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Astronomy

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In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness

August 29, 2023

Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.

Quaking Giants Might Solve the Mysteries of Stellar Magnetism

August 21, 2023

In their jiggles and shakes, red giant stars encode a record of the magnetic fields near their cores.

JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe

August 14, 2023

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

Exoplanets Could Help Us Learn How Planets Make Magnetism

August 7, 2023

New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields swaddling our solar system’s planets.

How (Nearly) Nothing Might Solve Cosmology’s Biggest Questions

July 25, 2023

By measuring the universe’s emptiest spaces, scientists can study how matter clumps together and how fast it flies apart.

An Enormous Gravity ‘Hum’ Moves Through the Universe

June 28, 2023

Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves pervading the cosmos.

New Proof Finds the ‘Ultimate Instability’ in a Solar System Model

May 16, 2023

For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always be unstable.

Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way

March 28, 2023

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants.

What Lights the Universe’s Standard Candles?

February 8, 2023

Type Ia supernovas are astronomers’ best tools for measuring cosmic distances. In a first, researchers have managed to re-create one on a supercomputer, giving a boost to a leading hypothesis for how they form.

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