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Most Universe Today readers are familiar with nebulae. They’re gaseous structures lit up with radiation from nearby stars, and they’re some of nature’s most beautiful forms. With the help of amateur astronomers who laid the groundwork, an international team of astronomers has discovered a new type of nebulae around binary stars that they’re calling galactic … Read more
Before Earth and the other planets in our Solar System existed, the Sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study. Those rings of dust may have prevented Earth from growing into a “super-Earth” – a type of planet that is about twice the size of Earth and … Read more
Average atmospheric concentrations of methane reached 1900 parts per billion last September, the highest in nearly four decades of records Environment 7 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan Wetlands such as the Pantanal in Brazil are a major source of methane emissions CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images Rising levels of the powerful greenhouse gas methane … Read more
Average atmospheric concentrations of methane reached 1900 parts per billion last September, the highest in nearly four decades of records Environment 7 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan Wetlands such as the Pantanal in Brazil are a major source of methane emissions CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images Rising levels of the powerful greenhouse gas methane … Read more
Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them. About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier … Read more
Dominik Hülse, an Earth system modeler based at University of California Riverside, worked on a November 2021 study that explored how ancient microbes may have prolonged the Permian extinction by producing a toxic gas. Here, Hülse poses with a finger to his nose to highlight the toxic “rotten egg” scent of hydrogen sulfide. (Image credit: … Read more
The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It’s also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes have shown us. Astronomers rarely use their telescopes to simply take pictures. The pictures in astrophysics are usually generated by a process of scientific inference and … Read more
The second hottest planet ever found is being pulled into its star faster than any planet we have seen before Space 30 November 2021 By Jonathan O’Callaghan Artist’s impression of a hot planet transiting in front of its parent star ESA/ATG medialab, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO A gas giant exoplanet has been found that orbits … Read more
We thought young gas giant planets would be large and low-density, but the gas giants around a star that is just 20 million years old don’t fit this model Space 2 December 2021 By Chen Ly An artist’s impression of a Jupiter-like exoplanet Alexandr Yurtchenko/Alamy Two Jupiter-like planets that orbit a young star are much … Read more
A major part of tackling the climate crisis is in understanding what’s happening in Earth’s atmosphere in terms of heating, cooling, and the factors playing into that. Now scientists have discovered a massive new source of nitrous oxide (N2O), one of the greenhouse gases causing our planet to warm up. This nitrous oxide source … Read more