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Feast your eyes, my good curious friends, on this — by far the clearest image ever taken of a very young star and its newly formed protoplanetary disk. In this spectacular image you can see the young star HL Tau, which is just about one million years old. This image is truly a marvel of science. Around this star, dust and gas swirl, slowly developing into planets and asteroids. You may or may not believe it but a few billion years ago, this is precisely what our very own Solar System would’ve looked like. This amazing image was taken by ALMA. ALMA stands for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. It is a huge telescope consisting of 66 separate antennas, situated high up in the Atacama Desert in northern parts of Chile. ALMA is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). According to ESO this image comes from some of the telescopes first observations in its “new and most powerful mode”. ALMA has been under construction for years, but only a few year ago, they h...

Another deluge of curio mounts as the astronomer, Dustin Lang from the University of Toronto, tweeted about a baffling X-shaped bulge, comprising stars and interstellar matter, lying at the heart of Milky Way’s flat structure. Further analysis of this massive structure can lend a fair insight of how the galaxy was formed, scientists envision.  “The bulge is a key signature of formation of the Milky Way. If we understand the bulge, we will understand the key processes that have formed and shaped our galaxy” says Melissa Ness, who is a postdoctoral researcher from the Max Planck institute for Astronomy, Germany. Milky Way. NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) “The X-shaped morphology of the bulge in itself and the fraction of bulge stars that comprise orbits within this structure has important implications for the formation history of the Milky Way, and spiral galaxies in general” published by Ness and Lang , who are expected to team up as a proper and detailed research starts ...

As our current video games become more and more lifelike and realistic, it's becoming clear that at some point, perhaps soon, our simulations will be indistinguishable from reality. If that's true, how do we know it didn't already happen? Could we be in a simulation now? A simulation created by someone? Moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, put the odds at 50-50 that our entire existence is just a program on someone else’s hard drive. “I think the likelihood may be very high,” he said. He noted the obvious  gap between human and chimpanzee intelligence, despite that the fact that we share more than 98 percent of our DNA. Somewhere out there could be a being whose intelligence is that much greater than our own. “We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence,” he said. “If that’s the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.” This is rea...

Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons has recently emerged as a top priority in the search for alien life. NASA has already announced their plans to send a robot to the moon with plans to carry out an investigation, but it is very possible that the agency might be beaten by a Russian billionaire. Yuri Milner has used his enormous wealth multiple times to advance the our current knowledge and understandings of the cosmos. For example, he has collaborated with physicist Stephen Hawking in creating an idea of an interstellar spacecraft. This concept has become a key component in the project named Breakthrough Starshot . Currently, Milner has taken on a new project. He plans to send an inexpensive probe to the moon Enceladus in hopes of finding life in one form or another in the geysers that are on its surface. He suspects that a mission that is backed by a major space agency (such as NASA, for example,) can possibly take as long as a decade to truly materialize. He also believes that t...

A team led by NASA has found evidence of an enigmatic planet whose properties are so peculiar and unusual, that it brings into question everything astronomers know about these types of planets. Planet WASP-18b is approximately 325 light years away from Earth and its mass is approximately 10 times greater than that of Jupiter.  Around it is a smothering atmosphere of carbon monoxide, and the planet is almost entirely devoid of any traces of water and has extremely high temperatures. Obviously, all of this makes life incredibly unimaginable on this planet. What is particularly interesting about this planet is that having an upper atmosphere filled with carbon monoxide is pretty unheard of in the universe so far. Kyle Sheppard of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who is also lead author of the paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters said the following about the discovery: “the composition of WASP-18b defies all expectations. We don't know of any other extrasolar plane...

China’s Dark Matter Foray Quantum physics has seen tremendous advances and a new hunt is in place: the search for dark energy. As this search continues by American and European scientists, China continues to close the gap in scientific prowess. For example, according to recently reported results , China-led space mission has revealed auspicious symptoms of dark matter.  Despite no direct evidence of dark matter was found, this still remains the first observational data courtesy of China’s very first mission exclusively designed for astrophysics. Welcome the dark horse in the competition. For centuries, the hunt for dark matter has haunted the dreams of astrophysicists. Ever since Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky first discovered that the mass of all of the particles within the Coma cluster of galaxies was responsible for a mere one percent of the mass required to generate sufficient gravity necessary for the galaxy in order to protect itself from dissembling. This was the spark to a ...

At times, scientists observe flashes of radio bursts with astounding levels of energy, which are called Fast Radio Bursts (FRB’S). Such a flash was observed in 2001, a brilliant burst of light breaching the skies was observed. This event was so powerful that in the matter of seconds, power was released that was equivalent to that of 500 million suns. Just as fast as it had come, the signal disappeared in the matter of milliseconds.  Ever since such an occurrence in 2001, approximately 30 of such flashes have been identified. However, new estimates indicate that these flashes occur almost every second. Dr.Avi Loeb, science professor of Harvard University, says that “in the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, hundreds of FRB’s may have gone off somewhere in the universe.”  The origins these flashes remain unknown but an explanation may have been found. The FRB 121102 is the only one of such flashes that repeats. In fact, scientists have observed at least 150 flashes fro...

Director of Berkeley’s SETI Research Center, Andrew Siemion once said: “as we improve our understanding of ancient Earth and the history of our solar system, perhaps we may someday uncover evidence that suggests the activity of another technological civilization right here in our neighborhood.” Massive efforts have been put into the search for alien life in our universe. For example, in the year of 2015 a research study lead by The Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright, examined 100,000 neighboring large galaxies and concluded that none of them possessed any obvious symptoms of any highly technologically advanced civilizations. Now, the focus is steered closer to home-- in this past spring of 2017, Wright has proposed that an indigenous technological civilization could have arisen and lived within the solar system before Earth-bound life did. He also went on to suggest that its “technosignatures” may have potentially survived if they were made of a material that could...

It was once said by Dr. Wei-Chun Jao, lead author of a new study and research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State: “Finding old stars could also lead to the discovery of new planets. Maybe we can find some old ancient civilizations around these old stars. Maybe these stars have some planets around them that we don’t know about.”  Our home galaxy, The Milky Way, reaches an age that is approximately 14 billion years. It’s a very massive galaxy. Within this galaxy, the most antediluvian stars were formed in its early stages of formation, making them about six to nine billion years old. Such stars are found in the halo, a roughly spherical component of the galaxy that was one of the first to form and within it, old stars advance in eccentric orbits. However, younger stars in The Milky Way rotate together along the galaxy’s disk in nearly circular motions, resembling horses on a merry-go-round. This study primarily focused on senior stars, known as co...

Prepare for astounding investigation, for the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has elaborated the 13 proposals that will compromise the initial set of scientific observations carried out by the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).  The James Webb Space Telescope is a component of NASA’s Next Generation Telescope program that is to be launched in 2019, developed by NASA, Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency.  JWST will ultimately provide unprecedented resolution and amazing sensitivity from the long-wavelength visible light through the mid-infrared range. John C. Mather, senior project scientist for the Webb telescope and senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland spoke out about the telescope in a news release: “I’m thrilled to see the list of astronomer’s most fascinating targets for the Webb telescope and extremely eager to see the results. We fully expect to be surprised by what we find.” ...

This weird yet amazing Cosmic Snake galaxy is actually behind a massive galaxy cluster called MACS J1206.2-0847, but thanks to the cluster’s gravity, we can see it directly from Earth. Light from the distant galaxy arrives at Earth, having been distorted by the gigantic gravitational influence of the intervening cluster. The ‘Cosmic Snake’ galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble. Fascinatingly, instead of making it more difficult to perceive cosmological objects, such strong lensing effects improve the resolution and depth of an image by magnifying the background object. Sometimes gravitational lensing can even produce multiple images of the object as light is bent in different directions around the foreground cluster.  Using Hubble, Dr. Antonio Cava of the Université de Genève and co-authors looked at several such images of the Cosmic Snake, each with a different level of magnification. “The amplified images are more precise, luminous, and allows us to observe details up to 100 ...

Aliens-- always a prevalent topic of discussion and one sparking controversy. It is known to everyone that scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial planets for signs of life. Now, in the hope of making contact with aliens, a message beamed by scientists towards two planets potentially capable of supporting life. The message was directed towards GJ 273-- known as Luyten’s star, a red dwarf, lying 12.36 light years away from Earth but scientists estimate that it will take a mere 12 years to reach it. If any aliens reside on the planets and the message is received and understood by them, and a reply is sent, then it is expected to be received in the duration of the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice in 2042 (June 21st, 2042). However, the plan set in motion does not please all-- Stephen Hawking, amongst other experts, warns us that if aliens were ever to discover life on Earth, it is very probable that such a discovery could be the end of a civilization. Life on Earth would...

Using the light-warping effects of gravity, astronomers have detected a massive object right in the center of our galaxy. The universe is teeming with cranky objects that simply don’t fall into certain categories, just like Pluto. Astronomers are dubious of what exactly this massive object is, named OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb , a huge star or a flunked star.  OGLE, 13 times the size of Jupiter orbiting a star about 22,000 light years away from Earth, is not as big as the record-breaking giant DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b, which is 29 times the mass of Jupiter. NASA’s Spitzer has been set into Earth’s orbit around Sun since 2003 to find exoplanets, using Microlensing, which no one contemplated when it was first launched. Microlensing is comparatively an efficient technique for identifying details about stars, planets, and even galaxies. Gravity is the warping of space, which means a massive object can warp space into what is effectively a lens. The more conventional approach is to watch fo...