Author: Richard Massey, Professor of extragalactic astrophysics (dark matter and cosmology), Durham University In recent decades, we’ve learnt huge amounts about the universe and its history. The rapidly developing technology of telescopes – both on Earth and in space – has been a key part of this process, and those that are due to start […]
Made famous in 1995 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula have captured imaginations worldwide with their arresting, ethereal beauty. Now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of these towering celestial structures using data from NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This is the […]
When you are trying to solve one of the biggest conundrums in cosmology, you should triple check your homework. The puzzle, called the “Hubble Tension,” is that the current rate of the expansion of the universe is faster than what astronomers expect it to be, based on the universe’s initial conditions and our present understanding […]
early galaxy problem Author: Rajendra Gupta, Adjunct professor, Physics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa Early universe observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cannot be explained by current cosmological models. These models estimate the universe to be 13.8 billion years in age, based on the big-bang expanding universe concept. My research proposes a model that […]
collision Authors: Simon Lock, NERC Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol; Matthew Kenworthy, Associate professor in Astronomy, Leiden University, and Zoe Leinhardt, Associate Professor, School of Physics, University of Bristol The afterglow of a massive collision between two giant planets may have been detected for the first time. The wreckage of the […]
In a paper published today in Science, an international team reports on their discovery of the most ancient and distant fast radio burst located to date, about eight billion years old. The discovery smashes the team’s previous record by 50 per cent. It confirms that fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure the […]
Galaxies from the early Universe are more like our own Milky Way than previously thought, flipping the entire narrative of how scientists think about structure formation in the Universe. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers has discovered that galaxies like our own Milky Way dominate throughout the universe and […]
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun the study of one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years, since its discovery in February […]
How close can a rocky planet be to a star, and still sustain water and life? Where is the edge of habitability? A recently discovered exoplanet may be key to solving that mystery, providing important insights about conditions at the inner edge of a star’s habitable zone and why Earth and Venus developed so differently […]
nuclear star cluster This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of M74 (or NGC 628), otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy. Webb’s sharp vision has revealed delicate filaments of gas and dust in the grandiose spiral arms which wind outwards from the centre of this image. A lack of gas […]