Earth and Planetary Science

Scientists have discovered the first binary system ever known to consist of a black hole and a Be star. Read on to know more. 

The interaction between the sun and Earth’s magnetic fields sometimes cause storms of explosive nature in the space near Earth. Understanding these interactions is important to help protect and improve the performance of satellites. NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission’s results have provided the first direct and detailed observation of magnetic reconnection. Read more about these findings here.

Physicists have made a groundbreaking finding by gathering evidence of a long-predicted twist in light from the big bang that represents the first image of ripples in the universe called gravitational waves. Read on for more details. 

In a new study, researchers have concluded that the majority of circumbinary planets must have formed much further away from the central binary stars and then migrated to their current location. Read on to find out more. 

Latest findings suggest that Saturn's rings originated around 4.4 billion years ago. NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, has measured the rate at which dust from outside the Saturn system is falling on the rings and polluting them. Read on to find out more. 

In mid-July, a mysterious 30-meter-wide crater was spotted in the frozen Yamal peninsula in Siberia. Although many theories abounded over the cause of the crater, researchers in Russia believe the mysterious hole was left behind when permafrost thawed and collapsed and methane released. Read on to find out more. 

Using sophisticated plate tectonic and 3D numerical modeling, geoscientists have been able to show that break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana about 130 million years ago could have led to a completely different shape of the African and South American continent. Read on for more details. 

A team of researchers headed by Simon Clark reported that they have found the "runaway star" that caused the Milky Way Galaxy's only magnetar—a rare type of neutron star that is highly dense and extremely magnetic—in the star cluster Westerlund 1 to form. Read on for more details. 

The All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), a project that comprises small telescopes worldwide to observe the universe for any bright objects, has detected an extremely luminous body that is 3.8 billion light years away from the Earth. Read more about this here.

Researchers have found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona, possibly explaining the solar physics conundrum called the “coronal heating problem.” Read on to know more.