When White Dwarfs Collide
How tides, mergers and thermonuclear explosions forge and disperse iron across the Universe Type Ia supernovae are among the brightest stellar explosions in the Universe. They occur when a white…
Continue readingWhy hasn’t humanity returned to the Moon?
Humans have already landed on the Moon six times. So why have we not gone back in the past fifty years? Let’s explore the reasons behind this long pause in…
Continue readingThe Never‑ending Revolution in Celestial Sciences
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton: the revolution that created astrophysics. For most of human history, the night sky was an enthralling mystery. The stars appeared as unchanging points of light,…
Continue readingMars: the Artemis programme as a launchpad for the Red Planet
How similar are Mars and Earth? Let’s look at some key facts — and why all of this is closely linked to the Artemis programme. With the Artemis programme, humanity…
Continue readingDid Supermassive Black Holes or Galaxies come first?
New insights from JWST reveal how supermassive black holes and their galaxies formed together in the early Universe. 13.5 billions of years ago, black holes at the centers of tiny,…
Continue readingUnveiling Mysteries of the Galactic Core
Complex structures around the galactic core were discovered in 2019 by the XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes, creating the first highly detailed X-ray map of the central region of our…
Continue readingThe Secrets of Europa Revealed by ALMA
Telescopes like ALMA can detect the thermal ‘glow’ emitted even by cold objects like Europa, hence providing important clues about the hidden processes taking place there. An ALMA image of…
Continue readingAGB Stars and the Cosmic Secrets within Presolar Grains
Presolar grains allowed astronomers to make significant discoveries about the evolution of AGB stars through precise chemical analyses. AGB stars, which are very old, low-mass stars, have enriched the interstellar…
Continue readingThe Spherical Earth Revelation: Aristotle’s Lunar Eclipse Insight
More than 2300 years ago, in 350 BC, Aristotle noted that the Moon displays different shapes every month, but during an eclipse, the outline is consistently circular. This was one…
Continue readingDecoding the Mysteries of Heavy Element Formation in the Cosmos
The notion that heavy element formation predominantly stems from supernovae or neutron star mergers is frequently relayed, albeit inaccurately. Indeed, the full story is more complicated. Are we children of the…
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