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What Happens When Light Goes Boom? Part 2: The Crowd, the Molasses, and the Speed of Light (Sort Of)

Before Brad Bradington can sprint down the red carpet, we need to understand the crowd. Specifically, we need to understand why a crowd of atoms and molecules slows down light — and why that creates a loophole that changes everything. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Lgs62ZG via IFTTT
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Early Galaxies Were Surrounded by Huge Clouds of Hydrogen, and Astronomers Found a Whole Bunch!

Astronomers using data from the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) have discovered tens of thousands of gigantic hydrogen gas halos, called “Lyman-alpha nebulae,” surrounding galaxies 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/beO9mpz via IFTTT
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What Happens When Light Goes Boom? Part 1: The Scientist Who Stared at a Glow

In 1934, a Soviet physicist named Pavel Cherenkov shone gamma rays into a bottle of water and noticed a faint blue glow. So had others before him. They all shrugged and moved on. Cherenkov didn't. What he found — by refusing to dismiss something he didn't understand — turned into one of the most useful phenomena in modern physics. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8mvxQVX via IFTTT
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Where's the Dividing Line Between A Star and A Planet? Ask the JWST.

It's obvious that Earth is a planet. It's obvious that the Sun is a star. But for substellar objects like brown dwarfs, it's not so clear. Researchers are using the JWST to find a stronger dividing line between star and planet that depends on how they formed. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/zWaP4wL via IFTTT
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JWST Sees Smoking Gun for Black Hole Mergers in the Virgo Cluster

A pair of dwarf galaxies in the giant Virgo Cluster show what can happen when these stellar cities interact. Scientists at the University of Michigan focused the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) onto the galaxies NGC 4486B and UCD736 and found each of them sporting "overmassive" black holes at or near their hearts. Those supermassive black holes comprise a large fraction of each galaxy's mass. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/iwOzUsM via IFTTT
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The World Welcomes the Crew of Artemis II Home!

After achieving their record-breaking 10-day flight around the Moon, the crew of the Artemis II mission returned home on Friday, April 10th, 2026. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/z5AmjgN via IFTTT
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The Incredible Shrinking Neutrino.

They are the most abundant particles in the universe, yet we barely know they exist. Neutrinos stream through everything, through walls, through planets and even through you…. in their billions every second, leaving no trace. We've known for decades that they have mass, but pinning down exactly how much has defeated physicists for years. Now, the most sensitive experiment ever built has pushed our knowledge to a new frontier, and what it found raises a profound question about why these ghostly particles are so extraordinarily light. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/bvLVwyr via IFTTT
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