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A new map of the entire sky, as seen in X-rays, looks deeper into space than any other of its kind. The map, released June 19, is based on data from the first full scan of the sky made by the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Russian-German SRG spacecraft, which launched in July 2019. The […] More
Small worlds around other stars may come in more than two varieties. Using exoplanet densities, astronomers have largely sorted planets that are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune into two categories: denser, rocky super-Earths and larger, puffy mini-Neptunes (SN: 6/19/17). Mini-Neptunes are generally thought to be padded in thick layers of hydrogen and helium […] More
A dense, scorched planet around a faraway star may be the naked core of a gas giant. Satellite and Earth-based telescope observations show that the newly discovered exoplanet has a radius nearly 3.5 times Earth’s and a mass about 39 times as big. Those dimensions combined point to a density roughly the same as Earth’s, […] More
Newly christened “Dimorphos” is a tiny space rock with a big target on its back. The International Astronomical Union gave the rock an official name on June 23 for a unique reason: It has been marked for the first-ever asteroid deflection mission. A NASA spacecraft will ram into Dimorphos — on purpose — to alter […] More
In spite of their dark reputations, two black holes may have set off a cosmic light show. Subtle gravitational rumbles from a collision of two black holes may have been accompanied by a flare of light about a month later, physicists report June 25 in Physical Review Letters. It’s a surprising conclusion given black holes’ […] More
Neutrinos spit out by the main processes that power the sun are finally accounted for, physicists report. Two sets of nuclear fusion reactions predominate in the sun’s core and both produce the lightweight subatomic particles in abundance. Scientists had previously detected neutrinos from the most prevalent process. Now, for the first time, neutrinos from the […] More
Ripples in spacetime have revealed a distant collision between a black hole and a mystery object, which appears too massive to be a neutron star but not massive enough to be a black hole. At first glance, the event — detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors on August 14, 2019 — looked […] More
Jets of high-energy plasma shooting away from supermassive black holes resemble bell-bottom pants — starting out narrow but ending with a flare. The shape can help astrophysicists tease out how such jets are launched and reveal details of their black holes, researchers report in the July Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “From studying […] More
