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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

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

World's Most Powerful Collider Shuts Down for a Smashing Upgrade

Europe's CERN physics research center bids 'Farewell' to the Large Hadron Collider, but it's actually more like 'See You Later, Accelerator!' The new, improved High-Luminosity LHC is due to make its debut in 2030. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/TABCNXV via IFTTT

ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Has Yet to Detect Methane On Mars

After more than eight years of searching and with instruments designed to detect it, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Trace Gas Orbiter has yet to find methane in the red planet’s atmosphere. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/MBhTubO via IFTTT

The "Shadow Blaster" Galaxy's Role in High-energy Cosmic Neutrinos

On September 22, 2021, the IceCube Neutrino Detector in Antarctica caught a blast of neutrinos as it passed through the solar system. These neutrinos were remarkably high-energy and came from a galaxy 11 billion light-years away. That's a period of the Universe's history known as "Cosmic Noon". It's when star formation in galaxies was at its most active and that provided an interesting clue to their origin. The source of the neutrinos was nicknamed "Shadow Blaster" because the event that created the neutrinos was hidden by a dense cloud of dust, which made it invisible to optical observations. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/JyNlRdW via IFTTT

An Alternative to Black Holes: Gravastars with Big Bangs Inside

Stellar mass black holes may not be black holes at all. Instead, they could be a type of extremely compact star called a gravastar, which mimics a black hole. This is according to theoretical phsyicists who have discovered a solution to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity that doesn't automatically result in a black hole when a star collapses at the end of its life. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/aQCdprk via IFTTT