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The National Science Foundation has awarded up to $21.4 million for the design of telescopes for CMB-S4, an international experiment that will study the cosmic microwave background and help us understand the beginning, history, and makeup of the universe. Berkeley Lab leads the project for DOE and also plays a lead role in technology development.

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We’ve learned a lot about the Universe from telescopes that are sensitive to anything from high-energy gamma waves to visible light to low-energy radio waves. But detecting such electromagnetic waves has limitations.

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This DarkQuantum consortium was awarded €12.9 million on October 26 by the European Research Council, of which roughly €2 million is set aside for Aalto University researchers.

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Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, captures the billion-year-old aftermath of a spiral galaxy collision. At the heart of this chaotic interaction, entwined and caught in the midst of the chaos, is a pair of supermassive black holes — the nearest pair to Earth ever recorded.

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Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, captures the billion-year-old aftermath of a spiral galaxy collision. At the heart of this chaotic interaction, entwined and caught in the midst of the chaos, is a pair of supermassive black holes — the nearest pair to Earth ever recorded.

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Desde Chile, utilizando el telescopio de Gemini Sur, la mitad austral del Observatorio Internacional Gemini que opera NOIRLab de NSF y AURA, los astrónomos obtuvieron esta imagen que registra las consecuencias de una colisión de galaxias espirales hace mil millones de años. Al centro de esta caótica interacción se encuentran dos agujeros negros supermasivos, el par más cercano a la Tierra que se haya registrado.

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Desde Chile, utilizando el telescopio de Gemini Sur, la mitad austral del Observatorio Internacional Gemini que opera NOIRLab de NSF y AURA, los astrónomos obtuvieron esta imagen que registra las consecuencias de una colisión de galaxias espirales hace mil millones de años. Al centro de esta caótica interacción se encuentran dos agujeros negros supermasivos, el par más cercano a la Tierra que se haya registrado.

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Using Webb’s spectacular sensitivity, scientists captured the first mid-infrared spectrum from space of a kilonova, which marked Webb’s first direct look at an individual heavy element from such an event.

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Physics of Plasmas has bestowed the 2023 Davidson Award to Debra Callahan for her paper “Exploring the limits of case-to-capsule ratio, pulse length, and picket energy for symmetric hohlraum drive on the National Ignition Facility Laser.” The annual award of $5,000 is presented in collaboration with the APS Division of Plasma Physics to recognize outstanding plasma physics research by a Physics of Plasmas author.

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A new study leverages the NASA Exoplanet Archive and planetary system simulations to make narrowband SETI searches more efficient.

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Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (NJIT-CSTR) have captured the Oct. 14 solar eclipse in a way never seen before — recording the first radio images of an annular eclipse’s famous “ring of fire” effect.

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A team of astronomers has found a new clue that a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid, Kamo`oalewa, might be a chunk of the moon.

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In a paper published today in Science, a global team led by Macquarie University’s Dr Stuart Ryder and Swinburne University of Technology’s Associate Professor Ryan Shannon, report on their discovery of the most ancient and distant fast radio burst located to date, about eight billion years old.

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Jupiter has some of the most conspicuous atmospheric features in our solar system. The planet’s Great Red Spot, large enough to envelop Earth, is nearly as well known as some of the various rivers and mountains on the planet we call home. However, much like Earth, Jupiter is ever-changing, and there’s much about the planet we have yet to learn. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is unlocking some of those mysteries, revealing new features of Jupiter we’ve never seen before, including a high-speed jet speeding over the planet’s equator. While the jet stream is not as visually apparent or stunning as some of Jupiter’s other features, it’s giving researchers incredible insight into how the layers of the planet’s atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb will aid in these investigations in the future.

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The Simons Foundation has provided $28.8 million and the Heising-Simons Foundation has provided $1.5 million to the UC San Diego to complete the last phase of construction on the Simons Observatory in Chile.

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Astronomers have created a detailed atlas of almost 400,000 galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. The Siena Galaxy Atlas was primarily built from data gathered in preparation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) experiment and will be an invaluable tool for research into gravitational waves, dark matter, the structure of our universe, and how galaxies evolve.

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Astronomers have created a detailed atlas of almost 400,000 galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. The Siena Galaxy Atlas was compiled using data from NSF's NOIRLab telescopes, and is designed to be the pre-eminent digital galaxy atlas for large galaxies. It’s a treasure trove of information for researchers investigating everything from galaxy formation and evolution to dark matter and gravitational waves. It’s also freely available online for the public to explore.

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Astronomers have created a detailed atlas of almost 400,000 galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. The Siena Galaxy Atlas was compiled using data from NSF's NOIRLab telescopes, and is designed to be the pre-eminent digital galaxy atlas for large galaxies. It’s a treasure trove of information for researchers investigating everything from galaxy formation and evolution to dark matter and gravitational waves. It’s also freely available online for the public to explore.

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Los astrónomos crearon un atlas detallado de casi 400.000 galaxias de nuestro vecindario cósmico. El Siena Galaxy Atlas se elaboró a partir de datos de los telescopios de NOIRLab de NSF y está diseñado para convertirse en el principal atlas digital de galaxias de gran tamaño. Es un tesoro de información para los investigadores que estudian desde la formación y evolución de las galaxias hasta la materia oscura y las ondas gravitacionales. También está disponible en línea de forma gratuita para el público.

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Los astrónomos crearon un atlas detallado de casi 400.000 galaxias de nuestro vecindario cósmico. El Siena Galaxy Atlas se elaboró a partir de datos de los telescopios de NOIRLab de NSF y está diseñado para convertirse en el principal atlas digital de galaxias de gran tamaño. Es un tesoro de información para los investigadores que estudian desde la formación y evolución de las galaxias hasta la materia oscura y las ondas gravitacionales. También está disponible en línea de forma gratuita para el público.

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Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, have supported a ground-breaking measurement that is helping solve a 60-year-old cosmic mystery that involves the question of why the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, is so much hotter than the surface of the Sun itself.

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The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth.

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A paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today describes “a missing law of nature,” recognizing for the first time an important norm within the natural world’s workings.

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Twenty years ago, on Oct. 14, 2003, dignitaries gathered to declare the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) open for experiments.

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An instrument designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers departed Earth on a two-billion-mile, nearly six-year journey through space to explore a rare, largely metal asteroid.

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Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected evidence for quartz nanocrystals in the high-altitude clouds of WASP-17 b, a hot Jupiter exoplanet 1,300 light-years from Earth.

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Showers in bathrooms bring us comfort; showers from space bring astrophysicists joy. Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have observed, with their novel method, cosmic-ray extensive air showers with unprecedented precision, opening the door to new insights into the Universe’s most energetic particles.

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La Investigación del Espacio-Tiempo como Legado para la Posteridad (LSST) del Observatorio Vera Rubin ayudará a los científicos a mapear la estructura a gran escala del Universo con una precisión nunca antes vista.

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La Investigación del Espacio-Tiempo como Legado para la Posteridad (LSST) del Observatorio Vera Rubin ayudará a los científicos a mapear la estructura a gran escala del Universo con una precisión nunca antes vista.

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Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time will help scientists map the large-scale structure of the Universe with finer precision than ever before. With Rubin’s wide field of view and high resolution, the subtle distortions of galaxy shapes caused by dark matter will be detectable, allowing scientists to map dark matter and explore its cosmic tug of war with dark energy.

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Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time will help scientists map the large-scale structure of the Universe with finer precision than ever before. With Rubin’s wide field of view and high resolution, the subtle distortions of galaxy shapes caused by dark matter will be detectable, allowing scientists to map dark matter and explore its cosmic tug of war with dark energy.

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The nuclear reactions that power stellar explosions involve short-lived nuclei that are hard to study in the laboratory. Researchers used a combination of methods to measure a reaction where a neutron from a deuterium target is exchanged with a proton from a radioactive projectile, a reaction equivalent to a process in exploding stars.

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A chance social media post by an eagle-eyed amateur astronomer sparked the discovery of an explosive collision between two giant planets, which crashed into each other in a distant space system 1,800 light years away from planet Earth.

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Since Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun among the solar system planets, it is strongly influenced by the solar wind, a high-speed (several hundred km/s) stream of plasma blowing from the Sun.

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Within a neighboring dwarf galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) lies a dramatic region of star birth – NGC 346, shown here. As the brightest and largest star-forming region in the SMC, it has been studied intensely by a variety of telescopes. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showed a visible-light view filled with thousands of stars. More recently, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope offered a near-infrared vista highlighting both cool and warm dust. Now, Webb has turned its mid-infrared gaze to NGC 346, revealing streamers of gas and dust studded with bright patches filled with young protostars.

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An international team of scientists have discovered a huge spike in radiocarbon levels 14,300 years ago by analysing ancient tree-rings found in the French Alps.  

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Astronomers have gotten very good at spotting the signs of planet formation around stars. But for a complete understanding of planet formation, we also need to study examples where planet formation has not yet started.

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For the first time, scientists have direct evidence of an exotic state of ice that may form inside Uranus, Neptune, and other water-rich gas giants due to extreme temperatures and pressures.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with NASA, are taking additive manufacturing to the final frontier by 3D printing the same kind of wheel as the design used by NASA for its robotic lunar rover, demonstrating the technology for specialized parts needed for space exploration.

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Utilizando datos del telescopio Gemini Sur y de otros observatorios, los astrónomos encontraron un nuevo Evento Transitorio Óptico Azul Rápido (LFBOT por sus siglas en inglés), un tipo de poderosa explosión cósmica, de la cual no se sabe mucho. El estallido, al que se le apodó como “el Finch”, ocurrió en las afueras de una galaxia, a diferencia de otros LFBOT descubiertos hasta ahora que se hallaron anidando en galaxias de formación estelar. Esta observación pone en duda las teorías actuales sobre los orígenes de este tipo de eventos transitorios.

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Utilizando datos del telescopio Gemini Sur y de otros observatorios, los astrónomos encontraron un nuevo Evento Transitorio Óptico Azul Rápido (LFBOT por sus siglas en inglés), un tipo de poderosa explosión cósmica, de la cual no se sabe mucho. El estallido, al que se le apodó como “el Finch”, ocurrió en las afueras de una galaxia, a diferencia de otros LFBOT descubiertos hasta ahora que se hallaron anidando en galaxias de formación estelar. Esta observación pone en duda las teorías actuales sobre los orígenes de este tipo de eventos transitorios.

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Using data from Gemini South and other observatories, astronomers have found a new Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), a powerful but poorly understood type of cosmic explosion. However, rather than being nestled in a star-forming galaxy like other LFBOTs discovered so far, the latest event, dubbed ‘the Finch’, occurred in the far outskirts of a galaxy. This observation calls into question leading ideas about the origins of these transient events.

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Using data from Gemini South and other observatories, astronomers have found a new Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), a powerful but poorly understood type of cosmic explosion. However, rather than being nestled in a star-forming galaxy like other LFBOTs discovered so far, the latest event, dubbed ‘the Finch’, occurred in the far outskirts of a galaxy. This observation calls into question leading ideas about the origins of these transient events.

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Gravity can focus light like a lens, allowing astronomers to see distant galaxies and explore dark matter. Join our host Summer Ash of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory as she talks about how astronomers use gravitational lensing to study the universe..