Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · 6d

The strongest gravitational wave signal yet. GW250114 was detected by both arms of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington and Louisiana USA earlier this year.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · 19d

A Dragonfly for Titan eos.org/features/a-d...

A Dragonfly for Titan - Eos

A new eight-rotor robotic probe will head to the solar system’s most Earth-like moon. Here’s what its team is doing to prepare.

eos.org

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · 26d

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detect most massive black hole merger to date | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detect most massive black hole merger to date

Scientists have detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves, using the US National Science Foundation-funded (NSF) LIGO Hanford and Livingston Observator...

www.eurekalert.org

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Reposted by John Bird

The Planetary Society @planetarysociety.bsky.social · Sep 10

BREAKING NEWS: NASA has found a potential sign of past life on Mars. www.nasa.gov/news-release...

NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year - NASA

A sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken

www.nasa.gov

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Aug 25

New approach uses observed local supervoid to give expansion of the universe an extra push and solve the Hubble tension phys.org/news/2024-11... via
@physorg_com

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Aug 13

Perseid meteor shower 2025: When, where and how to see it www.space.com/32868-persei...

Perseid meteor shower 2025: When, where and how to see it

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best shooting star displays of the year.

www.space.com

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Aug 8

New Zealand Air Force Mounts Dangerous Rescue in Antarctica www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/w...

New Zealand Air Force Mounts Dangerous Rescue in Antarctica

www.nytimes.com

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jul 24

Scientists may have solved a chemistry mystery about Jupiter's ocean moon Europa. www.space.com/astronomy/ju...

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jul 13

On July 9, 2025, Earth spun faster than usual, enough to make the day 1.6 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24 hours. Add a leap day every 4 years, except: Years divisible by 100, unless they’re also divisible by 400, giving 365.2425 days/year, which is very close to the real 365.2422.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jul 4

For the first time ever, MIRI on JWST discovered an exoplanet by directl imaging. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evidence for a sub-Jovian planet in the young TWA 7 disk - Nature

Using the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, a study reports evidence for a direct detection of a cold, sub-Jupiter-mass planet in the disk of the star TWA 7. 

www.nature.com

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jun 28

A dedicated search for upward-going air showers at energies >0.1 EeV has been performed using the Fluorescence Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. arxiv.org/abs/2502.04513

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · May 23

Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager at 17.4 nanometres, viewing the Sun from a latitude 11.4° below the equator at a distance of 77 million km.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · May 20

Model suggests impact of global warming on AMOC has led to increased flooding along US Northeast Coast phys.org/news/2025-05...

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · May 12

Two separate axion-hunting groups have turned their gaze to a new potential source: starburst galaxies physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · May 4

Scientists discover a new colour by laser stimulation of only M cones and not L or S, which in principle would send a colour signal to the brain that never occurs in natural vision. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Apr 27

The NSF Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the largest solar telescope globally, with the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), has taken its first images.The new VTF has an unparalleled combination of imaging, spectral, and polarimetric capabilities.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Apr 9

Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica covers an area about the size of Florida. It has the largest ocean front of any glacier in the world.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Mar 25

JWST’s Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) analyzed 263 galaxies from the early universe and revealed a significant asymmetry: roughly 66% spin clockwise, while only about 33% rotate counterclockwise. Does this mean the universe is in a spinning black hole? academic.oup.com/mnras/articl...

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Mar 16

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognized 128 new moons in orbit around Saturn, discovered by astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the United States and France. Saturn’s new grand total of 274 moons is almost twice as many as all the rest of the moons in our solar system combined

Tony Dunn @tony873004.bsky.social · Mar 12

Saturn has 128 newly-discovered moons. Here they are color-coded by their MPEC release. Orange: MPEC 2025 E153, Purple: MPEC 2025-E154, Green: MPEC 2025-E155.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Mar 11

While NGC 1514 is an elliptical, but complex, planetary nebula at optical wavelengths, it was discovered to have a pair of infrared-bright, axisymmetric rings studied by JWST/MIRI. arxiv.org/abs/2502.21281

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Mar 2

The Veil Nebula is the remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded 10,000 years ago, situated about 2400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This view combines three filters of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Feb 17

JWST MIRI imaging filter curves. MIRI uses 3 arsenic-doped silicon (Si:As) IBC arrays.

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Feb 9

A trillion-ton megaberg heads toward South Georgia Island. Calving icebergs are happening more frequently as the climate warms and more fresh water flows into the ocean. apnews.com/article/gian...

Wall of ice the size of Rhode Island heading toward penguin-packed island off Antarctica

A wall of ice the size of Rhode Island is lumbering toward a remote island off Antarctica that’s home to millions of penguins and seals.

apnews.com

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jan 25

The expansion rate of the universe remains elusive. Using Type Ia supernovae, the rate was measured to be H0 = 73.24±1.74 (km/s)/Mpc arxiv.org/pdf/1910.02978

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John Bird @johnbird001.bsky.social · Jan 19

JWST spectrum of K2-18b’s atmosphere. The detections of methane and carbon dioxide suggest the presence of an ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. There’s also a hint of DMS, which on Earth is tied to biological activity.

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