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Almost four billion light years away from Earth in the centre of the galaxy OJ287, two giant black holes orbit each other, which are approximately 18 billion and 150 million times more massive than our sun. The larger of the two black holes is surrounded by a vast accretion disk, a rotating disk of matter that flows towards the black hole at its centre.

This image is a slice of a much larger simulation depicting the cosmos as NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see it when it launches. Every blob and speck of light represents a distant galaxy, except for the urchinlike spiky dots, which rep. Credit: C. Hirata and K. Cao (OSU) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center" Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory contributed to a project that sets the stage for two telescopes investigating one of astrophysics' biggest mysteries.

High-energy laser experiments led by Johns Hopkins researchers suggest the compound could be the earliest mineral to solidify out of magma oceans in forming "super-Earth" exoplanets Scientists have for the first time observed how atoms in magnesium oxide morph and melt under ultra-harsh conditions, providing new insights into this key mineral within Earth's mantle that is known to influence planet formation.

The structure and function of the kidneys is altered by space flight, with galactic radiation causing permanent damage that would jeopardise any mission to Mars, according to a new study led by researchers from UCL. The study, published in Nature Communications , is the largest analysis of kidney health in space flight to date and includes the first health dataset for commercial astronauts.

Clouds of gas in a distant galaxy are being pushed faster and faster - at more than 10,000 miles per second - out among neighboring stars by blasts of radiation from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. It's a discovery that helps illuminate the way active black holes can continuously shape their galaxies by spurring on or snuffing out the development of new stars.

Astronomy professor Jonathan Gagné will be part of the Landolt space mission, solving problems caused by errors in astronomical calibrations. A major scientific breakthrough will be taking place soon thanks to NASA's Landolt space mission. The mission, at a cost of $19.5 million, will make it possible to measure stellar luminosities more accurately.

Supernova explosions from the formation history of these families also left traces on Earth An international team of astronomers led by the University of Vienna has deciphered the formation history of young star clusters, some of which we can see with the naked eye at night. The team, led by Cameren Swiggum and João Alves from the University of Vienna and Robert Benjamin from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, reports that most nearby young star clusters belong to only three families, which originate from very massive star-forming regions.

For the first time, water frost has been detected on the colossal volcanoes on Mars, which are the largest mountains in the Solar System. The international team led by the University of Bern used high-resolution color images from the Bernese Mars camera, CaSSIS, onboard the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft.

A surprising yellow haze of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas "dwarf" exoplanet about 96 light years away from our own solar system makes the planet a prime target for scientists trying to understand how worlds are formed. Astronomers discovered the planet, GJ 3470 b, in 2012 when the planet's shadow crossed the star it orbits.

In the search for signals from the early universe, the Heidelberg scientist Georg Wolschin deals with the question of whether and how residual spectral lines from the recombination phase with the formation of the first elements can be detected in the cosmic background radiation - which can be measured very precisely today.

Astronomers have detected carbon in a galaxy just 350 million years after the Big Bang, the earliest detection of any element in the universe other than hydrogen. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge observed a very young galaxy in the early universe and found that it contained surprising amounts of carbon, one of the seeds of life as we know it.

In the first quintillionth of a second, the universe may have sprouted microscopic black holes with enormous amounts of nuclear charge, MIT physicists propose. For every kilogram of matter that we can see - from the computer on your desk to distant stars and galaxies - there are 5 kilograms of invisible matter that suffuse our surroundings.

Artist's depiction of CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope with two versions of the mysterious celestial object: neutron star or white dwarf Most collapsed stars rotate faster than once per second. This one takes nearly an hour. Scientists have detected what they believe to be a neutron star spinning at an unprecedentedly slow rate -slower than any of the more than 3,000 radio emitting neutron stars measured to date.

Scientists at the University of Warwick are using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse cosmic explosions known as supernovae. Many stars in the Universe will end their lives as white dwarfs - compact stars containing about the mass of the Sun in the size of the Earth. Some of these white dwarfs will eventually explode as supernovae.

The two earliest and most distant galaxies yet confirmed, dating back to only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have been discovered using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers today announced.

This computer-generated 3D model of Venus' surface shows the volcano Sif Mons, which is exhibiting signs of ongoing activity. Using data from NASA's Magellan mission, Italian researchers detected evidence of an eruption while the spacecraft orbited th. Credit: NASA/JPL" An analysis of data from Magellan's radar finds two volcanoes erupted in the early 1990s.

These images allow scientists to search for wandering planets, study dark matter using lensed galaxies and explore the evolution of the universe.

Two international teams of astronomers, including one co-led by a PhD candidate based at UCL and the University of Edinburgh, have discovered a planet only 40 light years away whose size is between that of Earth and Venus. The researchers used observations by NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).

New findings from a spaceborne monitoring team of University of Houston, TU Delft and DLR indicates the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine may have been already ongoing before the war with Russia, with deformations in the dam pre-dating the actual collapse. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment this month.

When it comes to the animal kingdom, bigger is better. Well, at least for proboscis monkeys, famously known for their long, large and droopy noses. Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) have provided a world-first explanation for why male proboscis monkeys have larger and "enhanced" nasal structures.