Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 6, 2023

James Webb telescope discovers the 4 oldest galaxies in the universe, born just 300 million years after the Big Bang

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have just discovered the four most distant galaxies ever seen, located a little over 13 billion light-years from Earth. This means astronomers are seeing what galaxies looked like only 300 to 500 million years after the Big Bang, in the infancy of...

Apr 6, 2023

Strange radio bursts that outshine entire galaxies may come from colliding neutron stars, new study suggests

For the first time, astronomers have linked mysterious pulses of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) with the ripples in space-time emitted by collapsed, colliding stars. The findings, published March 27 in the journal Nature Astronomy, propose a new explanation for FRBs, which have vexed scientists for more than a...

Apr 11, 2023

Bizarre object 10 million times brighter than the sun defies physics, NASA says

Something in outer space is breaking the law — the laws of physics, that is. Astronomers call these lawbreakers ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), and they exude about 10 million times more energy than the sun. This amount of energy breaks a physical law known as the Eddington limit, which determines...

Apr 12, 2023

'Green Monster' supernova is the youngest in the Milky Way, James Webb telescope reveals

Astronomers have captured the sharpest image yet of the debris field of the Milky Way's most recent known supernova. Cassiopeia A, the remnants of a stellar explosion that appeared in Earth’s skies 340 years ago, sits 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. A new image from the James Webb...

May 8, 2023

Astronomers find remnants of the oldest stars in the universe

Astronomers may have just found the remnants of some of the universe's very first stars. The chemical signatures of these faraway, 13-plus-billion-year-old objects are remarkably different from those of younger stars, like our sun. By studying them, scientists hope to shed light on how stars, galaxies and even basic elements...

May 9, 2023

Scientists discover secret 'symmetries' that protect Earth from the chaos of space

Earth probably shouldn't exist. That's because the orbits of the inner solar system planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — are chaotic, and models have suggested that these inner planets should have crashed into each other by now. And yet, that hasn't happened. New research published May 3 in...

May 18, 2023

Scientists watched a 'reappearing supernova' explode 5 times in a row — and it could help reveal how fast the universe is expanding

One stellar explosion can't get enough of the spotlight. After showing up five times in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, the bizarre reappearing supernova is now helping scientists solve one of astronomy's biggest mysteries: how fast the universe is expanding. About 13.8 billion years ago, the universe as...

May 19, 2023

James Webb Telescope finds evidence of 'celestial monster' stars the size of 10,000 suns lurking at the dawn of time

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered the first evidence that millions of supermassive stars up to 10,000 times the mass of the sun may be hiding at the dawn of the universe. Born just 440 million years after the Big Bang, the stars could shed light on how...

May 24, 2023

What's the difference between outer space and deep space?

Space is famously considered the final frontier — but what part of space are we even talking about? Space, outer space and deep space are used somewhat interchangeably in many contexts, but astronomers have come up with clear distinctions between them. So, what's the difference between them? The term outer...

May 30, 2023

What is the speed of light?

The universe has a speed limit, and it's the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than light — not even our best spacecraft — according to the laws of physics. So, what is the speed of light? Light moves at an incredible 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per...

Jun 6, 2023

James Webb Space Telescope finds the faintest galaxy ever detected at the dawn of the universe

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has identified one of the most distant galaxies ever seen — an ancient, nearly invisible star cluster so remote that its light is the faintest scientists have ever detected. Called JD1, the galaxy — whose light traveled for roughly 13.3 billion years to reach...

Jun 7, 2023

James Webb Space Telescope discovers oldest organic molecules in the known universe, 12 billion light-years from Earth

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have spotted a cloud of complicated organic molecules in a galaxy 12.3 billion light-years away — the farthest from Earth that molecules of this kind have ever been detected. The discovery, which was published on June 5 in the journal Nature, might...

Jun 8, 2023

Enormous structure discovered near doomed galaxy group is the longest galactic 'tail' ever seen

Like comets and cats, clusters of galaxies sometimes have long tails. Recently, astronomers have found that those tails can span staggering distances, with one newly discovered tail stretching more than a million light-years long — or longer than 10 Milky Way galaxies lined up side to side. The discovery began...

Jun 9, 2023

Largest explosion since the Big Bang was powered by a bizarre energy jet unlike any other

Scientists may finally know what made the largest explosion in the universe ever seen by humankind so powerful. Astronomers have discovered that the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever seen had a unique jet structure and was dragging an unusually large amount of stellar material along with it. This might explain...

Jun 13, 2023

This collapsed star is turning into a gigantic diamond before our eyes

Scientists have discovered a star that is in the process of crystallizing into a celestial diamond. The star is a white dwarf — the shriveled husk of a sun-like star that burned off most of its fuel before collapsing. For stars with cores made mostly of metallic oxygen and carbon,...