Using data from NASA’s WISE orbiting observatory, a team of scientists say they have found no evidence of the mid-infrared energy emissions we would expect to observe from other advanced civilizations. The research is a significant expansion of earlier work in this area, which looked at only 100 or so galaxies. “The idea behind our […]
Our planet’s long path around and through the Milky Way means that dark matter could be the ultimate wild card in our ability to predict asteroid strikes, and scientists are now speculating that dark matter could also be affecting the Earth’s core, potentially leading to major volcanic events. In a new paper in Monthly Notices […]
Astrophysicists have discovered an entire star cluster that has been ejected from the galaxy known as M87 at more than two million miles per hour. The newly discovered cluster, which astronomers named HVGC-1, will now travel forever through intergalactic space. “Astronomers have found runaway starsbefore, but this is the first time we’ve found a runaway […]
Astronomers have discovered dozens of solitary stars that are moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy. These cryptic hypervelocity stars appear to be traveling at speeds in excess of a million miles-per-hour, but scientists aren’t sure what force could have given them such a kick. An article describing these […]
Earth resides between two major spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy in what was thought to be a smaller spur structure called the Local Arm. Now, however, new observations indicate that our Local Arm is in fact much more like the adjacent major arms. “Our new evidence suggests that the Local Arm should appear […]
After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of Andromeda and our own Milky Way galaxy, scientists at NASA have visualized what the eventual collision of the two galaxies will look like and where our own solar system will end up. A century ago astronomers did not realize that Andromeda was a separate […]
The X-ray flares that are observed on a daily basis from the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may represent the demise of asteroids plunging into the singularity, according to an analysis of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. A new report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical […]
Working with data from telescopes located around the world, an international team of astronomers have shown that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception and that there are likely billions of planets in our galaxy where humans could live. Reporting their findings in Nature, the team say that most of the Milky […]
