Who says you can’t lose your atmosphere to a nearby red dwarf and then grow a new one with the help of volcanic activity? This resilient planet, located 41 light-years from Earth, appears to be thriving again after a rough encounter with its host star.
Tag Archives: Galaxy
Rare Planet With Three Suns Has a Super Weird Orbit
These two celestial bodies share a heartbeat, puzzling scientists
About 15,000 light-years away from Earth, a cloudy patch of space within our galaxy produces ultra-bright flashes of gamma radiation like clockwork. That’s not all—researchers found the unusual “heartbeat” coming from this cosmic gas cloud is beating along in time with the pulses of a black hole, located a whopping 100 light-years away from it. Researchers remain puzzled as to what the unusual long-distance relationship is between the two.
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Astronomers detect more mystery radio bursts from beyond the Milky Way
Sure enough, astronomers have discovered even more of those mysterious fast radio bursts from outside the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope have detected 13 different radio bursts, including six repeat bursts from the same location in a galaxy 1.5 billion light years away. Each of those bursts represents about 25 million times more energy than the Sun, and they were collected at the lowest frequencies yet (400MHz to 800MHz).
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It turns out our galaxy isn’t as special as we thought
Powerful, influential figures exert a irresistible pull, gathering an entourage around them. It’s a pattern that repeats on celestial levels. Our planet has the moon, but also a host of other artificial satellites that we’ve used to boost Earth’s follower count. The sun has planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. But neither can compare to galaxies like our Milky Way, which not only hosts hundreds of billions of stars but also has additional satellites, entire dwarf galaxies that chill in our galaxy’s neighborhood.
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Highest-Energy Cosmic Radiation Comes From a Mysterious Source Beyond Our Galaxy
Not to scare you, but you’re getting hit with radiation constantly. First, there’s just regular old light (yep, that’s a kind of radiation). Then there are low levels of higher energy radiation like the kind in nuclear reactors, including particles coming out of the soil and off of bananas. But the highest-energy radiation is the weirdest stuff. It’s literally out of this galaxy.
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Scientists Think They Know What’s Behind Those Mysterious Gamma Rays in the Galactic Center
Count up all the stuff in a galaxy and you should have a pretty good understanding of how much light is being emitted. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for our own Milky Way. Our galaxy’s got a source of extra gamma rays, the highest-energy light, right in its center. And scientists don’t know where all that energy’s coming from.
The Fat Cat Collective 