Toggle light / dark theme

We’ve got a new kind of ice on the block – medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).

It’s amorphous, which means that the water molecules are in a disorganised form instead of being neatly ordered like they are in the ordinary, crystalline ice you find floating in your Scotch on the rocks…

Amorphous ice is super rare on Earth, but scientists think that it might be the main type found in the frigid environment of outer space – because ice wouldn’t have enough thermal energy there to form crystals.

Images and spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the first galaxies in the universe are too many or too bright compared to what astronomers expected.

Evidence is building that the first galaxies formed earlier than expected, astronomers announced at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

As the James Webb Space Telescope views swaths of sky spotted with distant galaxies, multiple teams have found that the earliest stellar metropolises are more mature and more numerous than expected. The results may end up changing what we know about how the first galaxies formed.

After more than a decade of observations, Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang has constructed an amazing time-lapse video of four planets larger than Jupiter as they revolve around their star, giving viewers a one-of-a-kind glimpse into planetary motion.

Wang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, pointed out that it can be difficult to detect planets in a rotating orbit, which is why this video of planetary motion is so striking.

Objects in our solar system, like Jupiter and Mars, are barely visible since we are in the same system and don’t have a top-down view, Wang explains in a statement. Planetary events occur too promptly or slowly, making it hard to capture video of planetary motion of this caliber.