Science & Discovery
Space science and discovery from Cosmic Herald — planetary science, cosmology, astrobiology, and the search for life beyond Earth.
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Science & Discovery
JWST Finds a "Hot but Cold" Hydrogen Glow Far Out in an Edge-On Planet-Forming Disk
A new JWST study of the edge-on disk Oph 163131 finds hydrogen gas glowing from vibrational excitation without the rotational heat that normally comes with it, pointing to UV and cosmic rays stirring the far reaches of a planet-forming disk.
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Science & Discovery
James Webb's Biggest Discoveries So Far
From the most distant confirmed galaxy to overmassive black holes, a disputed biosignature, and proof the Hubble tension is real, here are JWST's most significant verified findings, sourced to NASA, ESA, and peer review.
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Science & Discovery
Beta Pictoris Gains a Third Confirmed World, Joining an Elite Club of Directly Imaged Systems
NASA's Exoplanet Archive confirmed Beta Pictoris d in its July 9 update, making Beta Pictoris only the second directly imaged system known to host more than two planets.
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Science & Discovery
Inside the Sun's 'Impossible' Thin Layer: NASA's COFFIES Center Cracks the Tachocline Mystery
A NASA-funded supercomputer study finds the Sun's razor-thin tachocline stays thin because it and the solar magnetic field are locked in a mutual feedback loop, resolving a decades-old puzzle tied to space weather forecasting.
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Science & Discovery
JWST's Rocky Worlds Program Delivers Its First Complete Verdict: GJ 3929 b Is a Bare, Airless Rock
Four stacked JWST/MIRI eclipses of the super-Earth GJ 3929 b rule out thick CO2 or water atmospheres at high confidence, giving the Rocky Worlds program its first finished case file — and a warm, dark rock instead of a habitable world.
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Science & Discovery
Webb Telescope Marks Fourth Anniversary by Revealing the Hidden Heart of Centaurus A
NASA's new Webb image of Centaurus A cuts through dust to resolve individual stars in a galaxy still reeling from a 2-billion-year-old collision, marking four years of the telescope's public images.
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Science & Discovery
Hidden Jet from a 'Missing-Link' Black Hole Lights Up the Radio Sky
Radio astronomers caught a years-long afterglow from AT2019ijn revealing an off-axis relativistic jet from a rare intermediate-mass black hole 3.4 billion light-years away.
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Science & Discovery
A 20-Year Argument Over the Bullet Cluster's Mass Just Got Settled — by Webb and a Ground-Based Camera
A joint JWST-DECam lensing study pins the Bullet Cluster's mass ratio at 10.14-to-1, ending two decades of dueling estimates and confirming it's a minor merger, not the near-equal collision often assumed.
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Science & Discovery
JWST Spots the Most Distant Barred Spiral Galaxy Ever Seen, and It's Already Surprisingly Grown-Up
JWST has found a massive barred spiral galaxy just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, the earliest such structure ever confirmed, challenging assumptions about how quickly orderly disks can form.
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Science & Discovery
A Warm, Wildly Eccentric Jupiter Just Showed Up in the Gap Where Few Giant Planets Are Found
NGTS-39 b, a 58-day, wildly eccentric Jupiter-mass world spotted by TESS and confirmed by NGTS, fills in a notoriously empty stretch of exoplanet demographics — and hints at a hidden companion tugging its orbit.
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Science & Discovery
A New Earth-Sized Neighbor: Astronomers Refine GJ 3378b's Mass in the Habitable Zone
A UC Irvine-led team cut the mass estimate for nearby exoplanet GJ 3378b roughly in half, from about 5 to 2.3 Earth masses, bolstering the case that it's a rocky, potentially habitable world just 25 light-years away.
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Science & Discovery
An Ultra-Black Coating Could Save Astronomy From 60,000 Satellites
University of Surrey researchers say coating satellites in Vantablack 310, which reflects just 2% of incoming light, could bring megaconstellation brightness near IAU limits—and it gets its first orbital test next year.
