interstellar

The James Webb Space Telescope

James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Coldest Interstellar Ice Ever Seen

NASA’s newest space telescope not only extends astronomers’ view deeper into the universe, it also reaches cooler temperatures than scientists have before. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb), the most powerful space observatory to date, peered deep into a dense molecular cloud and found a rich variety of pristine interstellar ice, including a …

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An artist

This Wild Interstellar Picogram Probe Idea Could Carry Man-Made Microbes to Other Stars

Microbes carried by laser-powered sails could serve as interstellar probes capable of building communication stations to telephone home from Alpha Centauri, suggests a scientist known for wanting to resurrect extinct woolly mammoths and use DNA to detect matter black. This concept by George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University, builds on efforts to dramatically speed …

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Image of the intracluster light of the cluster SMACS-J0723.3-7327 obtained with the NIRCAM camera on board of JWST. The data have been processed by the IAC team to improve the detection of the faint light between the galaxies (black and white).

The James Webb Space Telescope peers into the ‘ghostly light’ of interstellar space

The first deep-field image of the cosmos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has allowed scientists to study the faint, almost ghostly light of orphan stars that exist between the galaxies of galactic clusters. Gravitationally unbound to galaxies, these stars are pulled from their homes and drift through intergalactic space by the massive …

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'Dynamic soaring' trick could speed up spacecraft through interstellar space

‘Dynamic soaring’ trick could speed up spacecraft through interstellar space

Sailing to the stars on the scale of human lifetimes could be a matter of choosing the right type of wind. Researchers from McGill University in Canada and the Tau Zero Foundation in the United States have come up with a new way to traverse the extraordinary distances of interstellar space, using lots of nothing …

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An artist

Scientists want to build an “interstellar interceptor” to play hide and seek with the next “Oumuamua”

Artist’s rendering of the first identified interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua. (Image credit: M. Kornmesser/ESO) (opens in a new tab) A team of scientists has proposed building an “interstellar interceptor”, a spacecraft capable of closing in on and approaching the next asteroid or comet to enter the planet. solar system. So far, astronomers have spotted two such …

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Scientists are making plans to intercept an interstellar object

Scientists are making plans to intercept an interstellar object

We finally have the technological means to detect interstellar objects. We have detected two in recent years, ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, and there are undoubtedly others. As such, there has been a lot of interest in developing a mission that could visit one once we detect it. But what would such a mission look like? Now, …

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Most asteroids miss Earth at a safe distance.

Confirmed! 2014 meteor is Earth’s first known interstellar visitor

Astronomers have confirmed that a suspicious space rock that hit Earth in 2014 came from another star system, predating famous interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua by three years. Researchers found the meteor in the catalog from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) in 2019. At that time, however, some of the rock’s trajectory data was …

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