Astronomy
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Astronomy
Super-Earths are not a good place for plate tectonics
The intense pressures inside super-Earths make plate tectonics less likely, new research suggests.
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Astronomy
Advice to a baby planet: Avoid black holes
A dust cloud looping around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole might have once been an infant planet.
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Astronomy
X-ray rings reveal neutron star’s distance
Concentric X-ray rings around a neutron star help astronomers triangulate the star’s distance.
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Astronomy
Dark galaxies grow in abundance
Nearly 1,000 shadowy galaxies lurk in a nearby cluster, some of which are as massive as the Milky Way and yet have only 0.1 percent the number of stars.
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Astronomy
Magnetic ‘glue’ helps shape galaxies
Galaxy-wide magnetic fields may play a role in shaping the spiral arms of gas and stars.
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Astronomy
Big exoplanet may be surrounded by helium
Warm Neptune-sized exoplanet might have atmospheres filled with helium.
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Astronomy
Mars-sized exoplanet is smallest to have its mass measured
The smallest exoplanet to be weighed is a hot, rocky cousin of the Red Planet.
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Astronomy
Pluto at last
Precision matters, whether looking at global temperatures, subatomic particles or the carefully timed approach to a faraway world.
By Eva Emerson -
Astronomy
Distant galaxy may contain primeval stars
A stockpile of the first generation of stars might be lighting up gas in a galaxy that existed roughly 800 million years after the Big Bang.
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Planetary Science
Rendezvous with Pluto
Earth will get its first good look at Pluto and its five known moons when New Horizons sails past on July 14.
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Astronomy
Some of sun’s magnetic fields may act more like forests
A swaying forest of mangrovelike magnetic fields on the sun could be the answer to why the solar atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than the surface.