The solar wind—a stream of charged particles blowing off the sun’s surface—affects the entire solar system. Yet its behavior remains largely enigmatic. Now a new effort has provided the most detailed long-term measurements ever made of the solar wind, helping … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Category Archives: Astronomy
Journal Club: Highly-detailed solar wind observations may help explain sun’s mysteries
Categories: Astronomy | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club
Tagged heliophysics, magnetosphere, NASA, Parker Solar Probe, solar wind, space weather, sun
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Journal Club: Researchers may’ve finally solved mystery of crater ray formation
Look carefully at the full moon and you’ll see bright skinny streaks extending from large lunar craters. These are ejecta rays, spoke-like lines that seem to shoot from the circular impact site, a vivid testament to ancient explosions. But scientists … Continue reading
Categories: Astronomy | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club | Physics | Uncategorized
Tagged asteroid, crater, crater rays, ejecta rays, impactor, moon
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Journal Club: Potential life could have spread with relative ease amongst newly-discovered group of seven exoplanets
The odds of life spreading between the worlds of the newly-discovered seven-planet TRAPPIST-1 system are up to 1,000 times greater than in our own solar system. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis posted March 2 to the arXiv, an … Continue reading
Categories: Astrobiology | Astronomy | Ecology | Journal Club
Tagged exoplanet, habitable zone, model, panspermia, TRAPPIST-1
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Journal Club: Peering beneath Jupiter’s uppermost clouds
Astronomers have trained telescopes on Jupiter since Galileo, but much about what lies under the giant world’s uppermost clouds was a mystery. Now the most detailed radio map yet of Jupiter’s atmosphere reveals it is dynamically active beneath these clouds, … Continue reading
Journal Club: Record-breaking galaxy offers insight into early universe
A new champion has been crowned in the hunt for the most distant, independently-confirmed galaxy ever observed. Called EGS8p7, the galaxy existed when the universe was a mere 570 million years old, beating the previous frontrunner by almost 100 million … Continue reading
Detecting life on exoplanets harder than thought
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 1,000 worlds outside our solar system, potentially increasing the prospects of detecting signs of life on an exoplanet. However, scientists now propose a potential source of confusion that could dampen hopes of … Continue reading
Categories: Astronomy
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Sodium aids metallofullerene formation in stellar outflows
Ancient meteorites at times possess grains of graphite that pre-date the birth of the solar system. Past research found these grains are often mysteriously enriched with a form of neon known to be a byproduct of supernovae. Now scientists have … Continue reading
Categories: Astronomy
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