We know that a monstrous asteroid impact killed the (non-avian) dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Sixty-six million years ago, a 10-kilometer-wide space rock crashed into Earth just off the coast of present-day Yucatan, destroying a 150-kilometer-wide crater and unleashing a chain of catastrophic weather events that destroyed …
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When two black holes eat each other, they release a lot of energy. A lot. A significant fraction of the mass of black holes is converted into energy, which is radiated as gravitational waves, waves in the structure of space-time. These can have as much energy as, and I’m not …
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In the Serpens constellation, about 1,400 light years from Earth, a fledgling star flaps its wings. OK, I’m being a little poetic there. It is more like a planet in formation gravitationally deformed from its circumstellar disk into a quadrupole shape, so that the shadow cast by the star on …
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We have long known that planets like Earth are born from disks of gas, ice, and dust that surround stars as they form. But the details are important: planets like Earth form differently than Jupiter, and where On the album they are born it makes a difference in their potential …
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Eight hundred million light years from Earth, two massive cosmic objects merged after a long spiral dance, the violent burst of energy at the end literally shaking the fabric of space-time. One of these objects was a large black hole. The other was … well, something. It is unclear what: …
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