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A 60-Year Old Mystery About the Moon's Magnetosphere Is Finally Solved

One particularly well known fact about the Moon is that it doesn’t have much of a magnetosphere to speak of. There’s no blanket to protect it from the solar wind ravaging its surface, blowing away its atmosphere and charging the notoriously dangerous dust particles that make up its regolith. However, scientists have also known for around 60 years that some parts of the moon do experience sudden spikes in a magnetic field - some of which are up to 10 times stronger than the background magnetization. Since their discovery, these “lunar external magnetic enhancements” (LEMEs) have puzzled researchers - what was causing them, and why did they reach so high above the lunar surface that spacecraft could see them? A new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Shu-Hua Lai and her colleagues at the National Central University in Taiwan explains for the first time what is likely causing these LEMEs - a novel type of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. from Universe Today https:...
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The Sun's Great Escape

Our Sun didn't always call this quiet corner of the Milky Way home. New research using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite has uncovered evidence that the Sun fled the chaotic heart of our Galaxy four to six billion years ago and it didn't go alone. A vast migration of stars almost identical to our own swept outward together, a great exodus that may have made life on Earth possible. The story of how astronomers pieced this together is as remarkable as the discovery itself. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/7aWHEuM via IFTTT

Is the Universe Defective? Part 2: The Persistence of Memory

But here’s the thing about these defects. They can’t just go away. They’re stuck. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/u86BzIn via IFTTT

The Seven Hour Explosion Nobody Could Explain

On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers the explanation that a star torn apart by an intermediate mass black hole may well be the culprit! On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society off...

NASA's DART Mission Also Changed Didymos' Orbit Around Sun

The spacecraft changed the binary system’s orbit, confirming that a kinetic impactor can be an effective planetary defense technique for deflecting a near-Earth object. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Lec3A9q via IFTTT

Is the Universe Defective? Part 1: The Good Old Days

Every time you flip a light switch, or check the time, or feel the sodium ions wiggling in your brain — don’t think about that one too much—you’re assuming something fundamental. You’re assuming the universe is a finished product. A completed work. You think the Big Bang happened, the forces of nature settled into their seats, and we’ve been cruising on a smooth, predictable ride ever since. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/vD9kXSa via IFTTT

The Universe's Most Powerful Particle Accelerators Were Here All Along

Every planet with a magnetic field has a radiation belt, a region of space where charged particles get trapped and flung around at extraordinary speeds. Earth has two of them, and they've been puzzling scientists for decades. Now, a physicist at the University of Helsinki has built a model that defines a universal upper limit to just how energetic those belts can ever get. The answer applies not just to Earth, but to every planet in the Solar System, every gas giant, and even the strange objects sitting halfway between planets and stars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/soKSMcw via IFTTT