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2+ week, 6+ day ago (199+ words) by Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today Growing cosmic dust on a planet seems counterintuitive, but researchers have tried to do just that by using a laser to ablate rocks and then attempting to deposit the resulting gas and dust. In these laboratory simulations, the resulting deposition is always extremely porous, matching the data gathered by Rosetta and Stardust. Modeling confirmed a similar amount of porosity, especially for "hit-and-stick" models of early dust interactions, which were particularly good at causing extrinsic porosity. Atomistic modeling also showed how having internal "micropores" on samples that were intrinsically porous could harbor water molecules and make them less likely to sublimate away in interplanetary space. More information: Alexey Potapov et al, Is cosmic dust porous?, The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s00159-025-00164-5 Provided by Universe Today More from Astronomy and Astrophysics Cosmic dust in space may be…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (109+ words) by Matthew Williams, Universe Today In the coming years, scientists hope to have a mission ready to go that could intercept future ISOs and study them up close. This includes the ESA's Comet Interceptor, which is expected to be completed by 2029. Provided by Universe Today More from Astronomy and Astrophysics China's Tianwen-1 orbiter imaged interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it passed Mars, capturing its tail and coma from about 30 million km. Despite the object's small size (5.6 km) and faintness, the orbiter's high time-accuracy camera enabled successful observation. These data support the view that 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet rich in water and volatiles....

2+ week, 6+ day ago (307+ words) Recent advances in cosmology have made it possible to reconstruct in detail the history of the universe, from the rapid initial expansion known as inflation to primordial nucleosynthesis, the formation of the first atomic nuclei heavier than hydrogen, which occurred between 10 seconds and 20 minutes after the Big Bang. The intermediate period, however, remains largely unexplored. As the authors explain, "An intriguing possibility is that during this interval, matter temporarily dominated the universe." In this scenario, matter halos can naturally be formed. Furthermore, if the particles could interact with one another, then the interactions can lead to a gravothermal collapse, resulting in compact objects such as black holes and other exotic cosmic structures. Among these compact objects, researchers suggest that cannibal stars could have formed. Cannibal stars are similar to traditional stars, except that it is the particle self-annihilation instead of…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (525+ words) by Vanessa McBride, The Conversation The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) celebrates 20 years of observing the sky. SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. It's been steadily revealing new science knowledge, ranging from the discovery of planets outside our solar system to understanding the unusual physics around black holes. It's also 20 years of doing science for society. SALT is where I conducted much of my Ph.D. research. I'd grown up in rural Eastern Cape, marveling at the diamond night skies. My first fascination for astronomy was sparked when learning about the concept of SALT at a science fest in high school. Years later, I received the first SALT Stobie scholarship for Ph.D. study. It was a dream opportunity to start a multi-year observing campaign. My research sought to understand how mass moves from one star to another…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (166+ words) by Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today Currently, calculations give Euclid an extended life of about eight years, thanks to the additional fuel the craft has on board. That would more than double the six-year original mission, which is already well underway. With that additional time, Dr. Bedin suggests Euclid do something completely outlandish'do the exact same thing that it did for the first six-year mission. More information: Luigi "Rolly'' Bedin, The case for an Astrometric Mission Extension of Euclid. Extending Gaia by 6 magnitudes with Euclid covering one-third of the sky, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.23694 Provided by Universe Today More from Astronomy and Astrophysics Euclid has enough fuel for an additional eight years beyond its primary mission, enabling a repeat survey to measure proper motion of faint objects, which Gaia cannot detect due to its brightness limit. This extended mission could improve astrometric…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (544+ words) Last week, four lasers were projected into the sky above the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Paranal site in Chile. The lasers successfully created an "artificial star" that astronomers can use to measure and then correct the blur caused by Earth's atmosphere, ESO announced today. The striking launch of these lasers from each of the eight-meter telescopes at Paranal is a significant milestone of the GRAVITY+ project'a complex upgrade to ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). GRAVITY+ unlocks a greater observing power and much wider sky coverage for the VLTI than previously possible, enabling the study of even fainter and more distant objects. Dr. Rebeca Garcia Lopez, who is an expert in star and planet formation at UCD School of Physics, is an associate partner in the GRAVITY+ consortium, in charge of the instrument spectrograph upgrade. She said, "This opens a…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (362+ words) edited by Stephanie Baum, reviewed by Robert Egan This shimmering view of interstellar gas and dust was captured by the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope. The nebula is part of a so-called dark cloud, named LDN 1641. It sits at about 1,300 light-years from Earth, within a sprawling complex of dusty gas clouds where stars are being formed, in the constellation of Orion. This is because dust grains block visible light from stars behind them very efficiently but are much less effective at dimming near-infrared light. The nebula is teeming with very young stars. Some of the objects embedded in the dusty surroundings spew out material'a sign of stars being formed. The outflows appear as magenta-colored spots and coils when zooming into the image. In the upper left, obstruction by dust diminishes and the view opens toward the more distant universe…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (721+ words) by Evan Gough, Universe Today Earth's atmosphere is an impediment to astronomical observations. Not only is cloudy weather a problem, but temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere mean that ground-based telescopes require sophisticated adaptive optics systems to see clearly. Radio telescopes aren't bothered by clouds, but need to be built in 'radio quiet' locations to do their job best. The desire to get beyond Earth's atmospheric and other limitations has led to a fleet of space telescopes, and collectively, they've advanced our understanding of the cosmos in profound ways. But they're expensive and complicated, and for telescopes at L1, beyond the reach of maintenance missions. For decades, thinkers have been talking about building telescopes on the moon. Lunar telescopes share many of the same benefits as space telescopes, outperform them in some ways, and could be much less expensive, and potentially easier…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (492+ words) edited by Stephanie Baum, reviewed by Robert Egan Important details of this solar "magnetic field conveyor belt" are still poorly understood. The exact processes at the sun's poles are likely to be crucial. From Earth, scientists have only a grazing view of this region, making it impossible to determine the properties of the magnetic field. Most space probes have a similarly limited perspective. "To understand the sun's magnetic cycle, we still lack knowledge of what happens at the sun's poles. Solar Orbiter can now provide this missing piece of the puzzle," says Sami Solanki, MPS director and co-author of a new study on this topic appearing in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Since February 2020, ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been traveling in elongated ellipses around the sun. In March this year, it left for the first time the plane in which…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (684+ words) by Paul Sutter, Universe Today If we take out all the matter, neutrinos, dark matter, cosmic rays, and radiation from the deepest parts of the voids, the only thing left is empty space. I know it sounds like a paradox, but the voids are full of the vacuum of space-time. And crucially, that's not nothing. What we think of as a particle is really just a manifestation of a deeper, more fundamental object. These objects are the fields. There's a field associated with every kind of particle, and these fields completely soak every cubic centimeter of space and time. They have existed since the Big Bang and they completely fill up every corner of the universe. When we point to something and say oh look at that electron zooming by what we're really seeing is an excitation or a vibration…...