The biggest conundrum in cosmology may be closer to being solved, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists disagree on the expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. There are two main methods for measuring it – one based on exploding stars called supernovae and the other on the universe’s oldest […]

For the first time, scientists have measured a long-sought global electric field in Earth’s atmosphere. This field, called the ambipolar electric field, was predicted to exist decades ago but was never discovered until now. his animation shows how the ambipolar electric field works. The most abundant gas in the lower atmosphere, the part we live […]

For the first time, astronomers have seen gas boiling and bubbling on the surface of a distant star. Scientists observed the red giant star R Doradus with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile over four weeks in July and August 2023. The series of images show large cells of gas rising to […]

A red dwarf star known as Barnard’s Star, located just six light-years from our solar system, has at least one — and possibly a handful — of small rocky planets orbiting it, a new study suggests. . Barnard’s Star, which is about one-sixth the mass of our sun, is the closest individual star to our […]

Satellites interfere with radio astronomy – Scientific news, October 5, 1974 In the past, satellites and probes launched by NASA and others successfully avoided conflict with the radio frequency bands reserved for radio astronomy. But now there is trouble. The offenders are two large US satellites launched in May…. When one of the satellites is […]

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will soon be on its way to help solve a quarter-century-old mystery: Could anything live in the ocean hiding beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa? “This is a mission we’ve dreamed about for 25 years now, since I was in graduate school,” says planetary geologist Cynthia Phillips of NASA’s […]