Quasars are galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centres. These black holes are surrounded by spinning discs of extremely hot material that is often spewed out in long jets along their axes of rotation. Quasars can shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together. […]
After more than a decade traveling through space, a robotic lander built by the European Space Agency has made the first-ever soft landing of a spacecraft on a comet. Mission controllers at ESA’s mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, received a signal confirming that the Philae lander had touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, […]
A new study – led by Oregon State University, with significant contributions from the University of Washington – shows that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contributed to the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago did not occur gradually but rather was characterized by three abrupt pulses. Scientists are […]
This image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken by Rosetta’s Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) on Sept. 20, from a distance of 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers), shows jets of dust and gas streaming into space from the neck of the comet’s nucleus. Images of the comet nucleus, taken by Rosetta earlier in the summer, […]