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Volcanic domes are common in our Solar System but so far only one has been identified on dwarf planet Ceres. New research suggests that numerous volcanic domes may have formed throughout Ceres’s history, indicating that cryovolcanism may have once been more common on the dwarf planet.
The stunning discovery image of the spiral dust plumes enshrouding a Wolf–Rayet binary system dubbed Apep provides new trails of evidence that may bring us closer to resolving outstanding questions on the evolution and death of massive stars.
A model of the optical light detected following the merger of two neutron stars reveals polarization to be a unique probe of the geometry of the kilonova explosion that accompanied the gravitational waves.
An ultrahigh-energy neutrino event detected with the IceCube detector in Antarctica, simultaneous and co-spatial with a multi-wavelength outburst of a blazar about 3 billion light years away, points unambiguously to lepto-hadronic cooling mechanisms in jetted active galactic nuclei.
Contrary to usual assumptions, new astronomical observations suggest that dark matter may be self-interacting. If true this would rule out most popular dark matter particle candidates, including supersymmetric neutralinos, axions and sterile neutrinos, as well as black holes.
Large cosmological datasets have been probing the properties of our Universe and constraining the parameters of dark matter and dark energy with increasing precision. Deep learning techniques have shown potential to be smarter than — and greatly outperform — human-designed statistics.
The study of the early stages of galaxy cluster formation and their evolutionary path is critical for testing our structure-formation models and cosmological paradigm. Recent observations have pushed the detection of ‘protoclusters’ further back in time.
Observations with a continent-wide array of radio telescopes show that the merger of two neutron stars, which produced gravitational waves, successfully launched a very fast and highly collimated jet.
The positions and motions of galaxies are dictated by the laws of gravity. A new technique to measure the anisotropy in the three-dimensional redshift distribution of galaxies seriously challenges attempts to go beyond Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The Andromeda galaxy’s stellar halo and disk show signs of an active recent merger history. Recent work suggests that most of the disturbances in Andromeda’s disk and the inner halo may be due to a single merger event.
Dark matter is deemed essential for describing galaxy dynamics. A prominent alternative theory can make the same predictions without dark matter, by introducing a universal acceleration constant. Recent high-quality observations of galaxies are used to investigate whether this constant is really a constant.
A magnetic reconnection event within Saturn’s magnetosphere, captured by Cassini at an unexpected site, may reshape our views on how internally produced plasma is circulated in giant planet magnetospheres.
A new model predicts locations on the surface of radiation-blasted Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter, where biochemical signatures of life emergent from the subsurface ocean might survive long enough for detection on the moon’s changing surface.
New analyses show that most asteroids, nowadays residing in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, could have originated from collisional events that have broken apart a few large parent bodies.
