Alien life could face threats from passing stars and supernovae
Astronomers examined 84 of the closest known stars with potentially habitable exoplanets and found that 3 face possible extinction-level…
Category: Astronomy
How did supermassive black holes form?
An astronomer analyzed ancient supermassive black holes with mathematical models and found they likely grew exponentially after light,…
Citizen scientists and AI help astronomers find galaxies
Scientists trained an AI algorithm to categorize distant galaxies using volunteer classifications. Their model could improve the accuracy of…
Astronomers simulate hidden minor planets across the Galaxy
Researchers modeled how planets smaller than Earth formed and changed over the first billion years of their existence. They found these…
Searching for the first supernovae in the universe
Astronomers developed new theoretical models for how stars evolve that suggest the JWST could glimpse the oldest stars in the universe…
Why do galaxies shrink?
An astronomer studying the 3 main processes that cause galaxies to lose mass found that the dominant process depends on the size and age of…
Why the Milky Way is shaped like a spiral
A team of astronomers reconstructed a 3-part history of the Milky Way Galaxy by comparing the physics and chemistry of 10 million red giant…
Exoplanets with weird orbits might be more habitable
Astronomers modeled the ideal climatic and atmospheric conditions for exoplanets and found that planets with non-circular orbits had more…
Astronomers discover new rare hot Neptunes
Scientists discovered 2 new examples of medium-sized, closely-orbiting exoplanets whose characteristics shed light on how planetary systems…
Machine learning has its limits when studying hard-to-see galaxies
Scientists in South America and Italy found that a machine-learning algorithm astronomers commonly use to analyze large datasets classified…