Scientists studying a nearby protostar discovered gaseous water in the star's circumstellar disk, supporting the theory that water on Earth is older than our Sun. The team used ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in…

Spain is the first country to lead a global network of autonomous observatories. The BOOTES network performs space surveillance and the study of transient cosmic phenomena. The U.S. and Russia, among others, have similar projects that are…

A team of international scientists discovered a new ring system relatively nearby. Quaoar, a dwarf planet, orbits beyond Neptune and is challenging current ring formation theories.  The team used HiPERCAM, an extremely sensitive…

An international team of scientists gathered new evidence about the energetic core of an active galaxy 47 million light-years away. They used the neutrino particles it emits. NGC 1068, also known as Messier 77, is a high-energy neutrino…

Astronomers announced a compact "one of a kind" system of three stars earlier this year. The star system consists of a binary set of stars (two stars that orbit one another) with a more massive star orbiting the binary. The orbital period…

One of the craziest things a supermassive black hole can do is shred a star with its enormous tidal forces. The tidal disruption events are one of the very few ways astronomers know of the existence of supermassive black holes at the…

USING TYPICAL STARGAZING TOOLS, a UC Riverside astronomer and citizen scientists discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view. TOI-2180 b, with a diameter similar to Jupiter's, is nearly 3x more massive than Jupiter and 105x the mass of…

Japanese astronomers innovated an artificial intelligence (AI) technique to remove noise in astronomical data that is based on random variations in galaxy shapes. They then applied the new tool to actual data from Japan's Subaru Telescope,…

Glass, rubber and plastics are amorphous solids. While common, unlike other classes of solids, they have stymied researchers attempts to determine their atomic structures with precision. Mapping the 3D atomic structures of crystals, for…