Science

NASA experts fear a billionaire space tourist will accidentally break the Hubble Space Telescope while trying to repair it

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It’s been 15 years since NASA’s groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope was last serviced by astronauts. And the aging observatory, which has been orbiting our planet in low orbit since 1990, is looking a little worse for wear. Persistent technical problems have forced teams to halt scientific activities time and time again. That’s why billionaire space … Read more

Is the main rival theory of dark matter dead? There’s bad news from the Cassini spacecraft and other recent tests

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The Jamess Webb Space Telescope

This article was originally published on The conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com Expert voices: opinion pieces and insights. Indranil Banik is a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics at the University of St Andrews. Harry Desmond is a Senior Research Fellow in Cosmology at the University of Portsmouth. One of the greatest mysteries in… … Read more

Mysterious origins of the

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The ‘grotesque’ baobab tree has long been known as the ‘tree of life’ for its ability to create and maintain its own ecosystem in arid areas. Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, people have marveled at what researchers say are among the “most charismatic species on our planet,” but until now no one knew … Read more

In the Milky Way, three invaders are ‘on the run’ – in the wrong direction

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Lots of stars are seen in the image. A central, straight structure goes diagonally from the bottom left to the top right; it has strings of gas, bright sections and other features. It represents the Milky Way

Astronomers have discovered three ancient stars “on the run” in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, racing in the wrong direction at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour. Despite being bright for their age, the three stars are so old that they date back to the time when the first galaxies formed. That … Read more

Hidden in the Halo: MIT researchers discover the universe’s oldest stars

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SciTechDaily

MIT astronomers discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they live in our own galactic neighborhood. The stars are located in the Milky Way’s “halo” – the cloud of stars surrounding the main galactic disk – and they appear to have formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, when the very … Read more

Scientists prove ‘quantum theory’ that could lead to ultra-fast magnetic computing

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A futuristic image of a computer chip

For the first time, scientists have magnetized a non-magnetic material at room temperature, creating a quantum property that they say could pave the way for ultra-fast computing. The ‘switchable’ magnetic field could one day be used to store and transmit information. This was something that was previously only possible at ultra-cold temperatures. The results pave … Read more