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Science News
Super-Earth Discovered Orbiting the Sun’s Famous Stellar Neighbor
PLANET ORBITS BARNARD’S STAR, THE CLOSEST SINGLE STAR TO THE SUN Maunakea, Hawaii – At only six light-years away, Barnard’s star has fascinated exoplanet hunters since the 1960’s, largely due to its extreme proximity to us. It is the closest single star to the sun and second closest stellar system only to the Alpha Centauri […]
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Astronomers Get Best View Yet of Supermassive Black Holes in Merging Galaxies, Slowly Moving on a Collision Course with Each Other
Maunakea, Hawaii – Two galaxies, drawn together by the force of gravity, are merging into a tangled mass of dense gas and dust. Structure is giving way to chaos, but hiding behind this messy cloud of material are two supermassive black holes, nestled at the center of each of the galaxies, that are now excitingly […]
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New Insight Into Why Galaxies Stop Forming Stars
A team of scientists get best measure yet of why star formation stopped in galaxy clusters in the early universe Maunakea, Hawaii – Galaxy clusters are rare regions of the universe consisting of hundreds of galaxies containing trillions of stars, as well as hot gas and dark matter. It has long been known that when […]
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Researchers Solve Mystery at the Center of the Milky Way
Astronomers from Lund University in Sweden have now found the explanation to a recent mystery at the center of the Milky Way galaxy: the high levels of scandium discovered last spring near the galaxy’s giant black hole were in fact an optical illusion. Maunakea, Hawaii – Last spring, researchers published a study about the apparent presence […]
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Dying Star Emits a Whisper
The Death of a Massive Star and the Birth of a Compact Neutron Star Binary Maunakea, Hawaii – A Caltech-led team of researchers, with the help of W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, has observed the peculiar death of a massive star that exploded in a surprisingly faint and rapidly fading supernova. These observations suggest […]
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Young Galaxy’s Halo Offers Clues to its Growth and Evolution
Maunakea, Hawaii – A team of astronomers has discovered a new way to unlock the mysteries of how the first galaxies formed and evolved. In a study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, lead author Dawn Erb of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her team – for the very first time – used new […]
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Astronomers Find a Famous Exoplanet’s Doppelgänger
Maunakea, Hawaii – When it comes to extrasolar planets, appearances can be deceiving. Astronomers have imaged a new planet, and it appears nearly identical to one of the best studied gas-giant planets. But this doppelgänger differs in one very important way: its origin. “We have found a gas-giant planet that is a virtual twin of […]
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Dark Matter is a No Show in Ghostly Galaxy
Maunakea, Hawaii – Galaxies and dark matter go hand in hand; you typically don’t find one without the other. So when researchers uncovered a galaxy, known as NGC1052-DF2, that is almost completely devoid of the stuff, they were shocked. “Finding a galaxy without dark matter is unexpected because this invisible, mysterious substance is the most […]
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Stars Around the Milky Way: Cosmic Space Invaders or Victims of Galactic Eviction?
Maunakea, Hawaii – An international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has made a surprising discovery about the birthplace of groups of stars located in the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. These halo stars are grouped together in giant structures that orbit the center of our galaxy, above […]
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Astronomers Discover S0-2 Star is Single and Ready for Big Einstein Test
No companion found for famous young bright star orbiting Milky Way’s supermassive black hole Maunakea, Hawaii– Astronomers have the “all-clear” for an exciting test of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, thanks to a new discovery about S0-2’s star status. Up until now, it was thought that S0-2 may be a binary, a system where two […]
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