Topic description and stories

Artist's impression of TRAPPIST-1

New details of TRAPPIST-1 system’s outermost planet confirm earlier predictions

22 May 2017

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, used data gathered by the Kepler Space Telescope to...

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Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole

‘Saddle-shaped’ universe could undermine general relativity

22 May 2017

Researchers have shown how singularities – which are normally only found at the centre of black holes and hidden from view – could exist in highly...

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Icy ring around young planetary system has similar chemical fingerprint to our solar system

18 May 2017

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, has made the most detailed image of the ring of dusty...

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Opinion: Aliens, very strange universes and Brexit – Martin Rees

03 Apr 2017

Martin Rees is Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, the Astronomer Royal, a member of Britain’s House of...

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Newly discovered planets could have water on their surfaces

22 Feb 2017

An international team of astronomers has found a system of seven potentially habitable planets orbiting a star 39 light years away three of which...

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Pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars

A bridge of stars connects two dwarf galaxies

08 Feb 2017

̽»¨Ö±²¥Magellanic Clouds, the two largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, appear to be connected by a bridge stretching across 43,000 light years...

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Antarctic waterfall

Darwin Lectures go to extremes

19 Jan 2017

From climate change and extending the human lifespan to political extremism and reporting from war zones, this year’s Darwin College Lecture Series...

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Gaia’s first sky map

Gaia results revealed – first data release from the most detailed map ever made of the sky

14 Sep 2016

̽»¨Ö±²¥first results from the Gaia satellite, which is completing an unprecedented census of more than one billion stars in the Milky Way, are being...

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Artist's impression of dark matter clumps around a Milky Way-like galaxy

Massive holes ‘punched’ through a trail of stars likely caused by dark matter

07 Sep 2016

̽»¨Ö±²¥discovery of two massive holes punched through a stream of stars could help answer questions about the nature of dark matter, the mysterious...

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Artist’s impression of the disc and outflow around the massive young star

Astronomers identify a young heavyweight star in the Milky Way

22 Aug 2016

A young star over 30 times more massive than the Sun could help us understand how the most extreme stars in the Universe are born.

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First atmospheric study of Earth-sized exoplanets using Hubble telescope

20 Jul 2016

Two Earth-sized exoplanets have become the first rocky worlds to have their atmospheres studied using the Hubble Space Telescope.

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X-ray view of the Perseus cluster

Dead satellite finds a calm centre at the heart of brightest galaxy cluster in the sky

06 Jul 2016

With its very first – and last – observation, the Hitomi x-ray observatory has discovered that the gas in the Perseus cluster of galaxies is much...

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