In the Cartwheel Galaxy, Webb captures Stellar Gymnastics
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new information about star formation and the galaxy’s central black…
Astronomy
This Glorious Simulation Is the Most Realistic Model of Sagittarius A Yet
Every galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its heart. The most precise representation of Sagittarius A*, the monstrous object at the heart of our…
Why is Mercury’s Iron Core so Massive?
A new study questions why Mercury has a large core in comparison to its mantle (the layer between a planet’s core and crust). For decades,…
Where did Jupiter and Saturn come from?
Scientists have long been perplexed about how our solar system’s planets formed because it is not a process that can be observed. Researchers have generally…
Discovery of Magnetic Reconnection could help predict Space Weather
Magnetic reconnection is a physical process that occurs in highly conducting plasmas that reorganizes the magnetic topology and converts magnetic energy to kinetic energy, thermal…
Mysterious Solar Storm revealed by Ancient Ice
Solar activity is increasing as we enter solar cycle 25, increasing the likelihood of solar storms-large releases of energy in the form of solar flares…
First Evidence of X-rays from Uranus
Only one spacecraft has been to Uranus. NASA’s Voyager 2 gathered much of its critical information about the mysterious planet, including its rings and moons,…
Using Star-shattering Explosions to Measure the Universe
What is the size of the universe? It’s one of astronomy’s fundamental questions. We can estimate a diameter by looking for the farthest observable point…
The Rocky Shells of Water-ice planets are dissolved by Deep Oceans
Experiments in the laboratory provide insights into the processes that occur under extreme pressure and temperature conditions on distant worlds. What happens deep beneath the…
The Mystery of Pluto’s Surface Ice-shape Formation has been solved
The New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto in 2015, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had…
Cyclones on Jupiter are explained by Ocean Physics
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and its weather is extremely volatile. Beautiful Jupiter images show striped, stormy clouds covering the entire…
Earth and Venus Grew up to be Boisterous Planets
Using machine learning and simulations of massive impacts, researchers discovered that the planets in the inner solar system were most likely formed by repeated hit-and-run…
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