Electrons: Mass, discovery & history

Electrons are negatively charged subatomic particles found in the outermost regions of atoms. They are considered to be both partially particle-like and partially wave-like, depending on the scenario, according to West Texas A&M University. Electrons are essentially the reason atoms can interact with other atoms.  The nucleus of an atom consists of protons and neutrons. … Read more

Officials Confirm Several Geomagnetic Storms Are Hitting Earth This Week

The Sun is continuing its rowdy behavior, with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January. That means the inevitable has happened: some of those eruptions have blasted in the general direction of Earth, which means we’re in for some solar storms.   The Space Weather Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic … Read more

‘Heartbeat’ of Black Holes Solves Decades-Old Mystery of Plasma Jets

Fluctuating light from a black hole, observed over 15 years, has revealed more about the way these enigmatic objects feed. First, a structure called a corona forms around the outside of the event horizon. Then, powerful jets of plasma launch from the poles, punching material from the corona out into interstellar space at speeds close … Read more

Why Isn’t Jupiter a Star?

The smallest known main-sequence star in the Milky Way galaxy is a real pixie of a thing. It’s called EBLM J0555-57Ab, a red dwarf 600 light-years away. With a mean radius of around 59,000 kilometers, it’s just a smidge bigger than Saturn. That makes it the tiniest known star to support hydrogen fusion in its core, … Read more

The Closest ‘Black Hole’ to Earth Isn’t What We Thought at All

What astronomers had concluded to be a black hole a mere 1,120 light-years from Earth instead appears to be something quite different: a two-star system where one of the stars is sucking the life out of the other.   Far from disappointing, though, the conclusion gives astronomers an exciting opportunity to explore how these ‘vampiric’ stars … Read more

Mysterious Repeating Fast Radio Burst Traced to Very Unexpected Location

A recently discovered repeating fast radio burst (FRB) named FRB 20200120E is deepening the mystery of these already deeply mysterious space signals. Astronomers have tracked its location to a galaxy 11.7 million light-years away, which makes it the closest known extragalactic fast radio burst, 40 times closer than the next-closest extragalactic signal.   But it … Read more

‘Ghost particle’ coming into focus: Scientists put upper limit on mass of neutrinos

Every second, about 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body. These ghostly particles are fundamental to our understanding of the universe. But they’re extremely small — so small that scientists once thought they had no mass at all.  Neutrinos do indeed have mass, however, and physicists have now managed to put a new upper limit … Read more

Two New Studies Just Outlined The Basics of Building an Interstellar Light Sail

For centuries, people have dreamed of being driven at speed across the vast oceans of space by winds of light. As whimsical as the idea sounds, nudging reflective sails slowly towards the speed of light using nothing more than the punch of photons might be our only plausible shot at reaching another star inside of … Read more

Physicists Just Achieved a New Smallest Measurement of a Ghost Particle’s Mass

Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino. By measuring the energy distribution of electrons released during the beta decay of tritium, physicists have determined that the upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino is just 0.8 electronvolts. That’s 1.6 × 10–36 kilograms … Read more

A New Planet Has Just Been Discovered Orbiting The Nearest Star to The Sun

What appears to be a teeny tiny alien world has just been found orbiting the Solar System’s closest stellar neighbor. The exoplanet candidate, named Proxima d, orbits a star named Proxima Centauri: a small, dim red dwarf star just 4.2 light-years from the Sun.   Amazingly, the exoplanet is just a quarter of the mass … Read more