The image shows an artist’s impression of Barnard’s star b and its dim host star. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Put on your friendliest face and say hello to the newest member of our planetary neighborhood: Barnard’s star b.
An international team led by researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science announced today that they’ve detected an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to Earth at just six light-years away. The ...read more
Damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Rockport, Texas. (Credit: AMFPhotography/Shutterstock)
The death toll from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria numbers in the thousands. Excessive rain and flooding from the Atlantic hurricane season led to damages that cost at least $265 billion. Now, two new studies show how human activity is at fault.
“Tropical cyclones can have really strong impacts on people’s lives,” Christina Patricola, a climate scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley N ...read more
An artist’s illustration shows what of the exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s Star might look like on the surface. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Just six light-years from Earth, the second closest star system to our sun hosts a frozen super-Earth, according to new findings by an international team of researchers.
Barnard’s Star is a small, ancient kind of sun called a red dwarf. And while it’s not easily visible without a telescope, Barnard’s Star has long attracted astro ...read more
What does a martian sunrise sound like? Now you can find out, as researchers have “sonified” (or turned into sound) an image of the Opportunity rover’s 5,000th sunrise on Mars. The data have been used to create a unique, two-minute piece of music, titled “Mars Soundscapes” — check it out below:
[embedded content]
To turn the photo into sound, researchers scanned across the image from left to right. They combined brightness and color from each individual pixel ...read more
The Ant 2 “ghost” galaxy is a large, dim dwarf galaxy that scientists have discovered near the edge of the Milky Way. While low in mass, Ant 2 is about the same size as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). (Credit: V. Belokurov and A. Smith (Cambridge, UK and CCA, New York, US) based on the images by Marcus and Gail Davies and Robert Gendler)
An international team of astronomers can’t fully explain the “ghost” galaxy that they discovered about 130 ...read more
The giant South American river turtle stands on the banks of the Tabuleiro do Embaubal Wildlife Refuge in Brazil. (Credit: Tarcisio Schnaider/shutterstock)
A group of community members living in the Brazilian Amazon have created biodiversity hotspots by working to protect a single species, the giant South American river turtle. That’s according to a new study out Tuesday. The finding showcases the power of local conservation efforts, particularly in places that lack financial resources, ...read more
A plant that evolved hollow thorns for ants to shelter in. In exchange, the ants defend the plant from attacks from other insects and mammals. (Credit: Field Museum, Corrie Moreau)
As alliances go, the one that exists between ants and plants is impressively robust. Symbiotic relationships exist between many species of flora and Formicidae fauna, and it’s evolved past simple you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours deals. Some plants have been living and working with ants for so ...read more
“First Man” gave us a look at a side of Neil Armstrong we don’t see too often, focusing on the family side of his life over the science element, but even that only gave us a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes home and family life of the notoriously stoic first man on the Moon. Now, the brand new Armstrong-Engel Family Gallery has published personal, never-before-seen images of Neil and his family beginning in 1955 during his Edwards days gong all the way to 1969 and the Moon land ...read more
About 200,000 light-years from Earth, the SMC is a dwarf galaxy only about 7,000 light-years in diameter. This radio image shows hydrogen gas in the SMC, which is losing such gas at a higher rate than it is currently forming stars. (Credit: Naomi McClure-Griffiths et al, CSIRO’s ASKAP telescope)
Just as each successive smartphone companies release includes a higher-resolution camera for sharper, more detailed photos, each new instrument astronomers build reveals the universe in ever-fine ...read more
