map the velocity of the gas that makes up the towering structures known as Fermi bubbles.
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SpaceA Milky Way flash implicates magnetars as a source of fast radio bursts
A bright radio burst seen from a magnetar in the Milky Way suggests that similar objects produce the mysterious fast radio bursts observed in other galaxies.
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SpaceHalf the universe’s ordinary matter was missing — and may have been found
Astronomers have used fast radio bursts as cosmic weigh stations to tease out where the universe’s “missing matter” resides.
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PhysicsA star shredded by a black hole may have spit out an extremely energetic neutrino
A star’s fatal encounter with a black hole might have produced a neutrino with oomph.
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AstronomyThe oldest disk galaxy yet found formed more than 12 billion years ago
A spinning disk galaxy similar to the Milky Way formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than astronomers thought was possible.
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SpaceHow tiny ‘dead’ galaxies get their groove back and make stars again
Computer simulations explain how puny galaxies can sustain star formation: Gas falls into them and billions of years later begins to create new stars.
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SpaceThe closest black hole to Earth may have been spotted 1,000 light-years away
What appears to be the closest black hole to the solar system shares orbits with two massive stars, a new study finds.