Tag Archives: cosmic

A recent breakthrough in astronomical research, published in Nature Astronomy, has provided a detailed glimpse into the internal structure of an ancient galaxy, thanks to one of the strongest gravitational lensing events ever observed. The study, led by Seiji Fujimoto, reveals how natural magnification through gravitational lensing allows scientists to study distant galaxies with unprecedented clarity. The research, which combines …

A cosmic blast may have wiped out a lost civilization 12,800 years ago. Credit: Kevin Gill / CC BY 2.0 A powerful cosmic explosion may have wiped out an early, advanced human civilization around 12,800 years ago. New scientific findings in Louisiana suggest that a large comet fragment exploded in Earth’s atmosphere with enough force to melt stone into glass, …

A distant galaxy appears to have more than a dozen tightly packed star-forming clumps arranged like a bunch of grapes — far more than astronomers thought possible in a galaxy from the early universe. The galaxy, nicknamed “Cosmic Grapes,” is believed to have formed just 930 million years after the Big Bang. A new study has revealed that the galaxy …

A groundbreaking set of supercomputer simulations is offering a vivid glimpse into how the universe’s first stars, known as Population III stars, emerged from the chaos of the early cosmos. These simulations, led by Ke-Jung Chen of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and detailed in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveal …

Growing up, my first pop-culture obsession – before Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, or Pokémon – was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I obsessed over their animated adventures and live-action movies, and I lived through their Golden Age of video games back when Konami was at the top of its game. For that reason, I could not have possibly been more …

When it comes to deep space observations, our cosmological insignificance seems to grow with the resolution of our telescopes’ cameras. In the latest advance, astronomers constructed the deepest-ever images of Abell 3667, a massive galaxy cluster located 700 million light-years from Earth—and most of the tiny dots you see represent entire galaxies. But the latest images of Abell 3667 also …

Get ready stargazers: the Perseid meteor shower peaks next week, Aug. 12-13, bringing up to 100 shooting stars per hour, along with the potential for dazzling fireballs The Perseid meteor shower occurs each year as Earth barrels through the trail of ancient debris shed by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. These cometary fragments — often no larger than a grain of sand — …

After almost 20 years of the MCU’s dominance—where characters like Gamora and Groot have miraculously become household names and command the careers of A-list actors—we’ve suddenly found ourselves in a period of nostalgia for Marvel’s ramshackle 1990s era. This was first felt with the warm reception that found Disney+’s hugely charming X-Men ’97 series, a show that was completely disconnected …

“You didn’t mention camping on Mars.” My wife had a point: thin air, thinner soil, extreme UV, rocks straight from a Nasa red-planet image, jagged ranges – all ideal backdrops for a movie set. No wonder the place was considered for training by the Apollo program. Its sparse life forms include an intimidating shrub whose thorns mimic the stingers on …

NASA astronaut, Donald Pettit, has gained a distinguished reputation for his show-stopping photography from the International Space Station. Now safely returned to Earth, the spaceman has taken time to reveal more of his incredible pictures. Pettit has completed four spaceflights, accumulating a total of 590 days in space, making him one of NASA’s most experienced astronauts. His last mission saw …