Thermonuclear reaction rates power the models that explain how stars live, explode and create the elements. A new study co-authored by NC State faculty member Richard Longland provides a comprehensive, statistically grounded reevaluation of these rates, offering a stronger foundation for interpreting astronomical observations and simulating stellar environments.

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The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors—a small, gas-rich galaxy visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere, and bound to our galaxy by gravity, alongside its companion, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). All three galaxies have been interacting for hundreds of millions of years.

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Here is a problem that has been quietly gnawing at astronomers for decades. The standard approach to detecting life on other worlds involves scanning exoplanet atmospheres for oxygen, methane, and ozone, whose presence is difficult to explain without biology. It’s a clever idea, but it carries a hidden flaw. That entire shopping list was written […]

As four astronauts travel around the moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission, they will venture beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field. The crew’s spacecraft, Orion, will carry and protect them as they journey into deep space and serves as the main protection against the sun’s intense power. During their 10-day flight, NASA and the National Oceanic […]

All the essential ingredients to make the DNA and RNA underpinning life on Earth have been discovered in samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu, scientists said Monday.

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Science in the modern era is increasingly reliant on enormous datasets and automated analysis. In astronomy, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)—a ten-year survey covering the entire southern sky almost a thousand times over the next decade—will test the limits of this reliance.

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