Category: Science

New study suggests this extremely dense star cluster is stunting planet formation


Using the Hubble Space Telescope researchers have conducted a pioneering 3-year study of the massive dense young star cluster Westerlund 2. In the process, discovering that dense clouds of relatively cool dust are curiously absent from material around the stars at the cluster’s heart. As these dense clouds are the seeds of planets that form over the course of millions of years, thus, planet formation is stunted in these regions. The astronomers believe that this dearth of dense dust and gas discs is a result of the cluster’s most massive and powerful stars eroding and dispersing them from around their…

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Scientists built an AI to discover new stars in the quest to explain our galaxy’s origin


An AI system has spotted thousands of new stars that could hold clues about the formation of the Milky Way. Researchers from Leeds University made the discovery by analyzing images collected by the Gaia satellite, which the European Space Agency launched in 2013 to create a 3D map of our galaxy. After applying machine learning techniques to the data, they found more than 2,000 new protostars — infant stars that form in clouds of gas and dust in space. Scientists had previously cataloged only 100 of these stars, which have already provided enormous insights into how celestial objects form. The newly-identified stars will deepen their understanding [Read: AI…

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Prehistoric climate change damaged the ozone layer and led to a mass extinction, study finds


Mass extinctions are very important to how life evolved on Earth. For example, when an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, the resulting dinosaur extinction led mammals to take their place. My colleagues and I have published new research on the mass extinction that took place 359 million years ago at the boundary between the Devonian and Carboniferous geological periods. There have been many previous speculations as to the cause of this event, including volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, climate change, sea level changes, wildfires and the rise of the first forests. But we have shown that the extinctions…

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Astronomers found an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting the solar system’s nearest star


Proxima b an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the nearest star to our own in the Proxima Centauri solar system — located just 4.2 light-years from Earth — has been confirmed by an international team of astronomers from the University of Geneva. The team used the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) spectrograph, attached to the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in the Chilean desert to make their observation. The team’s findings are published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Proxima b, an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star, was initially detected four years ago by…

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The asteroid that killed dinosaurs hit at worst possible angle, study finds


Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid larger than Mt. Everest ripped through the atmosphere of Earth, striking our planet at the Yucatán Peninsula, on the southeastern coast of Mexico. This event set off fires around the globe, and the dust kicked into the air blocked out the Sun over large portions of the world. Soon, the era of dinosaurs, which lasted 175 million years, was snuffed out. Simulations show the impactor struck Earth at an angle around 60 degrees to the surface of Earth. Striking at this angle, the asteroid kicked up the greatest possible amount of dust, maximizing…

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The rocket science behind the SpaceX astronaut launch


Two NASA astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, have finally made history by travelling to the International Space Station in a privately funded spacecraft, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule. The launch was initially due to take place on May 27 but had to be be postponed due to bad weather. It launched at 3.22pm EST on May 30. The astronauts took off lying on their backs in the seats, and facing in the direction of travel to reduce the stress of high acceleration on their bodies. Launching from Kennedy Space Centre, the spacecraft travelled out over the…

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Study: Volcanoes on Mars were to blame for massive mud flows, not lava


Mud volcanoes on Mars could be the cause of distinctive features that most researchers had thought were left over from ancient lava flows. Tens of thousands of channels spread out over the Martian surface. Hundreds of kilometers long, and tens of miles wide, these ribbon canyons reach far across the ruddy landscape of Mars. Planetary science suggests these features were carved out as massive floods, comparable in size to the largest ever seen on Earth, tore across the surface of Mars long ago. As the water settled into the Martian crust, it (naturally) formed mud. Rapid freezing could have led…

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How cosmic rays may have sparked life on Earth — and what this could mean for life on other planets


Long before animals roamed the Earth, before the first bacteria, and even before the development of DNA, tiny molecules found they could make simple copies of themselves. Cosmic rays pouring down from space constantly bombarded those molecules as they replicated, and developed over time. These particles, raining down from distant stars and galaxies, could have played a significant role in the what would become the chemistry of life. Mirror, mirror, on the wall… Molecules can take on various shapes as they form during reactions. Some of these molecules can be mirror images of molecules having the same number and types…

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OpenAI’s new text generator writes sad poems and corrects lousy grammar


OpenAI has quietly unveiled the latest incarnation of its headline-grabbing text generator: GPT-3. The research lab initially said its predecessor’s potential to spread disinformation made it too dangerous to share. The decision led terrified journalists to warn of impending robot apocalypses — generating a lot of helpful hype for GPT-2. Now, OpenAI has unveiled its big brother. And it’s enormous. The language model has 175 billion parameters — 10 times more than the 1.6 billion in GPT-2, which was also considered gigantic on its release last year. [Read: Remember that scary AI text-generator that was too dangerous to release? It’s out now] The research…

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How the Dutch government uses data to predict the weather and prepare for natural disasters


Have you ever wondered what’s behind the weather forecast TV reports? Or who is managing government satellites? Perhaps you’ve wandered across a sensor — where does that data go? In the Netherlands, that data is collected and managed by the KNMI, or the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut — a.k.a., the government’s meteorological branch. The KNMI forecasts weather, researches climate change, and monitors seismic activity. Their reach goes far beyond the Netherlands. In 2017, the KNMI-built TROPOMI was launched into the atmosphere aboard the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. Recently, the TROPOMI measured and mapped the decline in nitrogen dioxide concentration over China from…

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