Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a cluster of young, blue stars encircling the first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered. The presence of the star cluster suggests that the black hole was once at the core of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy. [...more]
Astronomers using NASA's Kepler mission have detected two Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star. This discovery marks a milestone in the hunt for alien worlds, since it brings scientists one step closer to their ultimate goal of finding a twin Earth. [...more]
Astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and with these latest studies they have remarkably precise values of its mass, spin, and distance from Earth. [...more]
In a new paper, Avi Loeb, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Edwin Turner, Princeton University, suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights. [...more]
For the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that’s cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets. [...more]
The nature of dark matter is a mystery -- a mystery that a new study has only deepened. [...more]
New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought. [...more]
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite project is one of 11 proposals recently accepted for evaluation as potential future science missions by NASA. Each project will receive $1 million to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. Led by George Ricker, senior research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, TESS would use an [...] [...more]
Scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center have found that fledgling catbirds living in the suburbs are extremely vulnerable. Almost 80 percent are killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Nearly half of the deaths are connected to domestic cats. The team studied catbird nests in 3 suburban neighborhoods in Maryland: Spring Park, Opal Daniels Park, and Bethesda. Learn more about this 2011 study by clicking here. (Catbird photo by Gerhard Hofmann)
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