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Magellanic Clouds
The two Magellanic Clouds are irregular dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way galaxy, and thus are members of our Local Group of galaxies.The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and its neighbour and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye. Observation, and theoretical evidence suggests that the LMC and SMC have been greatly distorted by tidal interaction with the Milky Way as they orbit around it; streams of neutral hydrogen connect them to the Milky Way and to each other, and both resemble disrupted barred spiral galaxies. However, their gravity has affected our Galaxy as well, distorting the outer parts of the galactic disk.
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Space & Time News
November 30, 2025
Nov. 23, 2025 A massive solar storm in May 2024 gave scientists an unprecedented look at how Earth’s protective plasma layer collapses under intense space weather. With the Arase satellite in a perfect observing position, researchers watched the plasmasphere ...
Nov. 21, 2025 New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s ...
Nov. 17, 2025 Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process ...
Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers combined deep learning with high-resolution physics to create the first Milky Way model that tracks over 100 billion stars individually. Their AI learned how gas behaves after supernovae, removing one of the biggest computational ...
Nov. 16, 2025 Dark matter may be invisible, but scientists are getting closer to understanding whether it follows the same rules as everything we can see. By comparing how galaxies move through cosmic gravity wells to the depth of those wells, researchers found ...
Nov. 13, 2025 Researchers engineered “gyromorphs,” a new type of metamaterial that combines liquid-like randomness with large-scale structural patterns to block light from every direction. This innovation solves longstanding limitations in quasicrystal-based ...
Nov. 13, 2025 Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast, and scientists have turned to an unexpected cosmic clue—space dust—to uncover how ice has changed over tens of thousands of years. By tracking helium-3–bearing dust trapped (or blocked) by ancient ice, ...
Nov. 10, 2025 New research from UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrates that the universe cannot be simulated. Using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic understanding,” something no computation can ...
Nov. 2, 2025 A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the first 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet. The fiery WASP-18b, a massive “ultra-hot Jupiter,” revealed striking temperature contrasts, including regions so hot they destroy ...
Oct. 30, 2025 Scientists have developed a groundbreaking tool called Effort.jl that lets them simulate the structure of the universe using just a laptop. The team created a system that dramatically speeds up how researchers study cosmic data, turning what once ...
Oct. 29, 2025 Tohoku University researchers have found a way to make quantum sensors more sensitive by connecting superconducting qubits in optimized network patterns. These networks amplify faint signals possibly left by dark matter. The approach outperformed ...
Oct. 27, 2025 Two Sydney PhD students have pulled off a remarkable space science feat from Earth—using AI-driven software to correct image blurring in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Their innovation, called AMIGO, fixed distortions in the telescope’s ...
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Nov. 29, 2025 The discovery of strange, ultra-red objects—especially the extreme case known as The Cliff—has pushed astronomers to propose an entirely new type of cosmic structure: black hole stars. These ...
Nov. 29, 2025 Nearly a century after astronomers first proposed dark matter to explain the strange motions of galaxies, scientists may finally be catching a glimpse of it. A University of Tokyo researcher ...
Nov. 26, 2025 Michigan State University astrophysicists are closing in on one of space science’s biggest mysteries: where the galaxy’s most energetic particles come from. Their studies uncovered a pulsar wind ...
Nov. 26, 2025 Mars’s Coloe Fossae reveals a landscape shaped by ancient ice ages, with deep valleys, cratered terrain, and frozen debris flows preserved from a time when the planet’s climate dramatically ...
Nov. 24, 2025 Moss spores survived an extended stay on the outside of the ISS and remained capable of germinating once back on Earth. Their resilience to vacuum, extreme temperatures, and UV radiation surprised ...
Nov. 23, 2025 About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...
Nov. 23, 2025 Scientists flew the XL-Calibur telescope on a high-altitude balloon to measure polarized X-rays from Cygnus X-1. These measurements reveal details about the chaotic, superheated material swirling ...
Nov. 23, 2025 Researchers have pinpointed a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a nearby M-dwarf star only 18 light-years away. Sophisticated instruments detected the planet’s gentle tug on its star, hinting at ...
Nov. 22, 2025 New measurements of radio galaxies reveal that the solar system is racing through the universe at over three times the speed predicted by standard cosmology. Using highly sensitive data from multiple ...
Nov. 20, 2025 Scientists may finally be closing in on the origins of two colossal, mysterious structures buried nearly 1,800 miles inside Earth—hidden formations that have puzzled researchers for decades. New ...