After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.

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Considering the immense size of the universe, it’s no surprise that space still holds plenty of secrets for us. Recently, astronomers believe they stumbled upon a kind of cosmic blast never seen before, and it’s challenging what we thought we knew about how stars die.

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Researchers from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a hybrid deep learning model that can accurately predict atmospheric delay, a key source of error in astronomical observations and geodetic measurements. The study is published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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A new study led by UNLV scientists sheds light on how planets, including Earth, formed in our galaxy—and why the life and death of nearby stars are an important piece of the puzzle.

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Johns Hopkins researchers may have identified a compelling clue in the ongoing hunt to prove the existence of dark matter. A mysterious diffuse glow of gamma rays near the center of the Milky Way has stumped researchers for decades, as they’ve tried to discern whether the light comes from colliding particles of dark matter or […]

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the US space agency NASA have made an unexpected discovery that challenges one of the basic rules of chemistry and provides new knowledge about Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan.

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Use cases for smart materials in space exploration keep cropping up everywhere. They are used in everything from antenna deployments on satellites to rover deformation and reformation.

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Why is the universe expanding at an ever-increasing rate? This is one of the most exciting yet unresolved questions in modern physics. Because it cannot be fully answered using our current physical worldview, researchers assume the existence of a mysterious “dark energy.” However, its origin remains unclear to this day.

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