INFORMATION

Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy is an old star that has lost one of its comets. By some quirk of orbital mechanics, that frozen nucleus of ice and dust got kicked out of its home system and into a long and winding trajectory across space. It entered our Solar System sometime in the distant past and traveled somewhat near to Earth on October 30, 2025, on its way through the system. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/gH95oms via IFTTT

There are parts of the universe that are extremely hard to see, even for our most advanced telescopes. Gas and dust don’t emit any light, and are only visible by the light that they happen to block from stars and galaxies. Magnetic fields are even harder since regular light typically passes right through them. However, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv, by Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney and their co-authors, we’re currently commissioning a potentially game-changing new tool that could use a particularly violent astronomical phenomenon to provide new insight into these hard to see places. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/rjQ3Ox6 via IFTTT

Astrobiology has long been split into two camps: a search for "biosignatures" and a search for "intelligence." These look for very different things, but they also leave a huge gap in between. It took 3.5 billion years for us to go from the first microbe to a civilization that sent radio waves out into the cosmos. Detecting life in between those stages is a relatively untouched aspect of astrobiology—which is also the focal point of a new paper, "Signs and Signatures of Intelligence", available in pre-print on arXiv, by astrobiologist Julia DeMarines. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/pFP0X6R via IFTTT

Buried a kilometre underground in Japan, one of the world's most sensitive detectors may have caught its first faint trace of a sound scientists have been straining to hear for decades, the combined whisper of every supernova that has ever exploded across the universe. It is not yet a confirmed discovery, but if it holds up, it could rewrite how we trace the life and death of stars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Msb7A1I via IFTTT

Aside from an unknown quantity of water in the Moon’s permanently shaded polar craters, the lion’s share of what water the Moon may have is likely chemically bound in its deep interior. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/YpOr3FV via IFTTT

On Friday, July 10th, China achieved a major milestone as its Long March-10B completed a its maiden test flight, which included the retrieval of its first stage booster. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/uf5dZ9s via IFTTT