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Australian innovation ‘sifts’ space for mysteries
28 January 2025 News Release The first trial of an Australian-developed technology has detected mysterious objects by sifting through signals from space like sand on a beach. Astronomers and engineers at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, developed the specialised system, CRACO, for their ASKAP radio telescope to rapidly detect mysterious fast radio bursts and other…
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Supermassive black holes in ‘little red dot’ galaxies are 1,000 times larger than they should be, and astronomers don’t know why
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered distant, overly massive supermassive black holes in the early universe. The black holes seem way too massive compared to the mass of the stars in the galaxies that host them. In the modern universe, for galaxies close to our own Milky Way, supermassive black holes…
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Fast radio burst detected in ‘dead’ galaxy raises questions about mysterious signals
With their extremely strong magnetic fields, magnetars have long been considered the prime culprit capable of producing the powerful bursts of energy known as fast radio bursts. The recent burst, called FRB 20240209A, throws that theory into question. Now, astronomers must consider that not all fast radio bursts come from younger galaxies and stars. The…
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Near-Earth “Asteroid” Spotted By Astronomers Turns Out To Be Elon Musk’s Car
A near-Earth “asteroid” recently spotted by astronomers poring through telescope data has turned out to be Elon Musk’s car. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE On January 2, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of a new asteroid. The object was dubbed 2018 CN41 after the year and month when the telescope observations…
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NASA tracking bus-size asteroid approaching Earth at 30,000 mph
An asteroid the size of a school bus is set to zoom by the Earth on Tuesday, traveling several times faster than a speeding bullet. The asteroid, named 2025 BS4, is said by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be roughly 22 feet in diameter, with JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) estimated that it…
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Mysterious new asteroid turns out to be Tesla Roadster in space
A strange object initially thought to be a newly discovered asteroid actually turned out to be a Tesla zipping through space. The “asteroid” was designated 2018 CN41 on January 2 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after its discovery by an amateur astronomer from Turkey. 2018…
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Space photo of the week: Galaxies teeter toward collision in the sparkling depths of Virgo
What it is: The Antlia Cluster of galaxies (also called Abell S636) Where it is: 130 million light-years distant in the constellation Antlia, also known as the Air Pump When it was shared: Jan. 1, 2025 Why it’s so special: Astronomers used a telescope in Chile equipped with a highly sensitive camera to capture the…
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Astronomers Capture Mysterious ‘Chorus Waves’ Emerging From Deep Space
An international team of astronomers has detected mysterious chirping signals in an unexpected region of space, raising major questions about how they’re created. Known as chorus waves, these signals are split-second bursts of electromagnetic radiation emitted from high above Earth’s surface. When converted into an audio format and drawn out, they sound eerily like birds…
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Astronomers announce discovery of new asteroid — only to learn it’s…
Astronomers announce discovery of new asteroid — only to learn it’s a Tesla sports car hurling through space Breaking News
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Astronomers spot bizarre icy balls in space that are unlike anything seen before
Astronomers have spotted a mysterious pair of icy balls in a remote region of the Milky Way, and they’re unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. The peculiar objects appear in the same region of the sky but are 13,000 light-years apart and unrelated to each other. They were first spotted in 2021 lurking in data…