Astronomy

A Computer Simulation of the Universe’s Complete 14-Billion-Year Evolution

The Bolshoi Simulation is a massive, incredibly detailed model of everything, providing a comprehensive simulation of the universe’s 14 billion year history. Scientists are now exploring the simulation, and we’ve got some of the most breathtaking results of their efforts. The image up top is just one many stunning images to come out of this…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

New telescope views cosmic events with unprecedented detail

Situated 5,000 meters above sea level, atop a vast, arid plateau in northern Chile, sits the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). Despite being only one-third complete, ALMA is already the most powerful telescope of its kind, and is well on its way to becoming the most technologically advanced telescope we’ve ever built. And now, for…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The moon makes waves in our atmosphere as it moves in front of the sun

During total solar eclipses, the moon moves between the earth and the sun, completely blocking out the sun’s light. But that’s not all that happens. Recently scientist proved that when this happens, the moon sends waves rippling through the earth’s atmosphere that pile up like the bow waves on a boat. Once again, science gets…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Solar storm throws up plasma bursts bigger than our entire planet

No, Earth hasn’t suddenly migrated next to the Sun, but everything else about this picture is awesomely real. This is a plasma eruption from sunspot group AR 1302, the most recent solar storm to wreak havoc on Earth’s magnetic field. Thankfully, said havoc has pretty much been limited to some especially spectacular auroras. But there’s…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

In a faraway galaxy, seven supernovas explode all at once

Galaxy Arp 220, located 250 million light-years from Earth, is home to seven different supernova explosions all going on at the same time. We’ve never seen so many stars exploding simultaneously in the same galaxy. A team of astronomers at Chalmers and Onsala Space Observatory found that all seven supernovas went off in the last…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Neil deGrasse Tyson recounts his first meeting with Carl Sagan

Here’s some seriously uplifting material to kick off your weekend. Turns out that when Neil deGrasse Tyson was applying to colleges in high school, Carl Sagan made an outstanding effort to make him feel especially at home at Cornell University, where he taught. Tyson eventually wound up at Harvard for undergrad, but it’s still incredible…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Fewer asteroids are menacing Earth than we thought — and we know where 90 percent of them are

NASA recently repurposed a satellite called WISE that had completed its mission with all instruments intact and quite a bit of fuel. Renaming the mission NEOWISE, the space agency gave the satellite a new job: map the entire volume of space in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit around the sun, looking for every possible rock,…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Citizen Scientists may have found two new Earth-like planets, using Planet Hunters

Citizen Science made an amazing leap this week. Citizen scientists, using the data supplied by the Kepler public archives, helped to identify two possible planets outside of our solar system, thanks to the browser game Planet Hunters. The 10 best candidates as sifted through by citizen scientists during the first month afterPlanet Hunters went live…

io9 Keith Veronese

The Beautiful and Bizarre Dry Ice Pits of Mars

All around the Martian south pole, there are huge deposits of frozen carbon dioxide, better known as dry ice. In this image by NASA’s Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, we can see huge dry ice pits… and the mysterious walls that encircle them. At first glance, it may look like these pits are lined with gold, and…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

It’s three galaxies in one for Arp 272

Colliding galaxies may be common, but cosmic cacophony on this scale is still unusual. What we have here are two galaxies merging together in your standard collision…and then a third galaxy sidling in, just to complete the intergalactic chaos. To get the full effect, you’re going to want to click and expand the image to…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Peer into the terrible fury of a flaring black hole

Black holes “flare” when they release gigantic jets of material into space. While we’ve learned much about these jets and the accretion disks that feed black holes, we still know little about the ultra-bright, incredibly energetic bases of these jets. That’s starting to change, thanks to NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, which has…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

NASA gives us the best astronomical pun ever

About 6500 light years from earth, there’s a red chicken in the sky. There may even be more than one. Many people report seeing a chicken in this new Hubble image of the Lambda Centauri Nebula, earning it the nickname “Angry Bird Nebula” and “Chicken Nebula,” but they clash over exactly where the bird is.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Our solar system might have once had an extra gas planet

This solar system just doesn’t work. According to a new computer simulation, the planets could never have come together in their current configuration. The only explanation is that we once had a fifth gas giant…and it’s still out there somewhere. That’s a pretty big claim to make, so let’s see how David Nesvorny of Colorado’s…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The search is on for a lost piece of the Apollo program’s history

Two months before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, Apollo 10 completed the final test mission, doing everything except land on the Moon. Now amateur astronomers are looking for Apollo 10’s long-lost lunar module… which is, rather adorably, named “Snoopy.” Apollo 10 was the last of four dry runs conducted by NASA before the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Stare directly into the terrifying black heart of the Sun

This image is either a closeup look at a dark sunspot moving across the Sun, or a particularly fiery view of the gates of hell. Either way, this is clearly somewhere that’s dangerous to even look at, let alone visit. Credit for the image goes to the Swedish Solar Telescope, located on the Canary Islands.…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

That Cassini Smartypants Spacecraft Is One Amazing Photographer

The Cassini spacecraft has been able to capture this stunning image of five Saturn moons in one single frame. From left to right: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

Nebulae just don’t get more ridiculously beautiful than this

This is the Orion Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 1,500 light-years away. We have the Spitzer Space Telescope and its infrared camera to thanks for this incredible image, which pretty much shatters the scale for gorgeous cosmic vistas. There’s just so much to love about this image – the swirling interplay of reds and…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Why Earth might have started out as a gas giant

All planets are vast clumps of dust and gas packed together by gravity. If there’s lots of material, a gas giant is the result. If there isn’t much material, you get a rocky planet. At least, that’s what we thought. But now Seung-Hoon Cha and Sergei Nayakshin of the UK’s University of Leicester have come…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

This Is the Binary Star Planet We Were Looking For

have confirmed what it seemed inevitable: a planet orbiting a binary star. It’s no Tatooine but a Saturn-sized gas planet twisting around two stars about 1.5 and 4.5 smaller than our Sun. The stars orbit around each other every 41 days, while the planet—boringly called Kepler-16b—completes one orbit every 229 Earth days. According to the…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole went ballistic during the Renaissance

We didn’t yet have the technology to notice, but Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, threw one hell of a tantrum a few hundred years ago. It’s the only explanation for mysterious x-ray anomalies. The center of the Milky Way is full of X-ray sources, many of which seem…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

A Computer Simulation of the Universe’s Complete 14-Billion-Year Evolution

New telescope views cosmic events with unprecedented detail

The moon makes waves in our atmosphere as it moves in front of the sun

Solar storm throws up plasma bursts bigger than our entire planet

In a faraway galaxy, seven supernovas explode all at once

Neil deGrasse Tyson recounts his first meeting with Carl Sagan

Fewer asteroids are menacing Earth than we thought — and we know where 90 percent of them are

Citizen Scientists may have found two new Earth-like planets, using Planet Hunters

The Beautiful and Bizarre Dry Ice Pits of Mars

It’s three galaxies in one for Arp 272

Peer into the terrible fury of a flaring black hole

NASA gives us the best astronomical pun ever

Our solar system might have once had an extra gas planet

The search is on for a lost piece of the Apollo program’s history

Stare directly into the terrifying black heart of the Sun

That Cassini Smartypants Spacecraft Is One Amazing Photographer

Nebulae just don’t get more ridiculously beautiful than this

Why Earth might have started out as a gas giant

This Is the Binary Star Planet We Were Looking For

The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole went ballistic during the Renaissance

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