Space

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Astronomy

    Hubble’s new instant classic

    NASA has released a stunning image of a nearby star-forming region to celebrate the telescope's 20th birthday.

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  2. Space

    Solar-staring spacecraft captures novel views of sun’s violence

    NASA has released the first images recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the first craft to examine the sun’s entire disk at high resolution and over a multitude of wavelengths.

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  3. Space

    Not your grandfather’s space program

    President Obama offers a new plan that would send humans to orbit Mars during the mid-2030s.

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  4. Space

    Famous Martian meteorite younger than thought

    The famous fragment of Mars, once proposed to hold signs of extraterrestrial life, is still pretty old. But the rock appears to have formed about 400 million years later than earlier analyses indicated.

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  5. Space

    Stormy weather on Saturn

    Astronomers have for the first time glimpsed lightning storms on Saturn.

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  6. Space

    Backward planets may have flipped into place

    Reversed orbits among ‘hot Jupiters’ decreases chance of Earthlike neighbors.

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  7. Astronomy

    Can you hear me now?

    Astronomers reconsider how extraterrestrials could make contact.

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  8. Space

    Newfound neighbor to solar system is a cool slacker

    Researchers have found the closest brown dwarf to Earth and the coolest yet seen, raising the possibility that the nearest starlike body to the solar system may be a brown dwarf rather than a star.

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  9. Space

    Cosmic magnetic field strength measured

    Hints of weak magnetism between galaxies narrows options for how the early universe got its fields.

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  10. Planetary Science

    Warmth in the dark age

    Lower reflectivity kept Earth from freezing under a fainter young sun.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Signs of giant comet impacts found in cores

    An uptick in ammonium may be evidence of a 50-billion-ton strike at the end of the ice age.

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  12. Space

    Cosmic telephoto lens shows intense, early star formation

    A recently discovered galaxy gives a detailed view of stellar birth in the young universe.

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