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The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is slowly spinning, but what does that mean?

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The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is slowly spinning, but what does that mean?
The universe from the surface of an alien planet. Illustration: shutterstock

Life at the seam between the bright side and the dark side: the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to examine the composition of the atmosphere of Proxima Centauri b

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A starshot nano spacecraft of which thousands of copies will fly to Alpha Centauri and arrive within 20 years

Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg are aiming for the stars

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In this illustration, the Milky Way is dotted with green bubbles, which highlight the places where life has spread beyond the solar system where it originated, creating a cosmic oasis, in a process known as panspermia. A new study hypothesizes that we may be able to identify the pattern of the Premium Lantern, if indeed it did occur. redit: NASA/JPL/R. Hurt We only have one example of a planet that is home to life - Earth. However, in the next generation, it may be possible to discover signs of life on planets orbiting distant stars. If we find life, new questions will arise, for example, did life arise spontaneously or did it spread from somewhere else? If life crossed the vast expanses of interstellar space a long time ago, how would we be able to tell? A new study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics, concludes that if life could pass between the stars - in a process known as panspermia, it would spread in a characteristic pattern that we could potentially discover. redit: NASA/JPL/R. Hurt

"If life spreads from one solar system to another we can discover the pattern of the spread"

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In this photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, you see dark knots of gas and dust called "Bok globules" - compressed pockets in larger molecular clouds. Such islands of matter in the early universe may have contained water vapor as we see in our galaxy today, although they contained much less oxygen. Photo: Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team

Surprising discovery: the ancient gas clouds, from which the stars and galaxies in the universe were formed, contained a significant amount of water

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In the yellow circle you see a normal form of polarization (E-mode) and in the blue circle you see the form of polarization and the size of the polarization that must have created only gravitational waves during inflation. You can see the same special polarization in the background radiation in the top image as well. The black lines mark the direction and polarization of the radiation. Once the team measured this polarization shape they were able to confirm both the gravitational waves and the inflation phase. In the bottom picture you see a drawing starting on the left side where the big bang happened and immediately after it the inflation (the yellow part). After the end of inflation the universe expands much more slowly (the black part) until the present day. Today we measure the cosmic background radiation that came out when the universe was 380,000 years old and pass it through polarizers to measure the polarization of the radiation (the blue part). Image: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

First direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves that caused the universe to swell immediately after the big bang

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A proposal to search for artificial lights in planets orbiting other suns. Figure: CfA

City lights may reveal an intelligent civilization

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Supernova SN1979C is a likely candidate for the youngest black hole ever observed. Photo: NASA

The Chandra Space Telescope has discovered an extremely young and relatively nearby black hole

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Hundreds of "rogue" black holes wander the Milky Way and swallow everything in their path

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Two more stars have been discovered that escape the Milky Way forever

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Israeli astrophysicists discovered for the first time Milky Way-like galaxies at the edge of the universe (update)

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Gamma rays: the Israelis were right

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A mysterious ring in space

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