Science

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Today’s Forecast for K2-18b: Cloudy with a Chance of Rain?

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An artist’s impression of K2-18b orbiting K2-18 along with another planet in the system.

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Turning Up the Heat on Antibacterial-Resistant Diseases

A biocompatible polymer designed by Berkeley Lab could accelerate new medical therapies that enlist the power of near-infrared light to fight disease

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Photothermal therapy (PTT) – a proposed treatment for diseases such as antibacterial-resistant infections and cancer – makes use of a chemical agent that absorbs the light of an infrared laser
Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have made a biocompatible material that has potential use in medical therapies that deploy near-infrared light to combat antibacterial-resistant infections and cancer.

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The cosmic cow explained - radio signals point to an explosion and a newborn magnetar

Observations using 21 telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN) have revealed that a cosmic explosion, called AT2018cow most likely formed a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field - known as a magnetar. The high-resolution radio images produced in this new study show physical properties of the stellar remnant that make alternative explanations less likely, say scientists.

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The cosmic cow explained - radio signals point to an explosion and a newborn magnetar

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Fast rotating white dwarf drags its space-time in a cosmic dance

How astronomers used Einstein’s theory of general relativity to estimate the rotation of a white dwarf in a binary star system

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The white dwarf-pulsar binary system PSR J1141-6545 discovered by the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope. The pulsar orbits its white dwarf companion every 4.8 hours. The white dwarf’s rapid rotation drags space-time around it, causing the entire orbit to change its orientation.

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CHEOPS opens its eye to the sky

Six weeks after the launch of CHEOPS, ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.

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Artist's impression of CHEOPS.

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Faint Repetitions of an Extragalactic Fast Radio Burst

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The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope is responsible for finding a number of fast radio bursts. But could there be fainter flashes that it’s missing?

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NASA Creates Technologies to Gather Great Observatory Science from a Balloon

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This image shows BOBCAT hardware used to demonstrate the successful transfer of cryogenic fluids into a dewar during a balloon demonstration in August 2019. The shot was taken when the balloon reached its float altitude of 133,000 feet.

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Tarantula Nebula Spins Web of Mystery in Spitzer Image

This spidery cloud of gas and dust is home to seveal fascinating features. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope first observed the region in 2003, again in 2019, and many times in between.

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This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in two wavelengths of infrared light. The red regions indicate the presence of particularly hot gas, while the blue regions are interstellar dust that is similar in composition to ash from coal or wood-burning fires on Earth.

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Hubble Sees Dusty Galaxy With Supermassive Center

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Hubble Sees Dusty Galaxy With Supermassive Center

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NASA's Kepler Witnesses Vampire Star System Undergoing Super-Outburst

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This illustration shows a newly discovered dwarf nova system, in which a white dwarf star is pulling material off a brown dwarf companion. The material collects into an accretion disk until reaching a tipping point, causing it to suddenly increase in brightness. Using archival Kepler data, a team observed a previously unseen, and unexplained, gradual intensification followed by a super-outburst in which the system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day.