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Trying to solve a key black hole mystery: Simulating magnetic flows around black holes

Black holes have been fascinating subjects of study, not just because they are cosmic vacuum cleaners, but also as engines of immense power capable of extracting and redistributing energy on a staggering scale. These dark giants are often surrounded by swirling disks of gas and dust, known as accretion disks.

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‘City killer’ asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA

An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday—making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.

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Jupiter’s moon Callisto is very likely an ocean world

More pocked with craters than any other object in our solar system, Jupiter’s outermost and second-biggest Galilean moon, Callisto, appears geologically unremarkable. In the 1990s, however, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft captured magnetic measurements near Callisto that suggested that its ice shell surface—much like that of Europa, another moon of Jupiter—may encase a salty, liquid water ocean. […]

Mission accomplished for space telescope Gaia

The space telescope Gaia has created the largest three-dimensional map of the Milky Way ever. On January 15, 2025, Gaia shut down after 11 years in space. But the research on data Gaia collected will continue for many years to come.

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Solar Orbiter ready for close encounter with Venus

The European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to guide the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft through its closest encounter with Venus so far.

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What would happen if a tiny black hole passed through your body?

In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: Could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead […]

Why we think Theia existed

The giant-impact hypothesis posits that billions of years ago a Mars-sized body named Theia collided with the early Earth.

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First astronaut with a disability cleared for space station mission

The first-ever astronaut with a physical disability has been cleared for a mission onboard the International Space Station, the European Space Agency announced on Friday.

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How NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer will make a looping voyage to the moon

Before arriving at the moon, the small satellite mission will use the gravity of the sun, Earth, and moon over several months to gradually line up for capture into lunar orbit.

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FAST uncovers emission properties of three long-period pulsars

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers have investigated the emission properties of three long-period pulsars. Results of the observational campaign are presented in a research paper published Feb. 6 on the arXiv preprint server.

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Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket firm to cut 10% of workforce

Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin is laying off around 10 percent of its workforce following a period of rapid expansion, the firm’s chief executive told staff on Thursday.

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Why asteroid 2024 YR4 is unlikely to hit Earth in 2032 and how scientists keep track

The threat of a newly discovered asteroid has risen slightly in the past few weeks, as the world’s telescopes rush to track its course. But the chance of an impact is still quite slim.

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From collisions to stellar cannibalism—the surprising diversity of exploding white dwarfs

Astrophysicists have unearthed a surprising diversity in the ways in which white dwarf stars explode in deep space after assessing almost 4,000 such events captured in detail by a next-gen astronomical sky survey. Their findings may help us more accurately measure distances in the universe and further our knowledge of “dark energy.”

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White dwarf stars may host more habitable exoplanets than expected

Among the roughly 10 billion white dwarf stars in the Milky Way galaxy, a greater number than previously expected could provide a stellar environment hospitable to life-supporting exoplanets, according to astronomers at the University of California, Irvine.

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SPHEREx space telescope will seek life’s ingredients

Where is all the water that may form oceans on distant planets and moons? The SPHEREx astrophysics mission will search the galaxy and take stock.

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