SALT LAKE CITY — In a galaxy that spans many light-years and is more than 13 billion years old, it stands to reason that major astronomical discoveries are rare, to say the least. Omega Centauri, a global cluster of millions of stars, is nestled in the Milky Way. The stars are so close to the … Read more
Enlarge / The fairing for the first test flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket has been placed around the small group of satellites that will carry it into orbit. Welcome to edition 6.48 of the Rocket Report! Fresh off last week’s dramatic test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, teams in Texas are wasting no time preparing … Read more
New findings from the Gaia Space Telescope indicate that the Milky Way cosmically cannibalized a small galaxy not so long ago. In fact, the last major collision between our galaxy and another galaxy appears to have occurred billions years later than previously suspected. It has long been believed that the Milky Way grew through a … Read more
Discoveries with the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that early galaxies formed complex structures such as bars much earlier, indicating accelerated evolution. Credit: SciTechDaily Advanced observations from the JWST indicate that early galaxies matured more quickly and were less chaotic, challenging previous theories of galaxy evolution. New research has found that the universe’s early galaxies … Read more
Magnetic fields in the Milky Way’s halo have a toroidal structure, extending in a radius range from 6,000 light-years to 50,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. The sun is about 30,000 light years away. Credit: NAOC Astrophysicists have discovered large magnetic toroids in the Milky Way‘s halo, which affects cosmic ray propagation … Read more