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Quantum semiconductor design could expand search for dark matter

Dark matter accounts for 85% of the matter in the universe, but scientists still do not know what it is made of. A study, published in Physical Review Letters, by Rice University researchers proposes a detector design that could help search for axions, hypothetical particles that many physicists think could make up dark matter.

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Analog gravity advance offers new insights into Hawking radiation from black holes

Hawking radiation is a form of radiation emitted by black holes, as theoretically predicted by Stephen Hawking. It suggests that black holes do not merely swallow matter—as had previously been assumed—but also emit very faint radiation themselves. This radiation has not yet been observed in space; instead, researchers use models in the laboratory that mimic […]

LSST begins full operations with key contributions from Japanese researchers and engineers

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially begun full operations for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), one of the world’s largest astronomical imaging surveys. Behind the scenes, Japanese researchers and engineers are drawing on technologies and expertise cultivated through the development and operation of the Subaru Telescope to support the project’s software, […]

New star activity catalog could sharpen hunt for habitable worlds

Searching for habitable worlds beyond our solar system involves more than having a planet orbit within its star’s habitable zone, the region where temperatures could be just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. On Earth, where water comprises approximately 75% of the planet’s surface, life is abundant. But what about the exoplanet’s […]

Cosmic dust could play key role in cracking long-standing mystery of solar corona heating

A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly influence how energy moves through the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. The discovery potentially […]

‘That man died a hero’: Pa. trooper killed by tractor-trailer during commercial vehicle inspection

Trooper Michael Pahira, a nearly 20-year law enforcement, was assisting with a commercial vehicle inspection when he was fatally struck by an out-of-control truck

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BWC: Ill. officer, traffic stop subject wrestle over gun before fatal OIS

After more than a minute of a physical altercation over the gun, the man appeared to break away with the gun before the Oak Park Police officer fired multiple shots

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Nautilus array to track missing exoplanet atmospheres

Exoplanet atmospheres have become prime targets for astrobiologists in the search for life beyond Earth. This is because exoplanet surfaces can’t be directly imaged yet, so astronomers must get creative in how they search for signs of life, also called biosignatures. Presently, powerful ground- and space-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and […]

TESS just found a planet in a new way—and more may be hiding in its eight years of data

For the first time, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to its warping of space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound microlensing world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star.

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A new CRASH clock measures the chance of satellite collisions, and it’s ticking down fast

Imagine a piece of space debris the size of a hockey puck slams into a Starlink satellite at about 10 kilometers per second. The kinetic energy is equivalent to 2 kilograms of TNT, or a fully loaded semitruck traveling at 100 kilometers an hour.

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The universe is less uniform than we thought—cosmology may need a radical rethink

Modern cosmology rests on a simple assumption: If we look on large enough scales, matter should be distributed evenly, with no preferred direction within the cosmos. This is known as the cosmological principle.

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13,000 tons of space junk clutters Earth orbit. Here’s how it could be cleaned up

Seventy years ago, Earth had only one satellite: the moon. Now it has more than 15,000—about 10,000 of which are owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The world’s first trillionaire plans to launch 1 million more satellites, each roughly 70 meters (230 feet) long and 20 meters (66 feet) wide, that would form a data center […]

XMM-Newton and Chandra help revise distance to Milky Way’s outer spiral arms

The European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the distance to these echoes, they found the outer arms to be up to 10% farther away than previously thought.

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BWC: Okla. K-9 dragged by suspect fleeing in truck

Oklahoma City Police K-9 Dash grabbed onto a fleeing suspect’s leg; the suspect then began to drive away, dragging the K-9 “a significant distance down the road”

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Martian dust storms may generate atmospheric electrical conditions that could impact future missions

A new study by a doctoral researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), part of The University of Alabama System, suggests global dust storms on Mars may organize the Martian atmosphere into regions favorable for electrical activity, increasing the potential for electrostatic discharges that could affect missions to the red planet by interfering […]