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How Astronomers Confirmed the Universe Is Dying

 How Astronomers 
 Confirmed the 
 Universe Is Dying 
in case you missed it
Aug 15, 2015 6:25 PM CDT

How Astronomers Confirmed the Universe Is Dying

First, you need some really big telescopes

(Newser) - How does one confirm that the universe is slowly dying? For starters, you use "as many space and ground-based telescopes as we could get our hands on." That according to Simon Driver, a principal investigator with the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) project. Driver explains that the group...

Astronomers Say We Owe Our Lives to These Stars

Galaxy CR7 said to contain some of the universe's earliest stars

(Newser) - Astronomers peering through the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a faraway galaxy of stars so significant, they say we wouldn't exist without them. The galaxy, known as Cosmos Redshift 7, or CR7—a name inspired by soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo—is three times...

Scan of 100K Galaxies Finds Zero 'Super-Civilizations'

Theoretical 'Kardashev III' galaxy masters may not exist

(Newser) - Super-civilizations that conquer entire galaxies may only exist in science fiction, a new study suggests. In the scale of possible civilizations proposed by Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, highly advanced Type III civilizations are capable of harnessing the whole power of a galaxy, but a survey of the most promising 100,...

Milky Way Is a 'Galactic Lightweight'

Same-sized neighbor Andromeda has twice the mass

(Newser) - If our galaxy were a boxer, it would have just slipped down a few weight classes—and would be no match for our neighbor Andromeda. New research has revealed that the Milky Way, while still mind-bogglingly vast, is only around half the weight of the Andromeda galaxy, which is about...

To Search for Aliens, Look for ... Air Pollution?

Air pollution could signal intelligent life on other planets: researchers

(Newser) - Astrobiologists look for extraterrestrial life by searching for gases (i.e. methane and oxygen) that suggest the possibility of life, or for radio or laser signals in the hopes of communicating with distant alien life forms. But now a team of astronomers at Harvard is suggesting we also look for...

Astonishing NASA Image Captures Color of 10K Galaxies

Hubble shot spans light spectrum, took 841 orbits to create

(Newser) - Thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes, and colors can be seen in a stunning new image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Some of the oldest galaxies visible appear as light from nearly 12 billion years ago, almost as old as the universe, but NASA says the most exciting...

Tiny 'Fossil Galaxy' Could Hold Clues to Early Universe

Segue 1 apparently stopped evolving 13B years ago

(Newser) - One of our galactic neighbors, the tiny Segue 1, could be among the first galaxies ever to take shape—and it may present an opportunity for scientists to examine our universe as an infant. Segue 1's chemical composition suggests it stopped evolving some 13 billion years ago, Scientific American...

Dark Matter's 'Cosmic Web' Spotted for 1st Time

Scientists see glue that holds universe together

(Newser) - Scientists have seen a tendril of dark matter for the first time, and all it took was a "cosmic flashlight." Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, a scientific team spotted the dark matter in a gas cloud illuminated by the radiation of a distant quasar, the BBC reports....

Newly Found Galaxy Is Oldest One Yet

It emerged about 700 million years after the Big Bang

(Newser) - Residents of the Milky Way, meet z8_GND_5296. That's the not-so-great name of a newly discovered galaxy that just happens to be the most distant—and thus oldest—ever spotted, reports CBS News . Scientists say it formed a mere 700 million years after the Big Bang, and it could shed...

Milky Way Has 17B Planets the Size of Ours

And that's a conservative estimate

(Newser) - Before we start feeling too special about our home planet, scientists have a message: There are at least 17 billion planets the size of Earth in the Milky Way alone, Space.com reports. About 17% of our galaxy's stars have Earth-size exoplanets closely orbiting them—so 100 billion stars...

Milky Way: Home to 100B+ Planets
 Milky Way: Home to 
 100B+ Planets 
new study
Jan 3, 2013 1:07 PM CST

Milky Way: Home to 100B+ Planets

New study comes up with conservative estimate

(Newser) - Scientists have done a sort of "cosmic census," completing a new study that finds the Milky Way galaxy is home to 100 billion alien planets—and maybe even many more than that. "It's a staggering number, if you think about it," says the lead author....

Massive Black Hole Stumps Scientists

Its mass equals 17B suns, turning previous theory on its head

(Newser) - An enormous, newly discovered black hole has scientists questioning what they thought they knew about black holes to begin with. Usually, supermassive black holes make up about 0.1% of the mass of the stars at a galaxy's center, known as a stellar bulge. But in this case, the...

Hubble 'Travels' Back 13.2B Years

'Time-tunnel' composite bares space 'just' after Big Bang

(Newser) - An out-of-this-world composite photo of Hubble Space Telescope shots peers back to a time a "mere" 450 million years after the Big Bang. Dubbed the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photograph—made up of 2,000 snaps taken by the Hubble over 10 years—reveals nearly 5,500...

Strange New Kind of Galaxy Spotted

Infrared survey uncovers 'menagerie of hidden objects'

(Newser) - After two years of scanning the night sky, NASA's WISE infrared telescope has spotted millions of supermassive black holes and a type of galaxy never seen before. The hot, dust-obscured galaxies—hot DOGs—are very rare. Each emits as much light as 100 trillion suns, hidden behind a vast...

Oldest Spiral Galaxy Shocks Astronomers

'Grand-design' spiral formed only 3B years after Big Bang

(Newser) - An ancient galaxy has flabbergasted astronomers. The perfectly formed spiral galaxy was born eons ago, a mere 3 billion years after the Big Bang. But this galaxy type was considered impossible so early on, when the cosmos was too chaotic to mold a "grand-design" spiral. How did it appear?...

Big Find: Dark Matter Strand Connecting Galaxy Clusters

Find confirms theories on universe's formation

(Newser) - This is shaping up to be one hell of a week for scientists trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe. Hot on the heels of the apparent Higgs boson discovery , an international team of astrophysicists has revealed that it has spotted a filament of dark matter connecting two...

Oddly Close Alien Planets Witness Huge 'Planetrise'

Kepler Space Telescope spots them 1,200 light-years away

(Newser) - Two far-flung planets are orbiting the same star so closely that they can appear to each other as giant, colorful moons, Space.com reports. Spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, a craggy "super-Earth" and a gaseous, Neptune-size world are 1,200 light-years away, but just 1.2 million miles...

Japanese Team Spots 'Oldest Galaxy'

Astronomers believe galaxy is nearly 13 billion years old

(Newser) - A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, light was apparently emitted that has now been detected by Japanese astronomers using telescopes at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano. The team says the galaxy is 12.91 billion light years away and is the oldest one...

Milky Way Has Tens of Billions of Habitable Planets

These super-Earths are all over the galaxy, say scientists

(Newser) - Could aliens be hanging out in the Milky Way? A new discovery by astronomers shows they'd have plenty of possible homes in the galaxy, reports Reuters . The researchers found that tens of billions of planets reside in a habitable zone close to a star, allowing water to flow on...

Rare 'Rectangular' Galaxy Spotted

'Emerald cut' shape probably the result of two galaxies colliding

(Newser) - The vast majority of galaxies fall into one of three categories—football-shaped, irregular, or a disc with spiral arms. But LEDA 074886 is a strange one. When viewed from our planet, the dwarf galaxy has a strange, rectangular, "emerald cut" shape. Its discoverers believe the galaxy is shaped like...

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