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McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News. More
McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News. More
The early universe is speckled with little red dots, and now we may have an idea of how these peculiar galaxies originated: They were born with almost no spin.
Little red dots were totally unknown until their discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope, which revealed a tiny galactic species that proliferated when the universe was only 640 million to 1.5 billion years old. These galaxies are compact because they were barely rotating when first taking shape, Harvard astronomers Fabio Pacucci and Avi Loeb report in a paper submitted June 3 to arXiv.org and accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. More
McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News. More
McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News. More
It may come down to a coin toss as to whether the Milky Way collides with the Andromeda Galaxy within 10 billion years.
While scientists have previously reported that a convergence was certain, an analysis of the latest data suggests the odds are only about 50 percent, researchers report June 2 in Nature Astronomy. The Milky Way’s largest satellite system — the Large Magellanic Cloud — may be our galaxy’s saving grace, the study shows. More
Astronomers have found a giant interstellar cloud surprisingly close to Earth.
Lurking about 300 light-years from our solar system, this immense cloud of gas and dust is the closest of its kind ever found to Earth, beating the previous record holder by roughly 90 light-years. Despite being some 5,500 times as massive as the sun, the cloud went unnoticed — until now.
That’s because the cloud does not contain much carbon monoxide, the molecule astronomers often use to probe these clouds, called molecular clouds. Astronomers found this cloud by scanning the sky for ultraviolet light coming from a molecular cloud’s main constituent, hydrogen molecules. The results, published April 28 in Nature Astronomy, reveal a crescent-shaped cloud that, if visible, would appear to viewers on Earth as the largest single structure in the night sky — roughly 40 full moons wide. More
A potential dark galaxy — one made primarily of dark matter — may have been spotted in the local universe.
Dark galaxies are theoretical, starless systems whose discovery could help astronomers better understand galaxy formation. The new candidate was found within a large, fast-moving cloud of gas first seen in the 1960s. High-resolution observations of the cloud, reported April 18 in Science Advances, revealed a compact clump of gas that might be a dark galaxy. More
You may have already seen the headlines: Signs of life have reportedly been discovered on an alien world.
A team of astronomers led by Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge used the James Webb Space Telescope to search for interesting molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system called K2 18b. The team now says they’ve found molecules that, on Earth, are associated with life, in an abundance that is hard to explain otherwise. More
