Space

 In under 300 hours, the world-renowned CSIRO telescope in Australia surveyed the whole southern sky in amazing detail and record time, discovering 3 million previously unseen galaxies. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> The feat, announced on December 1 by Australia's national science organisation CSIRO, has swiftly made headlines throughout the world for developing a new atlas of the universe. According to the researchers, as many as 1 million of these distant galaxies may be previously unknown to astronomy, and this is likely just the beginning. Because of the success of this first study, CSIRO scientists are already planning additional in-depth observations in the future years. Previous telescopic all-sky surveys of the galaxy took years and tens of thousands of photographs to complete. The t

With a flawlessly symmetrical ring encircling a red sphere of stars, Hoag's object is one of the most stunning mysteries in the universe.  style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> If you look closely at the serpent constellation in the northern sky, you might notice a galaxy within a galaxy within a galaxy. This cosmic turducken is known as Hoag's object, and it has baffled astronomers since astronomer Arthur Hoag found it in 1950. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> Left: Hubble Heritage WFPC2 colour image of Hoag’s Object (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team). Right: The FPI Hα data drawn as co

An international team of astronomers has captured some extremely rare photos of planetary systems forming hundreds of light-years away. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> While photos of " protoplanetary discs " have been seen before, the process has never been documented in such detail. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> “In [earlier] pictures, the regions close to the star, where rocky planets form, are covered by only few pixels,” lead author Jacques Kluska, from KU Leuven in Belgium, said in a statement. The photos depict the core regions of young stars where planets begin to form, gathering materials

As the dynamics inside a fusion reactor are very complex, the walls melt. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> Image credit: Max Planck Institute of Plasma physics. Cutaway of a Fusion Reactor A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wein) have discovered a way to control Type-I ELM plasma instabilities, that melt the walls of fusion devices. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. There is no doubt that the day will come when fusion power plants can provide sustainable energy and solve our persistent energy problems. It is the main reason why so many scientists around the world are working on this power source. Power generation in this way actually mimics the sun. style="display:block"

According to Australian astronomers, a weird spinning object in the Milky Way has been identified that is unlike anything astronomers have ever seen.  The object, which was first discovered by a university student working on his undergraduate thesis, emits a massive burst of radio waves three times each hour. The pulse occurs every 18.18 minutes, " like clockwork ," according to astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker, who headed the inquiry after the student was discovered using the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in Western Australia’s outback. While other things in the universe, such as pulsars, flicker on and off, Hurley-Walker claims that the frequency of 18.18 minutes has never been detected previously. Discovering this object was “kind of spooky for an astronomer,” Walker said. She added: “because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that.” The scientific community is now trying to figure out what they’ve discovered. They were able to establish a few facts after

We are aware of how skewed our perception of reality is. How we see the world is shaped by our senses, our societies, and our knowledge.  style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> And you may want to rethink your belief that science will always provide you with objective reality. Physicists can now verify a hypothesis that Nobel Prize winner Eugen Wigner initially put out in 1961.  The setting of the experiment, dubbed "Wigner's Friend," is not too difficult. You begin with a quantum system that is in superposition, which implies that both of its states exist concurrently up to the point of measurement. In this example, the polarisation (the axis on which a photon spins) is both horizontal and vertical. When they measure it, the system will collapse and the photon will be stuck into one of tho

American space agency NASA on Sunday shared the " largest-ever " image assembled of the Andromeda galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope.  style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> The picture was captured seven years ago and it is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the image depicts a 48,000-light-year-long region of the Andromeda galaxy with over 100 million stars visible. The Instagram picture divides the panoramic image into three parts, with the last revealing a belt of blue stars with countless stars sprinkled around the image. The photograph has captivated internet users since it was shared. It has received almost one million likes. "It is really gorgeous," one user said. "It

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: " significant amounts of water " are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA). And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules. Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND)

It’s possible that an extremely advanced alien civilization has created a transportation network of wormholes around the universe — and we might even be able to spot them. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> While it’s certainly a far fetched theory, according to a new piece by BBC Science Focus, it has some scientists intrigued. Take Nagoya University astrophysicist Fumio Abe, who told the publication that we may have even already captured evidence of such a network in existing observations — but lost them in the sea of data, leading to the intriguing prospect that reanalyzing old observations could lead to a breakthrough in SETI. “If the wormholes have throat radii between 100 and ten million kilometers, are bound to our Galaxy, and are as common as ordinary stars, detection might be achieved by rea

Nothing is standing or stationary.  style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> As you are reading this, the Earth spins around its own axis; it revolves around the sun, the sun is moving through space at a stunning 792,000 km/h around the gigantic center, and our universe is moving at a mind-boggling 2.1 million kilometers per hour. You may contemplate that as you are reading this, your body in a stationary position. But, everything inside the universe travels, from our planet (Earth) –which revolves on its axis at a speed of approximately 1700 km/h— to the solar system and even the Milky Way Galaxy. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="tr

There’s trouble brewing at the Milky Way’s edge: new measurements show that a peculiar distortion of the galactic disk is moving slowly, contradicting previous reports. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> As yet, nobody knows which result will be correct. Some crucial details in the structure and genesis of spiral galaxies throughout the cosmos are at stake. The Milky Way is characterized by astronomers as a flat disk-shaped, double-armed spiral galaxy twirling and twinkling with stars. However, astronomers have known since the mid-twentieth century that this picture is partially inaccurate. Observations in the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum initially indicated that our galaxy’s farthest borders are warped, with some parts drooping down and others bending upward, similar to a vinyl recor

On October 24, NASA's $1 billion Juno spacecraft took its ninth series of breathtaking flyby photographs while travelling at more than 130,000 kilometres per hour above Jupiter.  style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> However, the sun slipped between the massive planet and Earth for more than a week, preventing the spacecraft from broadcasting back its valuable data. Previous article has been updated. However, now that the conjunction is finished, new raw image data from Juno's ninth perijove — the spacecraft's high-speed flybys — has flooded in. Researchers made the data available online on Tuesday, and a community of amateurs and pros has been hard at work processing it to produce colourful and breathtaking new images of Jupiter. “Brand new Jupiter pics from @NASAJuno Perijove 09! What a bl

Non-scientific versions of the answer have invoked many gods and have been the basis of all religions and most philosophy since the beginning of recorded time. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> Now a team of mathematicians from Canada and Egypt have used cutting edge scientific theory and a mind-boggling set of equations to work out what preceded the universe in which we live. In (very) simple terms they applied the theories of the very small – the world of quantum mechanics – to the whole universe - explained  by general theory of relativity, and discovered the universe basically goes though four different phases. More importantly they discovered what came before this universe was.. another universe or more accurately another ‘ cosmological phase ’. Despite being infinite in size our universe is cy

A newly discovered crescent of galaxies spanning 3.3 billion light-years is one of the world’s largest known structures, challenging some of astronomers’ most fundamental assumptions about the universe. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7629783868" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> The epic arrangement known as the Giant Arc is made up of galaxies, galaxy clusters, and a lot of gas and dust. It is located 9.2 billion light-years away and stretches across roughly a 15th of the observable universe. Its discovery was “ serendipitous ,” according to Alexia Lopez, a doctoral candidate in cosmology at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in the United Kingdom. Lopez was creating maps of things in the night sky using light from approximately 120,000 quasars, which are distant brilliant cores of galaxies where supermassive black holes consume m