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Astronomy

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The Sun Is Stranger Than Astrophysicists Imagined

May 1, 2019

The sun radiates far more high-frequency light than expected, raising questions about unknown features of the sun’s magnetic field and the possibility of even more exotic physics.

Q&A

The Astronomer Who’d Rather Build Space Cameras

April 18, 2019

Jim Gunn shaped the theory of the evolution of the cosmos before building cameras and spectrographs for major observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope.

What the Sight of a Black Hole Means to a Black Hole Physicist

April 10, 2019

The astrophysicist Janna Levin reflects on the newly unveiled, first-ever photograph of a black hole.

Q&A

The Scientist Who Cooks Up the Skies of Faraway Worlds

April 8, 2019

Astronomers will soon take their first glance at the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet. Sarah Hörst is writing the guidebook for these exoplanetary explorers, one that will reveal what a distinctive atmosphere says about the world underneath.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

March 11, 2019

The latest AI algorithms are probing the evolution of galaxies, calculating quantum wave functions, discovering new chemical compounds and more. Is there anything that scientists do that can’t be automated?

Galaxy Simulations Offer a New Solution to the Fermi Paradox

March 7, 2019

Astronomers claim in a new paper that star motions should make it easy for civilizations to spread across the galaxy, but still we might find ourselves alone.

With a Second Repeating Radio Burst, Astronomers Close In on an Explanation

February 28, 2019

Brief cosmic blips called fast radio bursts have puzzled astronomers since their discovery earlier this decade. Now researchers appear to be close to understanding what powers them.

Q&A

An Astrophysicist Who Maps the Universe’s Terra Incognita

February 4, 2019

Priyamvada Natarajan has pioneered the mapping and modeling of the universe’s invisible contents, especially dark matter and supermassive black holes.

Missing Galaxies? Now There’s Too Many

January 9, 2019

Astronomers couldn’t find enough satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Now they have the opposite problem.

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