Astronomy

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is around 50% larger than previously thought, as confirmed by a new study led by Heidi Jo Newberg of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and whose findings have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The latest data collected by the Cassini space probe confirm that hydrothermal activity existed under the icy crust of Enceladus, one of Saturn's 60 moons. And this new information suggests the presence of an underground ocean, about 10 kilometers thick; a situation that had already arisen before, due to the ice with sodium salt that emanates from the cracks of Enceladus and whose origin is supposed to be from the liquid water reservoirs that are under that frozen layer.

A team of astronomers from the University of Cambridge, UK, has identified what look like nine tiny galaxies orbiting our own. Although they are not the first objects of this type to be discovered in the vicinity of the Milky Way, it is the first time that so many have been located at once.

The red planet housed an early ocean that contained more water than our planet's Arctic Ocean and that would have covered a larger part of its surface than the Atlantic Ocean occupies on Earth.

A team of astronomers led by Stephan Geier from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching (Germany) has discovered a star that moves at an unparalleled speed: about 1,200 kilometers per second, a speed so high that it has broken the record of speed in our galaxy. The finding has been published in the journal Science.

This is the conclusion of the latest study carried out by a team of researchers from New York University (USA) who explain in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society magazine that the movement of our planet around and through the disk of our galaxy could have crucial effects on the fate of the Earth by disturbing the orbits of comets that could cause additional warming in our planetary nucleus, putting on the table the threat of a new mass extinction that is not alien to us.

A complex geological system of about 1,400 kilometers made up of isolated hills, cliffs and small basins

Billions of years from now, the Sun will exhaust its nuclear fuel, expand into a red giant, and expel much of its mass.