Lifeboat Foundation

During a break from looking at planets around other stars, the European Space Agency’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.

The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?

The fate of galaxies is determined by the initial mass distribution at the birth of a new population of stars in the diverse and vast Universe. This relationship is referred to as the Initial Mass Function (IMF

In the field of astronomy, initial mass function (IMF) is an empirical function that details the distribution of stellar masses in a newly formed population of stars.

A tech demo launching later this year are the first steps towards a possible communication system based on quantum entanglement.

One of the most interesting stars in the Milky Way is still serving up more than its fair share of intrigue.

In October 2020, SGR 1935+2154, the magnetar responsible for spitting out radio signals never before detected in our home galaxy, unexpectedly slowed down.

Now, scientists believe the rotational slowdown could be evidence of a volcano-like eruption on its surface, spewing material out into space that altered the star’s environment enough to decelerate the spinning of the planet minutely.

Google’s wannabe rival to ChatGPT is off to a shaky start after its launch video featured a glaring error about the JWST and exoplanets. As a result of the blunderin parent company Alphabet plunged by around $100 billion on Wednesday.

In a promo video posted on Wednesday, Googles’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, was asked to describe the discoveries made by JWST to a nine-year-old child. It replied that it was the first telescope to ever take pictures of a planet outside of the Solar System.

Unfortunately, however, that is not true.

Scientists discovered a mysterious light in what they previously believed was a darker region of space. The light, which James Webb picked up, was initially invisible when Hubble observed the area. But scientists aren’t quite sure what caused this mysterious light in space, so they’re still searching.

The Andromeda galaxy — the closest neighbour to our Milky Way galaxy — is on course to collide right into us. Great news, right? But since it won’t happen for the next four to five billion years, here’s a simulation of what that would look like:

Read more ❯.

“When we put everything together, we saw drops in brightness that were not caused by Quaoar, but that pointed to the presence of material in a circular orbit around it,” said Bruno Morgado of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in a statement. “The moment we saw that we said, ‘Okay, we are seeing a ring around Quaoar.’”

Quaoar is part of a collection of about 3,000 dwarf planets known as trans-Neptunian objects, which are beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Scientists are now wondering why the dense material in Quaoar’s ring has not come together to form a small moon, because the ring itself is “at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar,” the ESA said.

Alphabet shares tumbled Wednesday after a Reuters report said an advertisement for Google’s newly unveiled AI chatbot Bard contained an inaccurate answer to a question aimed at showing the newly unveiled tool’s capability.

Shares of the company fell as much as 8.9% to $98.04 the lowest price since January 31 and barely pared the decline heading into afternoon trade.

Reuters reported an ad published by Google on Twitter featuring a GIF video of Bard — which Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday introduced as its “experimental AI service” — offered an incorrect response to a question about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.