Ever since astronomers first detected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in July, speculation about its true nature has run wild. Some experts speculate it isn’t a comet at all but rather an extraterrestrial spacecraft sent to sniff around our solar system. New evidence has dumped cold water on this provocative hypothesis. MeerKAT, a radio telescope operated by […]
Citizen Scientists Spot a Perfect Extragalactic Venn Diagram
For lovers of cool astronomy and math, this finding is a real treat. Citizen astronomers stumbled upon not one but two rings of extragalactic radio signals crossing each other to form a near-perfect Venn diagram. A paper published October 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies this strangely geometric object as an […]
Daylight Savings Time Is So Bad, It’s Messing With Our View of the Cosmos
Tracking gravitational waves—invisible ripples in space-time from intense astronomical events—pushes the limits of what astronomers must do to reduce unwanted noise. Scientists have been getting increasingly better at doing just that, but new research warns that something rather unexpected might be getting in the way: daylight savings time. In a preprint titled “Can LIGO Detect […]
Astronomers Revisit the Mysterious Wow! Signal—and Find a Big Surprise
Nearly 50 years ago, astronomers searching the cosmos for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life detected a strong radio signal emanating from deep space. Today, scientists still aren’t sure where—or what—the Wow! Signal came from. It remains one of the most perplexing phenomena in the history of radio astronomy. A new study has brought scientists closer […]