176 light years from Earth, in the constellation Hydra (the Water Serpent), lies a small young star and what appears to be a brand new planet. Recently spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope, TW Hydrae is breaking records and disrupting current theories on planetary formation, because not only is the star apparently too young to have formed planets, but the planet itself is about twelve billion kilometers from the star — twice as far out as Pluto. Of the thousands … Continue reading →

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Pamela Hoffman of Everyday Spacer.  The carnival of space is a weekly phenomenon, passing on to a new blog each week.  The sacred duty of finding and collecting the best news on astronomy and space science from around the Internet is entrusted to each new blogger, to ensure that the reader will always have the news that matters. This week’s Carnival has some good stuff:  We learn about using interstellar X-rays to … Continue reading →

 A century ago, scientists first discovered cosmic rays, subatomic debris which travel through the universe at relativistic speeds and which smash into our upper atmosphere with energies exceeding those of our most powerful particle accelerators. But it’s only now, thanks to a new study using observations from NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope that we know where they come from. The bulk of cosmic rays are protons, with the remainder being either electrons or atomic nuclei. Since these particles all carry … Continue reading →