X-rays

How a 19th-Century Breakthrough Could Revolutionize COVID-19 Diagnosis

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It sounds simple, but to treat someone you suspect has COVID, you need to confirm they are actually infected with the coronavirus. In the UK, it is easy to take this for granted – we’ve had a reliable detection method for diagnosing infected patients widely available since early on in the pandemic. This allowed for … Read more

Enigmatic High-Energy X-Rays Have Been Spied Coming From Jupiter

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Jupiter has finally been observed spitting out X-rays in high-energy wavelengths. Emanating from the giant planet’s permanent auroras, and detected by NASA’s space-based X-ray telescope NuSTAR, the emissions are the most energetic light seen coming from any planet in the Solar System (aside from Earth).   The detection could shed light on the most powerful … Read more

We May Finally Know The Cause of ‘The Cow’, a Freakishly Exciting Space Explosion

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The cause of a mysterious cosmic kaboom – so bright it led to the classification of a new type of space explosion – may have now been revealed. According to an analysis of the 2018 event, nicknamed “the Cow” (AT2018cow), it was likely an unusual kind of core-collapse supernova that led to the formation of … Read more

Space cow: Bizarre explosion was probably a failed supernova

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By Leah Crane Illustration of a cow in space Shutterstock An explosion that baffled astronomers in 2018 may finally have an explanation. Observations of X-rays from the blast have revealed that it was probably a massive star that only partially blew up, leaving behind either a dense neutron star or a small black hole – … Read more

NASA X-ray telescope: New spacecraft will study the science of black holes

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NASA and the Italian Space Agency are launching the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer space telescope to measure the X-ray light coming from objects including neutron stars and black holes Space 8 December 2021 By Will Gater An artist’s impression of the IXPE mission NASA NASA and the Italian Space Agency are scheduled to launch an … Read more