radio astronomy
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Pair of Merging Quasars Reveals Secrets of the Universe’s Earliest Days
A team of astronomers has spotted the most distant merging galactic cores yet, seen as they were when the universe was less than a billion years old. The duo of active galactic centers, called quasars, is the only confirmed pair seen during the Cosmic Dawn. The two very red galaxies were spotted by a team…
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Supposedly Dead ‘Tasmanian Devil’ Star Unexpectedly Whirls Back to Life
On September 7, 2022, the Zwicky Transient Facility detected a new transient object in deep space, about one billion light-years from Earth. The object was very bright, and now, a team of astronomers believes it’s a star that’s come back from the dead. The object was a star: a luminous fast blue optical transient, or…
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NASA’s Main Hotline to Space Is in Jeopardy Due to Increasing Demand
In order to contact its interplanetary spacecraft, NASA relies on an array of giant radio antennas spread across different parts of the world. The trusty communications network has been transferring data back and forth for more than 60 years but its antennas are currently operating at capacity, with an anticipated growth in demand as the…
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Breakthrough Gravitational Wave Findings Suggest Supermassive Black Holes Are Constantly Warping Spacetime
Astronomers and astrophysicists at five different pulsar timing array collaborations today announced data that strongly suggests the presence of a gravitational wave background: a constant murmur of low-frequency ripples in spacetime that emanates from some of the universe’s most exotic objects.