Years

New Models Let Us Dive Into One of The Brightest Star Explosions We’ve Ever Seen

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A star that exploded into brightness nearly 200 years ago can now be explored in glorious, multi-wavelength detail. In a new video, a team of scientists modeled the Homunculus Nebula around the star Eta Carinae in three dimensions, enabling insight into this incredible event.   The binary system Eta Carinae started erupting in the late … Read more

Signs of an Unknown Solar ‘Tsunami’ Have Been Discovered Deep Inside Earth’s Ice

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Deep beneath the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, researchers have found signs of an enormous solar ‘tsunami‘ that once crashed against Earth’s atmosphere more than 9,000 years ago.   This ancient superstorm was triggered by a wave of hot plasma and magnetism from the Sun, and it is significantly larger than anything we have recorded … Read more

Wolves Already Had The Genetic Mutation to Turn Into Tiny Dogs 54,000 Years Ago

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One of the main genetic mutations responsible for small size in certain dog breeds, such as Pomeranians and Chihuahuas, evolved in dog relatives long before humans began breeding these miniature companions. Researchers discovered that the mutation can even be traced back to wolves that lived more than 50,000 years ago.   Researchers discovered the mutation, which is found in … Read more

Water on Mars may have flowed for a billion years longer than thought

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Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago, much later than scientists once thought. Scientists charted the presence of chloride salt deposits left behind by flowing water using years of data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has … Read more

55 years after Apollo 1 fire, NASA’s lessons live on as Orion aims for the moon

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NASA’s last moonbound program for astronauts lifted off under the shadow of a fatal incident on the Apollo 1 spacecraft, 55 years ago today (Jan. 27). Apollo 1 was expected to fly to Earth orbit later in 1967 with astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White on board. During a test on the launch … Read more

Could a spacecraft ‘catch up’ to interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua in just 26 years?

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Could we send a spacecraft to the giant, cigar-shaped interstellar interloper ‘Oumuamua? Should we? In 2017, astronomers detected a space rock from another solar system whizzing through our cosmic neighborhood for the first time ever. The rock, called ‘Oumuamua, passed us by and sailed through our solar system leaving behind questions that remain to this … Read more

5,000 possible alien worlds in less than 4 years for NASA planet-hunting mission

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It’s been a busy four years for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the scientists who seek planets in its data. The mission just hit a major discovery milestone, passing 5,000 of what the team calls TESS Objects of Interest, or TOIs, which include exoplanet candidates and other intriguing signals. Astronomers select objects from … Read more

Mysterious Effects of Smoking May Surface Even 3 Generations Later, Study Finds

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The great-granddaughters of men who smoked cigarettes when they were pre-pubescent boys are more likely to carry excess fat on their bodies as young women several decades later, a rather startling study has found.   The discovery – which scientists claim is one of the “first human demonstrations of transgenerational effects of an environmental exposure … Read more

Mars ‘asteroid showers’ have stayed steady over 600 million years

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Our dating assumptions for the Red Planet might need a second look. Fresh analysis of craters on Mars suggests that asteroids have been smashing into the surface at a consistent rate for at least 600 million years. Scientists often use craters as a proxy to figure out how old a planetary surface is, since more … Read more