“We tend to think about particles as being tiny but, theoretically, there is no reason they can’t be as big as a galaxy,” says Asimina Arvanitaki, The Aristarchus chair in theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada about using solving the mystery of dark matter.
Researchers using ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) observed signals of oxygen, carbon, and dust from a galaxy in the early Universe 13 billion years ago. This is the earliest galaxy where this useful combination of three signals has been detected. By comparing the different signals, the team determined that the galaxy is actually two galaxies merging together, making it the earliest example of merging galaxies yet discovered.
We didn’t know what the Sun looked like in its first billion years, and it’s super important because it likely changed how Venus’ atmosphere evolved and how quickly it lost water, said Prabal Saxena, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It also probably changed how quickly Mars lost its atmosphere, and it changed the atmospheric chemistry of Earth.”
“We see so much more, and closer up, and we’re getting new and more interesting puzzles,” said NASA’s Ames Research Center’s Jeff Cuzzi, who’s been studying Saturn’s rings since the 1970s and is the interdisciplinary scientist for rings on the Cassini mission. “We are just settling into the next phase, which is building new, detailed models of ring evolution—including the new revelation from Cassini data that the rings are much younger than Saturn.”
“Man on the moon,” cried Walter Cronkite to an amazed world fifty years ago this summer. Although cosmologically, a mere blink of the eye, the USA celebrates the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission marking Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon. Meanwhile, China quietly explores the mysterious lunar farside, laying the foundation for the human species’ first moonbase and a radio telescope that will provide an unfettered window on the universe.
