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Writer Fuel: Astronomers Watch Star Consume One Of Its Planets

An artist's illustration of the planet, a Jupiter-sized gas giant, being engulfed by the expanding star. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani)

Astronomers have spotted a star devouring one of its planets for the first time. It is a stunning preview of our own planet’s fate, when, in roughly 5 billion years time, Earth too will likely be engulfed by our rapidly expanding sun. The distant planet met its gory demise 13,000 light-years from Earth around a … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Can Gravity Become Light?

gravity light - deposit photos

Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, the Standard Model of particle physics, the reigning theory that explains the subatomic zoo of particles, usually forbids the transformation of massless particles into … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Why Are There Strange Red Astroids Hanging Around Blue Neptune?

Neptune - deposit photos

Neptune is famously a vivid blue, but the asteroids orbiting near it are decidedly not. An international team of astronomers recently took a peek at Neptune’s Trojan asteroids and found that they all seem to be some shade of red — far redder than most asteroids in the solar system. They published their results Feb. … Read more

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Writer Fuel: James Webb Telescope Finds Earth-Sized Planet Nearby – With No Atmosphere

An illustration of the rocky, Earth-like planet TRAPPIST 1-b, with its small red sun blazing in the distance. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI))

Five years ago, NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope helped discover a family of seven rocky exoplanets orbiting the same star, known as TRAPPIST-1. Now, NASA’s new infrared powerhouse — the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — measured the temperature of one of those worlds, TRAPPIST-1b, in new research published in the journal Nature. The bad … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Astronomers Find Black Hole As Big As 30 Billion Suns

black hole - deposit photos

Astronomers have discovered one of the largest black holes ever found — an ultramassive monster roughly 30 billion times the mass of the sun — using a space-time trick predicted by Albert Einstein. The colossal black hole, which lurks 2.7 billion light-years from Earth in the brightest galaxy of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201, was … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Giant “Solnado” Raged on the Sun for Three Days

Solnado - Live Science

An enormous “solar tornado” the size of 14 Earths stacked on top of each other recently raged on the sun’s surface for three whole days. The enormous plasma twister may be one of the largest ever recorded. The solar tornado emerged near the sun’s north pole on March 15 and continued to grow and shape-shift … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Doh! Is the Universe Shaped Like a Donut, or a Pancake?

donut on a background of stars - deposit photos

The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it’s as flat as a pancake, new research suggests. Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested the universe’s flatness, the study … Read more

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Writer Fuel: James Webb Telescope Captures Star Going Supernova

star going supernova - James Webb Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a dazzling image of a star about to go supernova in a massive explosion. The picture, released by NASA on Tuesday (March 14), shows the star WR 124 in the middle of a spectacular cosmic cloud. As it goes supernova, the star, which is about 30 solar … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Moon Assassins – How Often Do Unstable Moons Obliterate Alien Life?

moon impacts planet - deposit photos

The moon crashing into Earth may sound like an unrealistic doomsday scenario or the stuff of sci-fi disasters. But for some planets in other star systems, such catastrophic collisions may be common. New research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses computer simulations to show that collisions between exoplanets and … Read more

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Writer Fuel: What Is Space Junk?

Space junk around Earth - Deposit Photos

There’s a floating garbage dump orbiting Earth, and it’s getting fuller every year. Space debris — known colloquially as space junk — is the name that scientists give to the thousands of pieces of broken satellites and spacecraft that clog Earth’s orbit. Space junk can be as small as a paint fleck or as large … Read more