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1. To Find Evidence of Life on Exoplanets, Scientists Should Search for “Purple Earths”

   Finding potentially habitable planets beyond our Solar System is no easy task. While the number of confirmed extra-solar planets has grown by leaps and bounds in recent decades (3791 and counting!), the vast majority have been detected using indirect methods. This means that characterizing the atmospheres and surface conditions of these planets has been a …

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2. Astronomy Cast Ep. 502: No Touching: Determining Composition of Worlds Remotely

   We’re not learning that the vast majority of potentially habitable worlds out there are actually icy moons like Europa and Enceladus. Good news, there are hundreds, if not thousands of times more of them than worlds like Earth. Bad news, they’re locked in ice. What have we learned about water worlds and their potential for …

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3. Exos Aerospace Completes Successful Launch Test of Their SARGE Rocket

   The commercial launch provider Exos aerospace successfully completed its launch test, pushing the company closer to providing greater access to space

   The post Exos Aerospace Completes Successful Launch Test of Their SARGE Rocket appeared first on Universe Today.

4. How the Hubble Unlocked the Universe

   As engineers and technicians work diligently to diagnose and develop a solution (at best) or work around (at worst) the recent gyroscope issues in the Hubble Space Telescope, it gives us a moment to check in and reflect on some of its greatest feats of science. Don’t worry, that great observatory in the sky isn’t …

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5. A Red Dwarf Blasts off a Superflare. Any Life on its Planets Would Have a Very Bad Day

   Astronomers observed a red dwarf superflare much more powerful than anything our Sun can produce. Bad news for any habitable-zone planets orbiting it.

   The post A Red Dwarf Blasts off a Superflare. Any Life on its Planets Would Have a Very Bad Day appeared first on Universe Today.

6. How Mission Delays Hurt Young Astronomers

   Back in Ye Olden Times, the job of astronomer was a pretty exclusive club. Either you needed to be so rich and so bored that you could design, build, and operate your own private observatory, or you needed to have a rich and bored friend who could finance your cosmic curiosity for you. By contrast, …

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7. A Star Exploded as a Supernova and Then Collapsed Into a Neutron Star. But Only a Fraction of its Matter was Released

   An international team of scientists recently witnessed the birth of a binary neutron star system, which was indicated by a rather faint and short-lived supernova.

   The post A Star Exploded as a Supernova and Then Collapsed Into a Neutron Star. But Only a Fraction of its Matter was Released appeared first on Universe Today.

8. Review: The Most Unknown

   We recently came across a fascinating documentary that not only looks at some of the big questions today in multi-interdisciplinary science.

   We're talking about The Most Unknown, directed by Peabody-award winning filmmaker Ian Cheney

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9. Australian astronomers have been able to double the number of mysterious fast radio bursts discovered so far

   Using the Australia Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder in western Australia, a team of researchers almost doubled the number of FRBs observed in our Universe

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10. Surprising Discovery. Four Giant Planets Found Around a Very Young Star

    What exactly is a “normal” solar system? If we thought we had some idea in the past, we definitely don’t now. And a new study led by astronomers at Cambridge University has reinforced this fact. The new study found four gas giant planets, similar to our own Jupiter and Saturn, orbiting a very young star …

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