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The dust of dead Earth-like planets has been observed in the atmosphere of four nearby white dwarfs, the core of a dead star that is comparable to that of our sun. A team from the University of Warwick found outer layers containing up to up to 300,000 gigatonnes of rocky debris, which includes up to … Read more
Discovery of pulsars British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar. Since then other types of pulsars that emit x-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted. Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnatised neutron stars but when they were first discovered … Read more
A puzzling line up of six-exoplanets moving in a rhythmic dance as they orbit their star have been discovered in a system 200 light years from Earth. Researchers used the European Space Agency CHEOPS space telescope to detect the unusual explanatory formation – and it could shed light on how systems form. University of St … Read more
Sweet surprise: NASA Insight lander’s first look inside Mars reveals the Red Planet’s crust resembles a three-layer cake The lander’s seismometer has recorded over 480 marsquakes since April 2019 Differences in how seismic waves move lets scientists evaluate the crust’s size and composition They believe Mars’ crust is about 23 miles thick, far thicker than … Read more
Scientists say intelligent life on other planets is ‘exceptionally rare’ and that human-like civilisations are unlikely to exist away from Earth. In a new paper, Oxford researchers theorise that, for life to have evolved the same way somewhere else, it would have taken longer than the whole of Earth’s projected lifespan. Evolution on Earth from … Read more
Mars calling: NASA releases ‘out-of-this-world’ ringtone made from data on the Red Planet’s weather patterns Experts used the Pleiades supercomputer to convert cloud motion into sound They did this by filtering patterns out of the data to map onto musical intervals Flautist and musicologist Alyssa Schwartz then brought this piece to life Snippets of her rendition were … Read more
Building blocks of life such as amino acids are able to form in dark interstellar clouds long before the areas of gas and dust turn into stars and planets, new study reveals. An international team of scientists, led by experts from Queen Mary University of London, simulated the conditions found within dark interstellar clouds of dust. They … Read more
There are around 300 million planets that exist outside our Solar System but within the Milky Way which could potentially harbour life, according to NASA. Four of them are within just 30 light-years from Earth, with the closest just 20 light-years away, the space agency states. Researchers arrived at the 300 million figure based on … Read more
WWF’s poignant Christmas advert tells the magical story of a girl following an imaginary elephant through her urban hometown to raise awareness of devastating habitat destruction WWF launched Christmas advert highlighting vulnerability of planet’s wildlife Tells story of a girl following trail of imaginary elephant through her hometown However, it is an urban city centre miles … Read more
Earth is the only planet we know that has sentient life – but astronomers have found two dozen exoplanets that may have better conditions for life than our home world. A team led by Washington State University identified 24 ‘superhabitable’ planets out of more than 4,500 known exoplanets that could be a good candidate for … Read more