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By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In 1995, astronomers confirmed the discovery for the first time of a brown dwarf, a body too small to be a star and too big to be a planet – sort of a celestial tweener. But it turns out that was not the full story. Researchers now have taken a fresh look at that brown dwarf and learned that it actually is not a single brown dwarf but rather […]
By Pierre Celerier PARIS (AFP) – A planet relatively close to Earth could be the first ever detected with a potentially life-sustaining liquid ocean outside our Solar System, according to scientists using the James Webb space telescope. More than 5,000 planets have been discovered outside of the Solar System so far, but only a handful are in what is called the “Goldilocks zone” — neither too hot or too cold — that could host liquid […]
PARIS, June 18, 2024 (AFP) – Astronomers have been able to observe a supermassive black hole waking up and setting the heart of its host galaxy alight for the first time, the European Southern Observatory said on Tuesday. The galaxy 300 million light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation had been quiet for decades until late 2019, when it suddenly began to shine brighter than ever before. The centre of the galaxy — where […]
PARIS, March 27, 2024 (AFP) – Astronomers have discovered powerful magnetic fields spiralling around the black hole that sits at the centre of the Milky Way, the European Southern Observatory said Wednesday. A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) for the first time showed in polarised light a ring of magnetic fields surrounding the Sagittarius A* black hole. The fields are similar to those observed around the M87* black hole at the heart […]
By Juliette Collen PARIS, Feb 7, 2024 (AFP) – Saturn’s small moon Mimas seems an unlikely suspect in the hunt for life in Earth’s backyard — it is probably best known for looking like the “Death Star” in the Star Wars films. But scientists said on Wednesday that underneath the unassuming moon’s icy shell is a vast hidden ocean that has many of the ingredients necessary to host primitive alien life. Mimas is the latest […]
By Juliette Collen PARIS (AFP) – Six exoplanets have been spotted in a perfectly synchronised dance around a nearby star, offering clues about the formation of our own Solar System, astronomers said on Wednesday. The six planets orbit the bright star HD 110067 around 100 light years away from Earth. The star is visible from the Northern Hemisphere as part of the Coma Berenices constellation. The planets are so close to their star that all […]
By Daniel Lawler PARIS, Oct 19, 2023 (AFP) – Years ago, something happened in a distant galaxy that sent an incredibly powerful blast of radio waves hurtling through the universe. It finally arrived at Earth on June 10 last year and — though it lasted less than a thousandth of a second — a radio telescope in Australia managed to pick up the signal. This flash from the cosmos was a fast radio burst (FRB), […]
By Moises Avila with Issam Ahmed in Washington HOUSTON, Oct 11, 2023 (AFP) – A sample collected from the asteroid Bennu contains abundant water and carbon, NASA revealed on Wednesday, offering more evidence for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. The discovery follows a seven-year-round-trip to the distant rock as part of the OSIRIS-REx mission, which dropped off its precious payload in the Utah desert last month for painstaking scientific […]
PARIS, Sept 21, 2023 (AFP) – Carbon dioxide detected on Jupiter’s moon Europa comes from the vast ocean beneath its icy shell, research using James Webb Space Telescope data indicated on Thursday, potentially bolstering hopes the hidden water could harbour life. Scientists are confident there is a huge ocean of saltwater kilometres below Europa’s ice-covered surface, making the moon a prime candidate for hosting extra-terrestrial life in our Solar System. But determining whether this concealed […]
BENGALURU, India, Aug 23, 2023 (AFP) – India on Wednesday became the first nation to land a craft near the Moon’s south pole, a historic triumph for the world’s most populous nation and its ambitious, cut-price space programme. The unmanned Chandrayaan-3, which means “Mooncraft” in Sanskrit, touched down at 6:04 pm India time (1234 GMT) as mission control technicians cheered wildly and embraced their colleagues. Its landing comes days after a Russian probe crashed in […]
By Daniel Lawler Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — A scorching hot world where metal clouds rain drops of titanium is the most reflective planet ever observed outside of our Solar System, astronomers said on Monday. This strange world, which is more than 260 light years from Earth, reflects 80 percent of the light from its host star, according to new observations from Europe’s exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope. That makes it the first exoplanet comparably […]
