News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
An epic outburst from a baby star still in the process of forming has been captured in a spectacular Hubble image. Roughly 1,250 light-years away, in the Orion molecular cloud star-forming region, jets from a protostar are punching through the cloud at supersonic speeds, heating the gas and causing it to glow brightly. The result … Read more
Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On 6 January 2022, astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid roughly 70-meters (230 ft) across. Based on their initial observations, it appeared this object – called ‘2022 AE1‘ – could potentially hit Earth on its next pass, on … Read more
Add one more crater to the long list of pockmarks on the lunar surface. According to orbital calculations, a rocket hurtling through space for years crashed into the Moon on Friday, but the strike wasn’t directly observed, and there might be a wait for photographic evidence. The impact would have taken place at 7:25 … Read more
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
The Curiosity rover took a picture of something pretty enticing this week on the surface of Mars. While the object in question looks like a tiny little flower or maybe even some type of organic feature, the rover team confirmed this object is a mineral formation, with delicate structures that formed by minerals precipitating from water. … Read more
The next time a space rock races through our solar system from beyond, humans will be a little more prepared to unlock its secrets. To date, astronomers have identified two interstellar objects that came from other neighborhoods and rushed through the solar system. In 2017, there was ‘Oumuamua, and in 2018, Borisov followed, giving scientists … Read more
A new telescope designed to peer into the twisted X-ray Universe has just sent back its first-ever imaging data. The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), a joint project between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, fixed its gaze on one of the most famous explosions in the Milky Way: Cassiopeia A. Located 11,000 light-years … Read more
Quantum mechanics – the behavior of the Universe at the smallest of scales – continues to surprise us, with scientists now having been able to successfully create a quantum object called a domain wall in laboratory settings. For the first time, these walls can now be generated in the lab on demand, occurring when … Read more
The ongoing interaction between two galaxies 320 million light-years away has been captured in a gorgeous Hubble image. They’re collectively known as Arp 282 in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, and they consist of a large barred spiral galaxy named NGC 169, about 140,000 light-years across, and a much smaller polar-ring galaxy named IC … Read more
An elongated, cone-shaped skull with a possible metal implant could represent some of the earliest evidence from Peru of an ancient surgical implant. Or it could be a modern-day fake. The fact that the skull, which was donated to the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City, has a cone shape is nothing too unusual, … Read more