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New research has revealed high-altitude air in Earth’s atmosphere is teeming with living organisms, a discovery that challenges our views on the dispersal of microbes and their relationship to human health. The findings, made by an international collective of climate, health, and atmospheric specialists based in Japan and Spain, has revealed Earth’s atmosphere is populated with a surprisingly diverse array of living bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Discovered at altitudes as high as 1,000 to 3,000 meters, the organisms included several potential human pathogens, revealing their ability to travel over great distances and prompting new concerns about their impact on health...

Artist’s impression of the white dwearf star WD1054–226 orbited by clouds of planetary debris and a major planet in the habitable zone. Credit: Mark A. Garlick / markgarlick.com. ============================================================================== The lifespan of the Sun is 12.3 billion years. This is 1.5 billion years shorter than the age of the Universe, 13.8 billion years. If the Sun happened to be born in the first 1.5 billion years of cosmic history, or equivalently at a cosmological redshift above 4 when the first several percent of all stars formed, then it would have turned into a white dwarf by now. There are about...

A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has discovered a small planet that displays peculiar orbital motion. The shimmying planet, located 455 light-years from Earth, shows that planetary systems can be considerably more complex than researchers have previously thought.The newly discovered planet TOI-1408c has a mass equivalent to eight Earths and circles very close to a larger planet, the hot gas giant TOI-1408b. After starting to study both planets and their star, TOI-1408, in detail, the researchers felt puzzled. The small planet has a very peculiar orbital motion. The interactions between the two planets and their star can...

The image is a composite. 2M1207b orbits the brown dwarf from almost twice as far as Neptune does from the sun, but in the image, the planet appears positioned close to its star. The data used to capture it comes from three near-infrared exposures in different wavebands. It's a technique used to produce images for public consumption, but more importantly, to locate exoplanets around stars. That's because infrared data lessens the huge brightness difference between a star and a planet, making the latter easier to find.It was produced using the 27-foot (8.2 meters) Yepun telescope — part of the Very...

Scientists found that Sedna... had a weird orbit around the sun... hinted that another large mass in the outer solar system was gravitationally pulling on the miniworld...Then, in a 2014 study, astronomers announced that they had detected... 2012 VP113, with an eccentric orbit similar to Sedna's... Since 2016, Brown, Batygin and others... have discovered even more eccentric TNOs — bringing the total to 13...Planet Nine's composition is probably "most like Neptune," ... around 500 astronomical units away from the sun...This far out, it could take between 5,000 and 10,000 years for Planet Nine to complete a single trip around the...

Scientists have revealed that graphite in the ancient Saglek-Hebron iron formations of Nunatsiavut, once thought to indicate the earliest life on Earth, likely has abiotic origins.Early Life on EarthThe isotopic composition of carbon in iron formations from the Saglek-Hebron Complex in Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) has been seen as evidence of the earliest traces of life on Earth. But a new study by the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, and University College London suggests otherwise.The study shows that the petrographic, geochemical, and spectroscopic features in the graphite (the crystalline form of carbon) found in the Saglek-Hebron chemical sedimentary rocks are in...

...two teams, called UNITE (UNISTELLAR Network Investigating TESS Exoplanets) and Exoplanet Watch, have combined forces to confirm a new planetary discovery—a toasty "warm Jupiter."...Planets around other stars, called exoplanets, sometimes block the light from the stars they orbit. When this happens, it's called a "transit." Amateur astronomers can observe exoplanet transits with their own telescopes by watching for the light from a nearby star to dim.NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) sees these dimming events, too—many thousands of them. But just seeing a star dim once is not enough. You need to catch multiple dimming events (and perform various other...

Earth's North Pole points to a direction in space marked by the North Star. Polaris is both a navigation aid and a remarkable star in its own right. It is the brightest member of a triple-star system and is a pulsating variable star. Polaris gets brighter and fainter periodically as the star’s diameter grows and shrinks over a four-day cycle.Polaris is a kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. Astronomers use these stars as "standard candles" because their true brightness depends on their period of pulsation: Brighter stars pulsate slower than fainter stars. How bright a star appears in...

MacGregor and her colleagues observed Proxima Centauri for 40 hours using nine telescopes on the ground and in space. In the process, they got a surprise: Proxima Centauri ejected a flare, or a burst of radiation that begins near the surface of a star, that ranks as one of the most violent seen anywhere in the galaxy..."The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor.

The planet is as cold as ice and orbits far from its star. The observations from JWST of this cold giant planet. Image Credit: T. Müller (MPIA/HdA), E. Matthews (MPIA) ========================================================================== JWST has imaged a new planet directly and it is quite a fascinating object. It orbits one of the three stars in the Epsilon Indi system and it weighs six times the mass of Jupiter. This super-Jupiter is 20 to 40 times further from its star than Earth is from the Sun – so it is very cold. It also doesn't help that the star, Eps Ind A, is...

An international team of researchers, including a chemist from Northwestern University, has discovered that metallic minerals on the deep-ocean floor can produce oxygen at depths of 13,000 feet. This finding challenges the traditional belief that only photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and algae, generate Earth's oxygen. The discovery suggests oxygen can also be produced at the seafloor, supporting aerobic sea life in complete darkness. The study will be published on Monday, July 22, in the journal Nature Geoscience. Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) discovered this "dark oxygen" during ship-based fieldwork in the Pacific Ocean. Franz...

Astronomers at Penn State University have identified an exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit ever observed among transiting planets...Named TIC 241249530, this newly discovered exoplanet exhibits a highly elongated orbit resembling a cucumber rather than a circle. Published in the journal Nature, the study provides significant insights into the formation and evolution of Hot Jupiters, a class of massive gas giants that orbit very close to their host stars...First detected using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in January 2020, the exoplanet's host star exhibited a dip in its brightness, indicating the presence of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front...

The same observations also indicate LHS 1140b is a world of mostly solids and liquids, not an undersized gas giant. Artist's impression of LHS 1140b in the likely scenario where one side is all ice, while the side tidally locked to its star has a region of liquid ocean and cloud, which unfortunately looks like an eyeball (Earth for size comparison). Image Credit: B. Gougeon/Universite de Montreal Observations by the JWST have revealed exciting hints of an Earth-like atmosphere on a planet orbiting a relatively nearby star. The planet is likely to be cooler than Earth, but still warmer than...

Costco will no longer offer books for sale year-round and will instead stock them only for the holiday shopping period and during special promotions, according to a report — a surprise move that poses yet another threat to the publishing industry.Several publishing executives who were informed of the retailer’s plans told The New York Times that Costco will cease offering books for sale on a consistent basis starting in January.The decision was met with criticism on Reddit, where users vented that the decision was akin to “cancelling the hot dog in the food court” — a reference to Costco’s beloved...

Gliese 12 b is a newly discovered rocky exoplanet, between Earth and Venus in size. It orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years away..."Transiting" means this world passes in front of its star from our earthly perspective. That fact makes it possible to observe with TESS, whose full name is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite...The uncertainties about Gliese 12 b center on its possible atmopshere. If it doesn't have an atmosphere, computer models indicate its average surface temperature are slightly warmer than Earthlike, with an average temperature of only around 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). That's in contrast to...

Scientists using the SPECULOOS (Search for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescope network have reported the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting the most common star type in the galaxy a mere 55 light years away. Given that the farthest star ever spotted by human scientists lies over 9 billion light-years from Earth, this newly discovered rocky world is one of the closest such space bodies ever spotted. Dubbed SPECULOOS-3 b, the planet orbits an ultracool red dwarf star, the most common star in the Milky Way galaxy. This type of star can live 100 times longer than our Sun, making...

Why is the warm gas-giant exoplanet WASP-107 b so puffy? Two independent teams of researchers have an answer. Data collected using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, combined with prior observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show surprisingly little methane (CH4) in the planet’s atmosphere, indicating that the interior of WASP-107 b must be significantly hotter and the core much more massive than previously estimated. The unexpectedly high temperature is thought to be a result of tidal heating caused by the planet’s slightly non-circular orbit, and can explain how WASP-107 b can be so inflated without resorting to extreme theories of...

A survey of five million distant solar systems, aided by "neural network" algorithms, has discovered 60 stars that appear to be surrounded by giant alien power plants...Ever since theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the idea at Princeton in 1960, astrophysicists have speculated that advanced extraterrestrials might have constructed massive solar energy collectors around one star or more. [Illustration in Comment #1]

Around a star in our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have discovered an extremely low-density planet that is as light as cotton candy. The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density. CREDIT: K. Ivanov ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A team of astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have discovered a distant planet that they can’t explain with current planet evolutionary theories. The newly discovered WASP-193b is a gas giant 50 percent larger than Jupiter, the largest gas giant in our solar system. However, it is only one-tenth as dense,...

A new study of metal ore deep inside the moon is offering fresh evidence that Earth's natural satellite was formed by an ancient planet crashing into Earth long ago. This long-theorized interplanetary collision — which scientists believe occurred some 4.5 billion years ago — saw a Mars-sized planet named 'Theia' slice itself into hot lava fragments upon impact with the Earth. While some of Theia's planetary remains appear to be buried as dense and massive 'blobs' deep underneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean's tectonic plates, scientists said evidence for where the rest of Theia went after this crash had remained...