Hacker News with Generative AI: Astronomy

New analysis casts doubt on 'biosignatures' found on planet K2-18B (npr.org)
Astronomers have been poring over last week's claim of the detection of life-associated gases in the atmosphere of a distant planet named K2-18b — "the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system," as a University of Cambridge press release put it.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Science, Life Detection

20 points by ceejayoz 13 hours ago | 6 comments

Signs of alien life on exoplanet K2-18B may just be statistical noise (newscientist.com)
Apparent signs of alien life on the exoplanet K2-18b may just be statistical noise, according to a new analysis of data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Space Exploration, Exoplanets, Astronomy, Statistical Analysis

11 points by cryptoz 23 hours ago | 1 comments

Half of the universe's hydrogen gas, long unaccounted for, has been found (news.berkeley.edu)
Astronomers tallying up all the normal matter — stars, galaxies and gas — in the universe today have come up embarrassingly short of the total matter produced in the Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago.

Astronomy, Universe, Cosmology, Hydrogen

7 points by gmays 1 day ago | 0 comments

Half of the universe's hydrogen gas, long unaccounted for, has been found (phys.org)
Astronomers tallying up all the normal matter—stars, galaxies and gas—in the universe today have come up embarrassingly short of the total matter produced in the Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago.

Cosmology, Astronomy, Physics, Missing Matter

12 points by PaulHoule 1 day ago | 1 comments

One quantum transition makes light at 21 cm (bigthink.com)
Across the observable Universe, there are some 10^80 atoms, and most of them are simple hydrogen: made of just one proton and one electron each.

Quantum Physics, Astronomy, Hydrogen

252 points by Brajeshwar 2 days ago | 157 comments

Webb brings dying star's energetic display into full focus (phys.org)
Gas and dust ejected by a dying star at the heart of NGC 1514 came into complete focus thanks to mid-infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Space, Astronomy, Stars

7 points by wglb 2 days ago | 1 comments

NASA's Next Major Space Telescope Is Ready to Launch. Trump Wants to Kill It (scientificamerican.com)
Amid harsh cuts, the Trump administration has proposed canceling the nearly ready-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Space Exploration, Politics, Astronomy, Science, Government

16 points by croes 4 days ago | 5 comments

Ultra-precision formation flying demonstration for space-based interferometry (arxiv.org)
We propose SILVIA (Space Interferometer Laboratory Voyaging towards Innovative Applications), a mission concept designed to demonstrate ultra-precision formation flying between three spacecraft separated by 100 m.

Space Exploration, Technology, Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy, Scientific Research

70 points by PaulHoule 4 days ago | 23 comments

Astronomers confirm the existence of a lone black hole (phys.org)
A team of astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute, working with one colleague from the University of St Andrews' Center for Exoplanet Science and another from the European Southern Observatory, has confirmed the existence of a lone black hole.

Astronomy, Black Holes, Space

238 points by wglb 4 days ago | 170 comments

A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017) (nasa.gov)
Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go looking for remnants of the vanquished star, only to find that it disappeared out of sight.

Astronomy, Black Holes, Supernova

77 points by bfeist 7 days ago | 35 comments

NASA's next space-telescope is almost ready to launch but may be killed by cuts (scientificamerican.com)
Amid harsh cuts, the Trump administration has proposed canceling the nearly ready-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Space Exploration, Government Funding, Astronomy

13 points by ck2 7 days ago | 3 comments

'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years (phys.org)
Published in Nature, scientists at King's College London, Harvard University, UC Berkeley and others have shared the foundation of what they believe will be the most accurate dark matter detector to date.

Dark Matter, Physics, Astronomy, Research

34 points by rbanffy 9 days ago | 53 comments

Scientists find 'strongest evidence yet' of life on distant planet (bbc.com)
Scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

Exoplanets, Astronomy, Life, Science, Biology

14 points by vinni2 9 days ago | 1 comments

“Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System (skyatnightmagazine.com)

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Alien Life

417 points by fuidani 9 days ago | 349 comments

Astronomers claim strongest evidence of alien life yet (newscientist.com)
Astronomers claim to have seen the strongest evidence so far for life on another planet. But other astronomers have urged caution until the findings can be verified by other groups and alternative, non-biological explanations can be ruled out.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Alien Life, Science

12 points by tony69 9 days ago | 3 comments

Strongest evidence of life yet found on planet beyond solar system (news.sky.com)
Scientists have found what they are calling the strongest sign yet of possible life beyond our solar system after detecting the chemical footprint of gases in an alien planet's atmosphere that on Earth are only produced by living organisms.

Space Exploration, Astronomy, Astrobiology, Exoplanets

11 points by austinallegro 9 days ago | 2 comments

Scientists hail 'strongest evidence' so far for life beyond our solar system (theguardian.com)
A giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim.

Extraterrestrial Life, Astronomy, Science

13 points by c420 9 days ago | 1 comments

Telescope finds promising hints of life on distant planet (bbc.com)
Scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Life, Science

15 points by anaclet0 9 days ago | 2 comments

Exoplanet K2-18B: Alien ocean world likely 'teeming with life' (thetimes.com)

Exoplanets, Astronomy, Space Exploration, Life

5 points by kapkapkap 9 days ago | 1 comments

Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet (nytimes.com)
The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Science

168 points by julienchastang 9 days ago | 128 comments

Northern lights possible as far south as Illinois tonight (space.com)

Northern lights, Weather, Astronomy, Illinois

8 points by SCEtoAux 9 days ago | 0 comments

Jupiter, it's mushballs all the way down (sciencedaily.com)
Imagine a Slushee™ composed of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice. Now picture these ice-encrusted slushballs, dubbed "mushballs," raining down like hailstones during a thunderstorm, illuminated by intense flashes of lightning.

Science, Astronomy, Jupiter

54 points by docmechanic 10 days ago | 12 comments

Ocean Tides and the Earth's Rotation (2001) (nasa.gov)
Tides affect the earth's rotation in two sharply contrasting ways.

Physics, Earth Science, Astronomy

35 points by susam 10 days ago | 7 comments

School student uses AI to reveal 1.5M previously unknown objects in space (phys.org)
Through his research at Caltech, a local high school student revealed 1.5 million previously unknown objects in space, broadened the potential of a NASA mission, and published a single-author paper.

Space Exploration, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Astronomy

12 points by Brajeshwar 13 days ago | 0 comments

How many supernova explode every year? (beehiiv.com)
We went from seeing one star explode by February 23, 1987 to well over 3,000 in the same amount of time in 2021.

Astronomy, Supernova, Space, Science

368 points by rbanffy 14 days ago | 187 comments

'Sun-Like' Stars (centauri-dreams.org)
The thought of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star began to obsess me as a boy, when I realized how different all the planets in our Solar System were from each other.

Astronomy, Stars, Solar System

64 points by JPLeRouzic 17 days ago | 20 comments

An eerie spiral lit up the European skies (cnn.com)

Weather, Europe, Astronomy

3 points by vinnyglennon 18 days ago | 0 comments

Messier Marathon (wikipedia.org)
A Messier marathon is an attempt, usually organized by amateur astronomers, to find as many Messier objects as possible during one night.

Astronomy, Amateur Astronomy, Events

38 points by Hooke 19 days ago | 5 comments

Astrophotographers Help Scientists Solve Mystery of 'Sprite Fireworks' (petapixel.com)
A pair of astrophotographers teamed up with scientists to help them solve the mystery of “sprite fireworks.”