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TESS spots the rise of a black hole X-ray binary system

Designed to hunt for new alien worlds, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has serendipitously observed the rising outburst of a black hole X-ray binary known as AT 2019wey. The observations, which may help us better understand the nature of this system, were presented March 25 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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The largest survey of exoplanet spins confirms a long-held prediction

For some time, astronomers have theorized that there is a connection between planetary mass and rotation. In the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn both rotate rapidly, completing a rotation in roughly ten hours, while accounting for a significant fraction of the solar system’s rotational energy. Using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai’i, a team of astronomers tested this predicted relationship by studying 32 gas giants and brown dwarfs in distant star systems—6 giant planets larger than Jupiter and 25 brown dwarf companions.

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Image: NISAR views Mount St. Helens

This image captured by U.S.-Indian Earth satellite NISAR on Nov. 10, 2025, shows Washington’s Mount St. Helens. The image is cropped from a much larger swath spanning the Pacific Northwest on a cloudy day; NISAR’s L-band SAR instrument is able to peer through the clouds at the surface below.

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Artemis astronauts to study the moon’s surface using mainly their eyes

More than 50 years after humans first flew around the moon, Artemis astronauts will repeat the feat on Monday and use the most basic instrument to study it: their eyes.

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N.J. state troopers rescue bear cub from highway ditch

The bear was soon safely secured and taken back to the state police barracks, where it was later turned over to staffers with the state’s Environmental Protection Department

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Exploding primordial black holes might have reshaped the early universe, and created all matter as we know it

The early universe is absolutely so far outside our understanding of how the world works it’s hard to describe in words. Back then, the cosmos wasn’t filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, with a few microscopic black holes thrown in, occasionally detonating like depth charges. That’s the early universe theorized by a new paper, available in pre-print from arXiv, from researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and MIT anyway.

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‘It’s good policing’: Ill. PD emphasizes initiative to hire more women as officers

“When a victim of domestic violence … comes forward, having a female officer available can make the difference between someone sharing their story or staying silent,” said Normal PD Chief Steve Petrilli

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Artemis astronauts glimpse moon’s ‘Grand Canyon’ ahead of historic lunar flyby

The Artemis astronauts have taken in sights of the moon never before seen by human eyes, crew members reported on Sunday as their spacecraft crossed the two-thirds mark on their journey to a long-anticipated lunar flyby.

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Artemis II toilet acts up again as astronauts speed toward the moon to break Apollo 13’s record

Now more than halfway to the moon, the Artemis II astronauts prepared for their historic lunar fly-around to push deeper into space than even the Apollo astronauts.

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Two’s company: Scientists identify new class of star remnants

In about 5 to 8 billion years, our sun is expected to evolve into a white dwarf—an extremely dense, Earth-sized stellar remnant that has exhausted its fuel and shed its outer layer. But while our sun is a solitary star, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that binary or multi-star systems are far more common than astronomers once thought. When a dense and compact remnant like a white dwarf is involved in a binary system, it often “snatches away” material from its companion star. This process, called accretion, usually emits X-rays in what is considered a “signature” signal.

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Microscopic mechanism of ‘quantum collapse’ in real-world environments uncovered for the first time

A research team has, for the first time in the world, elucidated the microscopic mechanism by which quantum order is lost and collapses in “open quantum environments” existing in nature. Since perfectly isolated quantum systems cannot exist in reality, this study is expected to provide a decisive breakthrough in bridging the gap between ideal quantum theory and quantum technologies that must operate in real-world environments.

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Artemis mission shares office space—and physics—with Apollo

As four astronauts whiz toward a flyby of the moon, looking out for them are mission control experts using cutting-edge technology and lessons learned from the Apollo program 50 years ago.

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58 tortillas, five hot sauces and one toilet: life aboard spacecraft Orion

They’re sipping smoothies, snapping phone pics, dealing with crashed email and fixing broken toilets: astronauts, they’re just like us.

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BWC: N.Y. officers save person suffering mental health crisis from frigid river

Auburn Police Officers Edward Pickard and Lucas Drancsak spotted the person, climbed down a 10-foot wall and ran to shoreline; Pickard entered the water and helped the person to safety

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NASA’s water-hunting tool will help scout moon’s South Pole

NASA is joining international partners to hunt for ice on the moon in support of future human exploration. The agency is providing a water-detecting instrument, the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), to the Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization).

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