Stars can create DNA precursors, suggests new experiment
Scientists at Berkeley Lab and the University of Hawaii have shown how DNA’s molecular precursors – carbon ring structures with…
Search of 100,000 galaxies for advanced civilizations yields no obvious candidates
Using data from NASA’s WISE orbiting observatory, a team of scientists say they have found no evidence of the mid-infrared…
Unusual carbon-based molecule detected 27,000 light years away
Astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule – isopropyl cyanide – in the gaseous star-forming region Sagittarius B2. The discovery,…
Entire star cluster flung from distant galaxy
Astrophysicists have discovered an entire star cluster that has been ejected from the galaxy known as M87 at more than…
Newly discovered neighboring star as cold as the North Pole
Discovered using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes, a brown dwarf star only 7.2 light years…
Kepler mission identifies most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered
An international team of astronomers have announced the discovery of a new rocky planet the same size as Earth that…
Wobbly planets could be best place for finding life, say astrobiologists
Pivoting planets that lean one way and then change orientation within a relatively short time period might be surprisingly habitable.…
Work by celestial archaeologists hints at Earth’s ultimate fate
For decades, astronomers have known that the atmospheres surrounding stars are often “polluted” with elements like carbon, silicon, and iron.…
Mysterious “hypervelocity stars” observed fleeing the galaxy
Astronomers have discovered dozens of solitary stars that are moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky…
First exoplanet images from Gemini
After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world’s most advanced instrument for directly imaging planets around other…
Innovative fiber optic imager may soon photograph exoplanets
A new instrument that combines two high-resolution telescope techniques – adaptive optics and interferometry – has for the first time…
Mysterious “anti-glitch” observed in neutron star’s rotation
Astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, a never before seen event…
Black Holes A Cosmic Contraceptive?
Astronomers from Yale and Leiden University in The Netherlands have discovered that old stars dominated many large galaxies in the…
Stars Gone Wild
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has snapped some pictures of the dusty core of two merging galaxies and uncovered a region…