New data suggests there may be two undiscovered planets lurking on the outer fringes of our solar system. Astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid have detected curious abnormalities in the orbits of a belt of icy rocks at the edge of the solar system, far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the eighth and final known planet. (In 2006, Pluto […]
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From 2012 to 2015, Russia researched ways of deflecting Earth-bound asteroids using nuclear weapons and came up with a best-case scenario. The Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building, an arm of Russia’s state-run Roscosmos space agency, worked on the asteroid problem with other countries (including the United States) in a program called NEOShield, which was largely funded by the […]
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The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geo-scientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminum, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing […]
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Thanks to the Hubble space telescope, it is nearly impossible to unsee the huge glimmering region on the surface of Uranus. The cause of this blatant smear on Uranus is caused by powerful bursts of solar wind. Streams of charged particles caught in powerful magnetic fields forced into the upper atmosphere of Uranus, where their interactions with gas particles, such […]
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For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a black hole ejecting a hot “flare” of matter after devouring a star the size of our sun. The discovery was made thanks to the quick action of of scientists from John Hopkins University, who worked in conjunction with a team from the University of Oxford. Hubble fellow Sjoert van […]
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An international team of astronomers has detected a colossal black hole that is 12 billion times more massive than the sun—so big that it is challenging accepted cosmological thinking. Scientists discovered the enormous celestial body, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, at the center of a brilliantly glowing quasar, a cloud of gas that gets superheated and gives off […]
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Scientists have discovered that the moon Europa the sixth closest moon to Jupiter has been spewing plumes of water more than 20 times taller than Mt. Everest. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken images of this activity in recent years. If this activity can be confirmed this might confirm the existence of life in the underground oceans on the moon […]
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Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas some 12 billion light-years away that appear to preserve the primordial conditions of the universe in the minutes after the big bang. The clouds contain just hydrogen and its isotope deuterium, making them “the first examples to fit precisely” into what scientists think the early universe was like, University of California astronomer Jason […]
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Stephen Hawking: ‘There are no black holes‘ – Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has declared that black holes do not exist – at least not in the way we normally think about them. In a new paper, he tackles a scientific paradox regarding a black hole’s event horizon. This is the threshold past which nothing can escape it’s gravitational pull. Under […]
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People always wonder how the moon was made. The birth of the planets 4.5 billion years ago was extremely violent. They grew to full size by absorbing rival planet embryos in a series of titanic collisions—one of which probably gave Earth its moon (below). The moon’s large size, low density, and other features suggest that it emerged from an explosion […]
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