Space
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SpaceLIGO and Virgo probably spotted the first black hole swallowing up a neutron star
In a first, astronomers may just have detected gravitational waves from a black hole merging with a neutron star.
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SpaceA planetary body may have smashed into Jupiter, creating its weird core
A planetary body smashing into Jupiter may have jostled the gas giant’s insides during its formative years, creating the strange interior seen today.
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SpaceAstronomers just quintupled the number of known repeating fast radio bursts
A Canadian telescope spotted eight more repeating fast radio bursts. What causes these cryptic flashes of radio waves from deep space remains unclear.
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SpaceA proposed space telescope would use Earth’s atmosphere as a lens
One astronomer has a bold solution to the high cost of building big telescopes.
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PhysicsExploding stars scattered traces of iron over Antarctic snow
Researchers melted half a ton of snow to find just 10 atoms of a radioactive variety of iron.
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AstronomyGiant, active galaxies from the early universe may have finally been found
Overlooked galaxies from when the universe was younger than 2 billion years old could be the ancestors of other ancient and modern monster galaxies.
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AstronomyStars may keep spinning fast, long into old age
NASA’s TESS telescope has spotted an old star that spins too fast for theory to explain, suggesting that stars may have a magnetic midlife crisis.
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AstronomyA 3-D map of stars reveals the Milky Way’s warped shape
Our galaxy flaunts its curves in a chart of thousands of stars called Cepheids.
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AstronomyTESS has found the first-ever ‘ultrahot Neptune’
NASA’s TESS telescope has spotted a world that could be a bridge between other types of exoplanets: hot Jupiters and scorched Earths.
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CosmologyDebate over the universe’s expansion rate may unravel physics. Is it a crisis?
Measurements of the Hubble constant don’t line up. Scientists debate what that means.
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AstronomyIn a first, physicists re-created the sun’s spiraling solar wind in a lab
Some of the sun’s fundamental physics have been re-created with plasma inside a vacuum chamber
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AstronomyNASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope celebrates 20 years in space
The U.S. space agency has released new images for the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s 20th birthday.