news

An international team of researchers including Prof. Badri Krishnan at Radboud University has verified an important property of black holes known as the no-hair theorem using gravitational wave observations. Their research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. It is a remarkable fact of nature that black holes are extremely simple objects.

Planets like our Earth, including planets with water, could form even in the harshest known star-forming environments, drenched by hard UV light from massive stars. That is a main result of analyses of new observations of such an environment with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), conducted by, amongst others, Rens Waters and student Lars Cuijpers from Radboud University.

An international collaboration between astronomers using the CHEOPS and TESS space satellites, including NCCR PlanetS members from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva, have found a key new system of six transiting planets orbiting a bright star in a harmonic rhythm. This rare property enabled the team to determine the planetary orbits which initially appeared as an unsolvable riddle.

An international collaboration involving UCL researchers has discovered six planets orbiting their central star in a rhythmic beat, a rare case of an "in sync" gravitational lockstep that could offer deep insight into planet formation and evolution. The findings, published in Nature , are particularly valuable as the planets are likely to have been performing this same rhythmic dance ever since the system formed more than a billion years ago.

Researchers led by Göttingen University determine factors for chemical development in crater lakes on Earth In southern Germany just north of the Danube, there lies a large circular depression between the hilly surroundings: the Nördlinger Ries. Almost 15 million years ago, an asteroid struck this spot.

Understanding that even planets in pristine solar systems have some orbital tilt puts Earth's solar system into a larger perspective, researchers say. Share this with Facebook Share this with Twitter Share this with LinkedIn Share this with Email Scientists have long puzzled over why all of the planets in Earth's solar system have slightly slanted orbits around the sun.

New approach developed by Johns Hopkins researchers promises to improve the accuracy of celestial object matching A team of Johns Hopkins researchers has developed a cutting-edge data science approach capable of matching observations of celestial objects taken across multiple telescope surveys, overcoming a significant challenge in modern astronomy.

Alien haze, cooked in a lab, clears view to distant water worlds The research by Johns Hopkins scientists will help model how water exoplanets form and evolve-findings that could help in the search for life beyond our solar system Roberto Molar Candanosa / Published Nov 27, 2023 Scientists have simulated conditions that allow hazy skies to form in water-rich exoplanets, a crucial step in determining how haziness muddles observations by ground and space telescopes.

New method of age determination provides unexpected insights into the formation and drifting apart of young stars A team of astrophysicists led by Núria Miret-Roig from the University of Vienna found that two methods for determining the age of stars measure different things: Isochronous measurement thereby determines the birth date of stars, while dynamical tracking provides information on when stars "leave their nest", about 5.5 million years later in the star clusters studied.

A research team from EPFL and Wageningen University has developed a new artificial intelligence model that recognises floating plastics much more accurately in satellite images than before. This could help to systematically remove plastic litter from the oceans with ships. Our society relies heavily on plastic products and the amount of plastic waste is expected to increase in the future.

Delayed massive-star mechanical feedback at low metallicity Nebular C IV 1550 imaging of the metal-poor starburst Mrk 71: Direct evidence of catastrophic cooling If you look at massive galaxies teeming with stars, you might be forgiven in thinking they are star factories, churning out brilliant balls of gas.

Some exoplanets seem to be losing their atmospheres and shrinking. In a new study, astronomers report evidence of a possible cause: The cores of these planets are pushing away their atmospheres from the inside out. Exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) come in a variety of sizes , from small, rocky terrestrial planets to colossal gas giants.

Data from a NASA mission to map dark matter around galaxy clusters has been saved by a new recovery system designed by scientists at the University of Sydney. The system allowed the retrieval of gigabytes of information, even after communication failed and the balloon-based telescope was damaged in the landing process.

Astronomers can look 50 times deeper into the atmosphere of this exoplanet than is possible with Jupiter A team of European astronomers, with the help of researchers from the University of Vienna, has studied the atmosphere of the nearby exoplanet WASP-107b using the James Webb Space Telescope. An exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than our sun.

An international team of astronomers, co-led by Michiel Min (SRON), has discovered a silicate-based weather system on a fluffy gas planet around the star WASP-107. It is the first time that scientists, including Rens Waters from Radboud University, find clouds and rain made of sand. They also conclude that the temperature deeper in the atmosphere is rising surprisingly rapid Exoplanet WASP-107b orbits a star that is slightly cooler and lighter than our Sun.

The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA's first mission to collect samples from an asteroid - in this case 101955 Bennu - and return to Earth. OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer. The sealed capsule landed on Sept. 24 near Salt Lake City, Utah, a feat that was broadcast live by NASA.

A team of European astronomers, co-led by researchers from the Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven, used recent observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope to study the atmosphere of the nearby exoplanet WASP-107b. Peering deep into the fluffy atmosphere of WASP-107b they discovered not only water vapour and sulfur dioxide, but even silicate sand clouds.

How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown how comets could deposit similar building blocks to other planets in the galaxy. It's possible that the molecules that led to life on Earth came from comets, so the same could be true for planets elsewhere in the galaxy Richard Anslow In order to deliver organic material, comets need to be travelling relatively slowly - at speeds below 15 kilometres per second.

Luminous fast blue optical transients are characterized by their intense blue light and are amongst the brightest known optical phenomena in the universe. They evolve rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months. Image credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M.

Following the success of the Bern solar wind sail on the Apollo Moon missions of the U.S. space agency NASA in the 1960s, the Physics Institute at the University of Bern is to return to the Moon as early as 2027 with the LIMS mass spectrometer as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payoad A highly sensitive instrument for measurements on the lunar surface LIMS is a powerful instrument for the examination of a wide variety of samples which meets scientific lunar objectives.