07 June 2019
First-ever image of cool gas disk surrounding Milky Way's black hole
... to shed a different type of light on our own supermassive black hole to reveal a never-before-seen disk of cold, interstellar gas wrapped around its periphery. Known as Sagittarius A* (A “star”), our resident SMBH is around four million times...
29 January 2020
Material older than the Sun found unexpectedly where it shouldn't be
... and some of it has found its way to Earth over the years. These tiny bits of preserved solid interstellar material are called presolar grains and scientists know they originated from earlier stars before our...
19 May 2021
Scientists unexpectedly find heavy metal vapour in comets throughout our Solar System, and beyond
... Solar System, but gaseous nickel has also been detected surrounding comet 2I/Borisov, the second observed interstellar interloper after ʻOumuamua. Ranging in size from a few hundred meters to loosely packed balls of ice and dust...
January 2022
Revealing the magnetic universe
..., is where the magnetic fields and stellar winds are draped or diverted around the heliosphere. In this region, interstellar neutral atoms streaming toward the heliopause are ionised, by collisions or radiation, and then accelerated to even higher...
November 2018
How many people does it take to colonise an exoplanet?
...-sized structures, but are such vast ships really necessary? Multi-generational crews If we want to start designing an interstellar mission, we have to fully accept that our designs will be modified in the future as our understanding of physics (and...
February 2016
Is Jupiter Really Our Protective Shield?
... planets and ‘failed Jupiters’, then Wetherill’s hypothesis was that there should be no reasonable expectation of ever seeing interstellar comets passing through the Solar System. Wetherill noted, ‘…there are several ways in which Jupiter (and...
