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Astronomers Spot an Extremely Rare Galaxy Mega-Merger

Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times the math just doesn’t sit well with our brains that evolved to capture and process data about the world around us rather than groking the complexities of stellar dynamics and galaxy mergers. But every once in a while astronomers find something that, if we can wrap our heads around the numbers, gives a sense of just how big the universe is. That is precisely what a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv from a group of astronomers led by Z.L. Wen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, hopes to do when it describes a merger of not one, not two, but six supermassive galaxies and the active dynamics they’re subject to. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/neubH9h via IFTTT
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This Giant Planet Survived the Death of its Star

Some planets can survive when their main sequence stars "die" and evolve into red giants. Astronomers have found several of them. One of them in particular is orbiting extremely close to its star, providing an opportunity to study it with the JWST to determine how it got there. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/r25hn8b via IFTTT
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An Extended Barrage of Asteroid Impacts Made Earth Too Hot to Form Continents

New research shows that repeated impacts on Earth during the Hadean eon prevented thick and stable crustal material from forming. The heat from these impacts penetrated deep into the planet, and along with radiogenic heating, delayed the formation of a solid crust. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Q0I9rvB via IFTTT
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A Supermassive Black Hole Gets Blamed for Quenching Star Formation

Some of the most massive galaxies in the Universe appear to be missing a lot of stars. That seems unusual, since birthing stars is one of a galaxy's main tasks as it grows. According to Xin "Cindy" Xiang of the University of Michigan, something is suppressing or quenching the births of stars in these and she thinks that black holes might be the culprit. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/NaVIjcP via IFTTT
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Habitable Worlds Targets in New Star Activity Catalog

Searching for habitable worlds beyond our solar system consists of more than just having it orbit within its star’s habitable zone, which is the region where temperatures could be just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. On Earth, where water comprises approximately 75 percent of the planet’s surface, life is absurdly abundant. But what about the exoplanet’s star, specifically its activity and rotation? How could this influence how exoplanets are identified for current and future missions? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LzTryAl via IFTTT
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Nautilus Array to Track Missing Exoplanet Atmospheres

Exoplanet atmospheres have become prima targets for astrobiologists in the search for life beyond Earth. This is because exoplanet surfaces can’t be directly imaged yet, so astronomers must get creative with how to search for signs of life, also called biosignatures. Presently, powerful ground- and space-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are improving in their ability to observe and analyze exoplanet atmospheres. But did these atmospheres form and evolve, and what could this mean for the search for life beyond Earth? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/n0CBvkV via IFTTT
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It's Finally Begun! The Vera Rubin Observatory Creating What Will Be the Greatest Movie Ever Made

The Vera Rubin Observatory's long-awaited Legacy Survey of Space and Time has begun. This decade-long movie of the cosmos will capture anything that changes brightness, position, or both in the southern night sky. It will study grand subjects like dark energy and dark matter, and important things closer to home like near-Earth objects. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/S58QXka via IFTTT
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