There are ways to make gravity work in 2(space)+1(time) dimensional universe. A physicist showed how a scalar gravitational field would work in two spatial dimensions, enabling stable orbits and a logical cosmology. Have you ever wondered how life...
Researchers used two most advanced ground-based telescopes to measure the temperature of the rings of Uranus. Uranus ring system has a temperature of -196°C (77 Kelvin), just about the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. Typically, Saturn is the...
Acids behave quite differently in dense interstellar clouds. The study addresses a basic question of chemistry: whether acid can dissociate in extreme temperatures. The answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no. Things behave differently in...
Recent observations reveal that Earth’s Moon may be shrinking as its interior cool, and it’s causing fairly strong moonquakes. These observations are obtained from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Imagery and 5 decade-old data. Launched in...
NASA’s NICER recorded an X-ray map of the entire night sky, using data from the first 22 months of its operation. The information on the map can be used to develop a GPS-like navigation system for the solar system. One of the NASA’s...
Scientists analyze how plasma becomes unstable in the solar atmosphere. They used space-based radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras to observe solar flares associated with the ejection of plasmas. One of the most energetic phenomena in the...
A catastrophic collision of two neutron stars sent a small fraction of its precious materials to Earth. The event occurred 4.6 billion years ago, near the Earth’s solar system. Nearly 0.3% of the Earth’s heaviest elements came from this...
Cosmochemists discover water in fragments of an asteroid named Itokawa. Impacts by similar asteroids may have delivered almost half of the Earth’s ocean water. More than 332,519,000 cubic miles of water is present on Earth and 96.5% of this...
Researchers shed light on a mysterious black hole located 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Typically, jets are ejected straight out from the poles of black holes, perpendicular to the material disc. This one is a unique case because the black...
Neptune is perhaps one of the most fascinating planets in the solar system, maybe because we know very little about this planet. Due to its immense distance from the Sun, it has not been visited more than once. The earliest known observation of...
Researchers created a mosaic of the distant universe, using 16 years of Hubble’s observations. It contains 265,000 galaxies that stretch back to 13.3 billion years. The universe is nearly 13.8 billion years old, which means the light we see...
Researchers detected the first kind of molecule formed in the Universe, using NASA’s airborne observatory SOFIA. They found helium hydride in a very young and dense planetary nebula located 3,000 light-years from Earth. The early stages of...