<ul class="summary-list"><li>Aomawa Shields is one of 26 Black women astrophysicists in America.</li><li>She's long grappled with her two loves, acting and astronomy, spending 11 years acting before getting her Ph. D. in astrophysics.</li></ul><p><em>This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Dr. Aomawa Shields, an astronomer, astrobiologist, and associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine. She is just one of 26 Black women astrophysicists in America. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p><p>My fascination with the sky came at a young age. I remember being younger than 10 years old and going to air shows for the Blue Angels, an aerial flight team at the Miramar Air Force Base in San Diego. My grandmother worked there as a civil servant, and we would go to these shows and see these blue-and-yellow planes.</p><p>I would look up at the sky and see these incredible designs they'd make with these planes. I was wowed by what I saw. That led me to start to look up at night. I'd see these tiny pinpoints of light — so many of them — and I began to think about what might be looking back at me. What was out there? How far out did it go?</p><p>I also found inspiration in movies I watched as a child. My family loved sci-fi movies and TV shows, and we'd sit around the TV and watch "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Eventually, I watched "Top Gun," which was filmed at Miramar, and Kelly McGillis' character Charlotte Blackwood was an astrophysicist. She seemed so stunning. I thought, "If astrophysicists can be like that, that's what I want to be."</p><div type="image" title="Aomawa Shields as a child at her mother's masters degree ceremony" height="1617" width="1259" msid="102655344" hostid="261" sizebytes="52858"></div><p>It wasn't until I watched the movie "Space Camp" when I was 12 that I started to make plans. It was about these kids that get accidentally launched into space. And I again thought, "That's what I want to do." Ever the student, I went to my set of World Book encyclopedias my mother had purchased, pulled out the volume labeled "A," and looked up "astronomy" and "astronaut" and planned out my entire career trajectory.</p><h2>I was torn between my dual passions of acting and astronomy</h2><p>I also acted during my early years, even understudying for a professional production at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse. But I don't think it had permeated into my consciousness that I could do that for a career. It didn't have that stellar moment yet.</p><p>That came when I got into this prep school — which I largely went to for the observatory they had — and I ended up stumbling into an audition and getting cast in a play. I then did play after play, and it became, "Wow, I love both of these things." It didn't seem to be a problem back in high school.</p><p>Then it became time for me to choose where I'd go for college. I'd had MIT in the back of my mind for six or seven years. Even though I knew I loved acting, I was very stubborn: This was my path, so I was going to stick with it.</p><p>MIT was all-consuming. I spent all my time just on my coursework. I did join an acapella group called The Muses, and thought that was going to be enough. But acting was still there in my mind, and caught up to me in my second or third year, like, "Hey, it's me! You forgot about me." So I took acting classes while at MIT as well.</p><div type="image" title="Aomawa Shields as an undergrad giving a talk at MIT" height="1289" width="1719" msid="102655345" hostid="261" sizebytes="39656"></div><p>Again, when I got to the end of my time at MIT, I got the message: Choose between astronomy and acting. I applied to the top three acting graduate schools and a Ph. D. program in astrophysics. I didn't get into the acting schools but got into the Ph. D. program, and took that as a sign. I was desperate to put my future in anyone else's hands, looking for these signs. I never really thought, "What do I really want to do?"</p><h2>I struggled as the only Black woman in my Ph. D. program</h2><p>I was totally primed to take all of that inner conflict into the Ph. D. program. But it didn't go away simply because I had made a choice. All it took was a little seed of doubt: I'd struggle a little bit in class, and I'd find myself thinking about acting, or what movies were playing.</p><div type="image" title="Aomawa Shields during her first PhD program at U. Wisconsin-Madison" height="863" width="1150" msid="102655347" hostid="261" sizebytes="27736"></div><p>I started taking acting classics while in grad school. I loved it — no one could tell me I wasn't good at acting. They could tell me I wasn't good at astrophysics, but they knew nothing about my acting world. I had some control over that.</p><p>There were also external factors I'd internalized: I was the only Black woman in my Ph. D. program. My mind made a story about that. I felt so much pressure to do well, to represent my community. When I had a white male professor who told me I should consider other career options, I took that as confirmation — a sign — that I didn't belong. I started auditioning, and eventually moved out to Los Angeles and got an MFA in acting.</p><p>I think that seeming illusion of control came from the fact that I saw acting as so different from astronomy. It was as if my running to acting, though steeped in a genuine love and interest for that discipline, was running away from a feeling of fear, of not belonging, and of no control that I felt in the sciences.</p><h2>How I've reconciled my two passions</h2><p>For a long time, I judged the choice I'd made. It felt like I had run away when things got hard, and I didn't like that. But even as I acted in plays and even hosted a science TV show, my astronomy dreams kept reappearing. I got a day job working for a space telescope called Spitzer, and started to go to astronomy talks again. I also didn't like hearing about astrophysics discoveries on the news — I wanted to be the one in the labs, making those discoveries.</p><div type="image" title="Aomawa Shields on the set of the PBS/Wired show Wired Science" height="761" width="1015" msid="102655350" hostid="261" sizebytes="23828"></div><p>All the roads were pointing back to a Ph. D. I surrendered to it, and, at 34 years old, applied to a program at the University of Washington.</p><p>That time around, I did things differently: I sought out community, like mentorships for Black and brown students and a mental health group for women of color. I ended up finding wonderful mentors who helped me realize my theater background wasn't something I had to sweep under the rug, but was instead my superpower. </p><p>In acting school, I felt like my identity and uniqueness was valued; they wanted me to share and talk about my feelings and specific background. In science, it's more objective, with no questions about who I am. But I found that I was able to reconcile both parts in grad school, finding a commonality in the storytelling aspects of both acting and astronomy.</p><p>It also released me from the fear of the stereotypes that had informed me as a woman of color in science. This is why our presence is absolutely critical, and why I started <a href="http://www.risingstargirls.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rising Stargirls</a> to encourage other young women of color interested in the universe.</p><p>We need a diversity of backgrounds and views. Look at what people were able to achieve with only a fraction of representation of our country at the table. What can we achieve with the full representation of our country at the table? Literally, the sky is not the limit.</p>

I'm one of only 26 Black women astrophysicists in America. Acting helped me overcome the stereotypes I felt as a woman of color in STEM.

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5e067690855cc24d5f3d25bc-2000/tycho.jpg" alt="tycho supernova" /><ul class="summary-list"><li>This has been a year of photographic firsts: A worldwide team of scientists published the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-hole-first-photo-event-horizon-telescope-picture-explained-2019-4">first image of a black hole</a>, and China captured the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-far-dark-side-moon-panorama-image-change4-2019-1">first photos from the far side of the moon</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/upcoming-telescopes-will-transform-our-understanding-of-the-universe-2019-11">Space telescopes</a> also captured mind-blowing shots of galaxies and nebulae.</li><li>Here are 27 of the most stunning photos of the cosmos from 2019.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>The universe is filled with strange and beautiful objects, and we can now photograph them better than ever.</p><p>Space telescopes like Hubble, Spitzer, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have been capturing images of faraway galaxies in unprecedented detail.</p><p>This has also been a year of photographic innovation. Researchers stitched together thousands of Hubble photos to create an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hubble-telescope-galaxies-photo-legacy-wide-field-deep-universe-2019-5">image of 265,000 galaxies</a>. And astronomers captured the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supermassive-black-hole-first-photo-event-horizon-telescope-m87-2019-4">first photo of a black hole</a>.</p><p>Here are 27 mind-blowing photos of the cosmos from 2019.</p>

27 stunning photos of the cosmos taken this year

Washington, An international team of <keyword id="49623" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Astronomers">astronomers</keyword> has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than <keyword id="6359982" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="earth">Earth</keyword> orbiting a much younger version of our <keyword id="24879" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sun">Sun</keyword> called TOI 451.<br /><br />The system resides in the recently discovered Pisces-Eridanus stream, a collection of stars less than 3 per cent the age of our solar system that stretches across one-third of the sky.<br /><br />The researchers believe that the newly discovered planetary system, detailed in The Astronomical Journal, will provide researchers with the rare chance to study a group of growing <keyword id="6448742" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Planets">planets</keyword>.<br /><br />The planets were discovered in images taken by <keyword id="6360409" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between October and December 2018.<br /><br />Follow-up studies of TOI 451 and its planets included observations made in 2019 and 2020 using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has since been retired, as well as many ground-based facilities.<br /><br />Archival infrared data from NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite suggests the system retains a cool disk of dust and rocky debris.<br /><br />Other observations show that TOI 451 likely has two distant stellar companions circling each other far beyond the planets.<br /><br />"This system checks a lot of boxes for astronomers," said lead researcher Elisabeth Newton, Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, <keyword id="822202" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="New-Hampshire">New Hampshire</keyword>, US.<br /><br />"It's only 120 million years old and just 400 light-years away, allowing detailed observations of this young planetary system. And because there are three planets between two and four times Earth's size, they make especially promising targets for testing theories about how planetary atmospheres evolve."<br /><br />The young star TOI 451, better known to astronomers as CD-38 1467, lies about 400 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.<br /><br />It has 95 per cent of our Sun's mass, but it is 12 per cent smaller, slightly cooler, and emits 35 per cent less energy.<br /><br />TOI 451 rotates every 5.1 days, which is more than five times faster than the Sun.<br /><br />Even TOI 451's most distant planet orbits three times closer than Mercury ever approaches to the Sun, so all of these worlds are quite hot and inhospitable to life as we know it. Temperature estimates range from about 1,200 degrees Celsius for the innermost planet to about 450 degrees C for the outermost one.<br /><br />TOI 451b orbits every 1.9 days, is about 1.9 times Earth's size, and its estimated mass ranges from two to 12 times Earth's.<br /><br />The next planet out, TOI 451 c, completes an orbit every 9.2 days, is about three times larger than Earth, and holds between three and 16 times Earth's mass. The farthest and largest world, TOI 451 d, circles the star every 16 days, is four times the size of our planet, and weighs between four and 19 Earth masses.<br /><br />Astronomers expect planets as big as these to retain much of their atmospheres despite the intense heat from their nearby star.<br /><br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/comparison-between-realme-x7-pro-5g-and-xiaomi-mi-10i-mobile-phones-with-price-and-specifications/articleshow/80873224.cms">Realme X7 Pro 5G vs Xiaomi Mi 10i – best mid-range device under ₹30,000 in India</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/news/experts-say-india-and-china-both-need-to-show-their-voters-that-they-won-in-ladakh-for-the-disengagement-to-be-successful/articleshow/80876036.cms">Experts say India and China both need to show their voters that they won in Ladakh⁠ for the disengagement to be successful</a><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/why-grofers-may-allow-an-american-blank-cheque-firm-to-buy-it-out-instead-of-fighting-ambani-and-bigbasket-for-ipo/articleshow/80874979.cms"><strong>Here’s why Grofers may allow an American “blank cheque” firm to buy it out instead of fighting Ambani and BigBasket for IPO</strong></a><br />

Astronomers discover three planets orbiting younger Sun-like star

<ul><li>39 <keyword id="7962060" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="massive-galaxies">massive galaxies</keyword> have been discovered billions of light years away.<br /></li><li>These galaxies are producing stars that are equivalent to a 1,000 Suns.<br /></li><li>The discovery of these <keyword id="3160998" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="ancient-galaxies">ancient galaxies</keyword> can provide insights into the workings of supermassive black holes, dark matter and the evolution of the universe.<br /></li></ul>Billions of light years away and invisible to the naked eye, 39 massive galaxies are generating stars that match up to 1,000 of our galaxy's Suns. <br /><br />If these galaxies were a part of our sky — nights would be a lot brighter and stars far away would be outshined.<br /><br />The bigger the galaxy, the bigger the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/like-looking-at-the-gates-of-hell-astronomers-just-showed-off-the-first-picture-of-a-black-hole-and-its-a-monster/articleshow/68818000.cms">supermassive black hole</a> at its heart.<br /><br />"The study of these galaxies and their evolution will tell us more about the evolution of supermassive black holes, too," explained Kotaro Kohno, one of the authors of the study published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1452-4">Nature</a>.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="400121173" msid="70585903" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Ancient galaxies from the study are visible to ALMA (right) but not to Hubble (left)&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

<br /><strong>Cloak of invisibility</strong><br /><br />These huge and massive galaxies can't be seen through the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/new-black-hole-disk-found-by-hubble-in-starved-galaxy/articleshow/70185872.cms">Hubble Telescope</a> because the light from them in faint, and spread out over long distances.<br /><br />The further the universe expands, the more it stretches the light passing through it. Eventually, the light becomes so stretched out that it becomes infrared.<br /><br />Galaxies are also shrouded in dust, which obscures them from view even further. The larger the galaxy, the more dust there is.<br /><br />The good thing is that the amount of stretching helps scientists, like the ones who made this discovery, figure out how long ago the light in question for emitted — and these particular galaxies are 'ancient'.<br /><br />Scientists from the <a href="https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00066.html">University of Tokyo</a> combined the power of multiple astronomical observatories from around the world — like NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/Worlds-Largest-Space-Observatory-Opens-In-Chile/articleshow/21262291.cms">ALMA</a>) in Chile — to prove their existence.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="400121180" msid="70585922" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;A few of the 66 radio telescope antennas that make up ALMA&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

<br />"Massive galaxies are also intimately connected with the distribution of invisible dark matter. This plays a role in shaping the structure and distribution of galaxies. Theoretical researchers will need to update their theories now," stated Kohno explaining what the discovery of these galaxies implies for the scientific community.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/new-black-hole-disk-found-by-hubble-in-starved-galaxy/articleshow/70185872.cms">Hubble has found a black hole disk that should be non-existent</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/zombie-stars-dont-turn-into-blackholes-after-supernova/articleshow/70288635.cms">'Zombie' stars are coming back to life and scientists are on the hunt for more</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/a-black-hole-bigger-than-the-sun-is-pulling-on-the-fabric-of-space-and-time/articleshow/69127080.cms">A black hole bigger than the sun is pulling on the fabric of space and time</a><br />

Invisible massive galaxies producing 1,000 suns a year could rewrite how the universe works

A bizarre interstellar object called 'Oumuamua continues to perplex astronomers a year after it vanished. Here's why a few scientists still wonder if it was alien.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c50b0b42bdd7f5a82146436-1248/interstellar black hole.jpg" border="0" alt="interstellar black hole" data-mce-source="Paramount Pictures" /><p class="source"><span>Paramount Pictures</span></p><p class="caption">A shot of the black hole depicted in the movie "Interstellar."</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Director Christopher Nolan's Hollywood blockbuster "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crazy-physics-to-understand-interstellar-2014-11">Interstellar</a>" just celebrated its fifth anniversary.</li><li>In the movie, Matthew McConaughey plays an astronaut who journeys into a supermassive black hole called Gargauntua.</li><li>To make "Interstellar" <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=15&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiJ0oCCk9nlAhUGmeAKHZHNDzQQFjAOegQIABAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Finterstellar-black-hole-physics-discovery-2014-11&amp;usg=AOvVaw1h-geHvyLLQYL1E_Eruc-f">scientifically accurate</a>, Nolan hired physicist Kip Thorne to render the most realistic depiction of a black hole possible.</li><li>But since the movie was released, scientists have learned more about what black holes really look like, and even <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-first-black-hole-photo-breakthrough-prize-2019-9">imaged one for the first time</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-black-hole-animation-gravity-distorts-vision-2019-9">These discoveries</a> revealed that, despite Nolan and Thorne's best efforts, Gargantua wasn't perfectly accurate.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>At the heart of every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, where gravity is so strong that nothing - not even light - can escape its boundary.</p><p>In the movie "Interstellar," a fictional black hole called Gargantua takes center stage. The film came out exactly five years ago, in November 2014. In it, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway play astronauts who travel through a wormhole - a tunnel that allows for nearly instantaneous travel between far-distant points - to explore three planets that orbit Gargantua, 10 billion light-years from Earth. </p><p>In the end, McConaughey's character navigates his ship into the supermassive black hole, inside which he discovers a fifth dimension, inter-dimensional omniscient beings, and the ability to communicate with his estranged daughter across time and space.</p><p>Director Christopher Nolan and his visual effects team strove for superior scientific accuracy in "Interstellar" - they even hired theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne as a consultant.</p><p>"Neither wormholes nor black holes have been depicted in any Hollywood movie in the way that they actually would appear," Thorne <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfGfZwQ_qaY">said in an interview</a> prior to the movie's release. "This is the first time the depiction began with Einstein's general relativity equations."</p><p>Indeed, the movie's depiction of Gargantua was lauded as the most accurate film portrayal of a black hole ever. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5dc474c87eece5427e7cc1d6-2251/black hole .jpg" border="0" alt="black hole" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech/Reuters" /><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">An artist's concept of a supermassive black hole.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But in the last five years, a handful of major discoveries about black holes have given physicists new insights about what these massive objects look like and how they behave. Based on that information, Gargantua wasn't completely accurate, though it still comes close in many respects. Here's what "Interstellar" got right and wrong. </p><h2>The first image of a black hole ever captured</h2><p>Supermassive black holes form when stars collapse in on themselves at the end of their life cycles. On average, they're <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-k4.html">millions of times</a> more massive than the sun.</p><p>Scientists struggled for decades to capture one on camera, because black holes are so massive and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/this-black-hole-spins-so-fast-that-it-could-make-all-of-space-rotate-2018-11?IR=T">spin so quickly</a> that they distort space-time, ensuring that nothing can break free from their gravitational pull. Because even light can't escape, these forces create a unique shadow in the form of a perfect circle at the black hole's center.</p><p>The outer border of that center is known as the black hole's event horizon, or "point of no return."</p><p>But in April, a group of scientists from the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-first-black-hole-photo-breakthrough-prize-2019-9">released the first-ever photograph</a> of a supermassive black hole to the public. Though the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-hole-first-photo-event-horizon-telescope-picture-explained-2019-4">image was fuzzy</a>, it showed that, as predicted, black holes <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supermassive-black-hole-first-photo-2019-4">look like dark spheres surrounded by a glowing ring of light</a>.</p><p>"As a cloud of gas gets closer to the black hole, they speed up and heat up," <a href="https://twitter.com/josieapeters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Josephine Peters</a>, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supermassive-black-hole-event-horizon-flare-images-2018-10">previously told Business Insider</a>. "It glows brighter the faster and hotter it gets. Eventually, the gas cloud gets close enough that the pull of the black hole stretches it into a thin arc."</p><p>The unprecedented photo shows the supermassive black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is about 54 million light-years away from Earth. The black hole's mass is equivalent to 6.5 billion suns. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5caff26ac57fa6341520b6c2-2400/3a7aeffd4f604c309a1a6d4f92432a1f.jpg" border="0" alt="This image released Wednesday, April 10, 2019, by Event Horizon Telescope shows a black hole. Scientists revealed the first image ever made of a black hole after assembling data gathered by a network of radio telescopes around the world. (Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/Maunakea Observatories via AP)" data-mce-source="Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/Maunakea Observatories via AP" data-mce-caption="This image released Wednesday, April 10, 2019, by Event Horizon Telescope shows the first image ever made of a black hole." /><p class="source"><span>Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/Maunakea Observatories via AP</span></p><p class="caption">On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope team released the first image ever made of a black hole.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>To capture the image, astronomers relied on years of data from eight telescopes synced up across the globe. So the image is a reconstructed view, not a photograph.</p><p>"It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time," Heino Falcke, an Event Horizon Telescope collaborator, said <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&amp;v=Dr20f19czeE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">when the photo was published</a>.</p><p>The EHT team's next target is likely Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the center of our own galaxy.</p><h2>We simulated what it might look like to hang out near a black hole</h2><p>Since the April EHT image was so blurry, NASA scientists <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-black-hole-animation-gravity-distorts-vision-2019-9">created a visualization</a> of what a black hole might look like close-up and in action. </p><p>The animation shows how gravity surrounding the black hole would twist light from the orbiting cloud of gas, dust, dead stars, and other space detritus (called the accretion disk). That would appear as a rainbow of fire bending around a dark abyss.</p><p>The black hole would change in appearance depending on how you looked at it. A side view, like the one below, would show the accretion disk slithering around the event horizon.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d8cc73d2e22af5d5070ae22-2400/nasa black hole still image.jpg" border="0" alt="NASA black hole still image" data-mce-source="NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman" /><p class="source"><span>NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of a black hole as seen from the side.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The disk would appear brighter on one side than the other because M87's black hole is likely spinning, which also spins the cloud of dust and gas orbiting it. So the material moving towards our eyes would seem brighter than the material moving away - a bit like the beacon of a lighthouse.</p><p>If you were to look at the black hole from above or below, however, the accretion disk would form a near-perfect circle and the light would appear more evenly distributed. The difference is clear in the animation below.</p><biembeddedobject id="1a6d3941-f323-439e-acc3-052576b98754" class="raw mceNonEditable"></biembeddedobject><p> </p><p>According to Thorne, the reason the black hole in "Interstellar" doesn't match the M87 black hole image is that Nolan elected to omit that brightening and dimming phenomenon.</p><p>Thorne <a href="https://gizmodo.com/why-doesnt-the-black-hole-image-look-like-the-one-from-1833949289">told Gizmodo</a> that "the human eye would likely not be able to discern the brightness differences on the two sides of the hole when the overall brightness is so extreme." That's why the film's black hole appears to have same brightness all the way around.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5dc5b12c3afd3734f32bfea7-1332/interstellar black hole1.jpg" border="0" alt="interstellar black hole" data-mce-source="Paramount Pictures" data-mce-caption="An illustration of a black hole from the sci-fi movie &amp;quotInterstellar.&quot;" /><p class="source"><span>Paramount Pictures</span></p><p class="caption">The depiction of a black hole seen in the movie "Interstellar."</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Scientists confirmed that there's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy</h2><p>Supermassive black holes are common in the universe - they've been found at the center of almost every galaxy scientists have examined. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is 25,000 light-years away and 4 million times as heavy as our sun.</p><p>Sagittarius A*'s accretion disk is about 100 million miles wide, or a little wider than the distance between Earth and the sun.</p><p><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1835/eso1835a.pdf">In October 2018</a>, astronomers revealed that they'd observed Sagittarius A* sucking in blobs of hot gas at 30% of the speed of light - 201 million mph. That triggered three powerful bursts of radiation that were detected by telescopes on Earth.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d9e2d3a3b33a7751d44a8f3-2400/ssc2006-02a0.jpg" border="0" alt="milky way galaxy center spitzer infrared" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al." data-mce-caption="The center of our Milky Way galaxy, imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, October 9, 2019." data-link="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/revealing-the-milky-way-s-center" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/revealing-the-milky-way-s-center">NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al.</a></span></p><p class="caption">The center of the Milky Way galaxy, imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, October 9, 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>At the time, the study authors said the flares "provide long-awaited confirmation that the object in the center of our galaxy is, as has long been assumed, a supermassive black hole."</p><p>Josephine Peters, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who wasn't involved in the study, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supermassive-black-hole-event-horizon-flare-images-2018-10">previously told Business Insider</a> that the observations followed material "as close as you can get to a black hole without being consumed by it." </p><p>But Peters added that Sagittarius A* "is still incredibly mysterious." </p><p>The more scientists learn about black holes like Sagittarius A*, the better directors like Nolan can depict them in Hollywood blockbusters.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-hole-how-big-largest-universe-2019-5">Incredible animation shows just how big supermassive black holes can get</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/w0V1w91Q-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

The movie 'Interstellar' came out exactly 5 years ago. Since then, new discoveries have changed our understanding of black holes.

<br /><ul><li>The <keyword id="2104882" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="supermassive-black-hole">supermassive black hole</keyword> at the center of the Milky just lit up brighter than ever before. </li><li>Researchers who made the discover initially thought that they might be looking at a star.</li><li>The <keyword id="67503" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="milky-way">Milky Way</keyword>’s black hole is generally not very active and scientists are looking for more data to determine why it suddenly shone so bright.</li></ul>Our solar system, the Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at the heart of it and it just shined brighter than ever before. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/our-very-own-black-hole-in-the-milky-way-doesnt-quite-eat-up-everything/articleshow/69684893.cms">Sagittarius A*</a> is normally a pretty subdued black hole only flickering every once in a while to let us know it’s still there. This is because it doesn’t have an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/Physicists-have-discovered-that-rotating-black-holes-might-serve-as-portals-for-hyperspace-travel/articleshow/68434150.cms">active center.</a> <br /><br />
	
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="quantumpenguin" handlename="Tuan Do" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/513082247948148737/sa4usRVw_normal.jpeg" favoritecount="2831" retweetcount="1281" status="Here's a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The… https://t.co/XL6stP807v" createdat="1565488428000" id="1160368687590727680"></div>







<br />But this week, astronomers from saw the black hole glow 75 times brighter than it usually does in infrared before reverting back to its usual levels.<br /><br />In fact, the light from the black hole was so bright that <a href="https://twitter.com/quantumpenguin/status/1160368687590727680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1160368687590727680&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencealert.com%2Four-galaxy-s-supermassive-black-hole-just-mysteriously-got-really-really-bright">Tuan Do</a>, who spotted the anomaly from the Keck Observatory, thought that it was a star at first.<br /><br />The scientists at <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.01777">Cornell University</a> are now on a mission to find out why.<br /><strong><br />Looking for answers</strong><br /><br />The amount of light a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/10-mind-blowing-facts-about-black-holes/articleshow/44879500.cms">black hole</a> emits isn’t the actual black hole glowing but the disk around its gravitational center than pulls any dust and gas in the surrounding area.<br /><br />The friction among the particles in the disk is what produces the radiation that can be caught by infrared readings.<br /><br />S0-2 is a star that passed close to the black hole last year, so it’s possible that it changed the way that gas flows into the black hole. “So more gas is falling in it, leading it to become more variable,” Do told <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/our-galaxy-s-supermassive-black-hole-just-mysteriously-got-really-really-bright">Science Alert.</a><br /><br />But, the scientists can only speculate on what really happened until they have more data to analyse. Luckily, the Keck Observatory is not the only eye tracking the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/a-new-3d-map-of-the-milky-way-reveals-our-galaxys-warped-shape-in-unprecedented-detail/articleshow/70488471.cms">Milky Way</a>’s black hole<br /><br />Other telescopes like Spitzer, Chandra, Swift and ALMA are also watching the night sky. Curating more data from those sources can help the scientists figure out what happened.<br /><br />
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="quantumpenguin" handlename="Tuan Do" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/513082247948148737/sa4usRVw_normal.jpeg" favoritecount="23" retweetcount="4" status="@astronomeara @AsteroidEnergy @loganpearce @keckobservatory We can still get data from Keck for a few more weeks be… https://t.co/tCEBu24qK1" createdat="1565540366000" id="1160586532765306881"></div>





<br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/isro-nasa-just-spotted-a-black-hole-spinning-so-fast-that-it-could-be-making-space-itself-rotate/articleshow/66416605.cms">ISRO, NASA just spotted a black hole spinning so fast that it could be making space itself rotate</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/our-very-own-black-hole-in-the-milky-way-doesnt-quite-eat-up-everything/articleshow/69684893.cms">Our very own black hole in the Milky Way doesn’t quite eat up ‘everything’</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/new-black-hole-disk-found-by-hubble-in-starved-galaxy/articleshow/70185872.cms">Hubble has found a black hole disk that should be non-existent</a><br />

There was a big spark — 75 times brighter than usual — from the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5daf49f2cc4a0a36d30edafb-1956/2018-02-26t140554z1218648478rc17abf00360rtrmadp3europe-weather-serbia.jpg" border="0" alt="dinosaur park snow serbia dinosaurs" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Djordje Kojadinovic" data-mce-caption="A dinosaur park sees freezing weather and snowfall in Belgrade, Serbia, February 26, 2018." data-link="https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?id=tag%3Areuters.com%2C2018%3Anewsml_RC17ABF00360&amp;share=true"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?id=tag%3Areuters.com%2C2018%3Anewsml_RC17ABF00360&amp;share=true">REUTERS/Djordje Kojadinovic</a></span></p><p class="caption">A dinosaur park sees freezing weather and snowfall in Belgrade, Serbia, February 26, 2018.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa">NASA</a> scientist Jessie Christiansen made a video that traces our solar system's movement through the Milky Way as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/dinosaurs">dinosaurs</a> emerged, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-consequences-of-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-2019-9">went extinct</a>, and were replaced by mammals on Earth.</li><li>Our sun orbits <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-black-hole-milky-way-center-2019-10">the galaxy's center</a>, so many dinosaurs roamed the Earth while the planet was on the other side of the Milky Way.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-solar-system-photos-decade-you-were-born-2019-10">Our solar system</a>'s orbit keeps us just the right distance from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/human-ancestors-saw-galaxy-nuclear-explosion-milky-way-black-hole-2019-10">the galaxy's chaotic center</a> for life to exist.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>When dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the planet was on a completely different side of the galaxy.&#xa0;</p><p>A new animation by NASA scientist&#xa0;<a href="https://twitter.com/aussiastronomer">Jessie Christiansen</a> shows just how long the dinosaurs' reign lasted, and how short the era of humans has been in comparison, by tracing our solar system's movement through the Milky Way.</p><p>Our sun orbits the galaxy's center, completing its rotation every 250 million years or so. So Christiansen's animation shows that last time our solar system was at its current point in the galaxy, the Triassic Period was in full swing and dinosaurs were just beginning to emerge. Many of the most iconic dinosaurs roamed Earth when the planet was in a very different part of the Milky Way.</p><p>Christiansen got the idea to illustrate this history when she was leading a stargazing party at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Attendees were astonished when she mentioned that our solar system had been across the galaxy when dinosaurs roamed.&#xa0;</p><p>"That was the first time I realized that those time scales - archaeological, fossil record time scales and astronomical time scales - actually kind of match along together," Christiansen told Business Insider. "Then I had this idea that I could map out dinosaur evolution through the galaxy's rotation."</p><p>The resulting video puts both timelines in perspective:</p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>Christiansen said it took her about four hours to make the film using timed animations in PowerPoint.</p><h2>'A spiral through space'</h2><p>Galactic movement is more complicated than the video shows, though. The other stars and planetary systems in the galaxy are also moving, at different speeds and in different orbits. The inner portions spin faster than the outer regions.</p><p>What's more, the galaxy itself is moving through space, slowly approaching the nearby Andromeda galaxy.</p><p>"The animation kind of makes it seem like we've come back to the same spot, but in reality the whole galaxy has moved a very long way," Christiansen said. "It's more like we're doing a spiral through space. As the whole galaxy's moving and we're rotating around the center, it kind of creates this spiral."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d9e2d45122bd577ba1d7992-2400/ssc2006-02a0.jpg" border="0" alt="milky way galaxy center spitzer infrared" data-mce-source="NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al." data-mce-caption="The center of our Milky Way galaxy, imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, October 9, 2019." data-link="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/revealing-the-milky-way-s-center"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/revealing-the-milky-way-s-center">NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al.</a></span></p><p class="caption">The center of our Milky Way galaxy, imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, October 9, 2019.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>So in the solar system's rotation around the galactic center, we're not returning to a fixed point. The neighborhood is different from the last time we were here.</p><p>Earth, however, is not drastically different; it still supports complex life. That's partially thanks to the path of our sun's galactic orbit.</p><p>"Our solar system doesn't travel to the center of the galaxy and then back again. We always stay about this distance away," Christiansen said.</p><p>In other words, even as our solar system travels through the Milky Way, it doesn't approach the inhospitable center, where life probably wouldn't survive.&#xa0;</p><p>"There's a lot of stars, it's dynamically unstable, there's a lot of radiation," Christiansen said. "Our solar system certainly doesn't pass through that."</p><p>That's a huge part of why dinosaurs, mammals, or any other form of life can exist on Earth.</p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I have always been interested in galactic archaeology, but I don't think this is what they meant.<br><br>Did you know that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the Galaxy? <a href="https://t.co/ngGCAu0fYU">pic.twitter.com/ngGCAu0fYU</a></br></br></p>- Dr. Jessie Christiansen  (@aussiastronomer) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1166773845400801281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-dinosaurs-took-over-world-2018-7">How dinosaurs took over the world</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/wtrsBDoV-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

A NASA scientist's incredible animation shows how dinosaurs roamed the Earth on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56438a9b9dd7cc11008c92f9-5625-7500/hires.jpg" alt="hires" data-mce-source="Dana Berry" data-link="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-24" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-24">Dana Berry</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>A newly discovered exoplanet has a lot of astronomers excited, and for good reason.</p><p>The exoplanet, dubbed GJ 1132b, is about the size of Earth and lives in a solar system roughly 39 light-years from Earth, a team of scientists reported in the November 12, 2015, issue of the journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nature15762.epdf?referrer_access_token=vP55m5xCezvGOWNC6OxeTtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NFOl0SSdFIWpF8HZQJmLxXhec7IuHC7HqP4a3tNh4BwbIcSF8FGReMjhFy51w_yyiccSdN6Q54LJYxm9ZjTy7aU-K2PgbsdgqVymuQrZigW9vDpDuT43uTes1Y19hMVevlZ5Sy8GrQ6PbSSGFHWEqEMCLNX32qBYoKUvoVXqFKKDmvWTw7L8oTxFdqupjq_LDk4s0a8OSeJoUi9k7GfgT4peUB034PotkdlYrHahac9Exe9oW5NBNV8AGaaNP3c_XEbooeL5WoGTfu9CDexPkjkag5qqeuFpb0KUSPadOkRneeK1i1psJAs-JmjRCsi6WWDWKtTewhQhT2AygL_Z7E&amp;tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com">Nature</a>.</p><p>Furthermore, the exoplanet is the closest rocky Earth-sized exoplanet ever discovered, by far.</p><p>The next closest is about three times farther away.</p><p>GJ 1132b's size and distance are what have astronomers like Drake Deming at the University of Maryland - who was not part of the study - saying that this planet is "arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system," he told <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/11/earth-like-world-gj1132b-could-be-most-important-planet-ever-found-outside-the-solar-system?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>The reason is because GJ 1132b is close enough for astronomers to point their telescopes at it and sniff out any traces of an atmosphere.</p><h2>Atmospheric signatures of life</h2><p>Studying the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of life is the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-will-humans-find-aliens-on-exoplanets-2015-5">next big step</a> in the search for extraterrestrial life beyond our solar system.</p><p>But it's an extremely difficult project because most Earth-sized planets - the exoplanets that astrobiologists think are most likely to harbor life - are too distant to study in any detail. </p><p>One of the ways astronomers determine the chemical composition of gases on planets in our own solar system is by studying the light passing through their atmospheric layers, like Earth's shown in the photo below with our crescent moon in the foreground:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/534befe55afbd335078b4567-800-532/spacex-poised-for-space-station-cargo-run-monday.jpg" alt="A crescent moon rises over the cusp of the Earth's atmosphere in this picture by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata onboard the International Space Station taken February 1, 2014. REUTERS/NASA/Handout" data-mce-source="Thomson Reuters" data-mce-caption="NASA picture of a crescent moon rising over the cusp of the Earth's atmosphere" /><p class="source"><span>Thomson Reuters</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Chemical compounds and molecules interact differently with different energies of light, and, as a result, each molecule leaves a unique fingerprint that scientists can see when they map out the light over what is called a spectrum.</p><p>But when an object is hundreds of light-years away, it's nearly impossible to differentiate the light that's passing through an exoplanet's atmosphere from the light that's emanating from the larger, brighter host star.</p><h2>A significant stepping stone</h2><p>Now, GJ 1132b has changed that, offering astronomers a perfect specimen to test their instruments and methods for detecting life.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54a2cc11ecad043906ce4466-4096-4096/7302574832_ed3fa543b2_o.jpg" alt="Venus" data-mce-source="NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center" data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7302574832/in/photolist-ikWvMo-9EqKjo-8bPGsc-S21e5-cJbM1-cbYeYU-dXfy42-4q46Lx-cbqnQ1-dXm98N-c8iBgs-cc9eAb-cc7w2s-6cw2At-cbVu4q-cbPDVq-c8iBao-c8iB5C-cbh5L5-bUA9QX-k8bvEn-oyirRd-bUsDSX-c8iAif-bkDozd-cbTcEG-cbqnWd-bUAZv8-5hZrjs-c8iA9h-dXfuxH-cbXR9f-bUzuxV-c8iAMo-c8iBtf-cbYZSJ-cbSNJG-c8iAVC-9obh7g-bUx8Q2-bUx8Uv-bUzurZ-cbXSeU-cbVu6U-84iNci-dKjVwD-cuMMw3-8rvjoP-4WqR7-cQZqYj" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7302574832/in/photolist-ikWvMo-9EqKjo-8bPGsc-S21e5-cJbM1-cbYeYU-dXfy42-4q46Lx-cbqnQ1-dXm98N-c8iBgs-cc9eAb-cc7w2s-6cw2At-cbVu4q-cbPDVq-c8iBao-c8iB5C-cbh5L5-bUA9QX-k8bvEn-oyirRd-bUsDSX-c8iAif-bkDozd-cbTcEG-cbqnWd-bUAZv8-5hZrjs-c8iA9h-dXfuxH-cbXR9f-bUzuxV-c8iAMo-c8iBtf-cbYZSJ-cbSNJG-c8iAVC-9obh7g-bUx8Q2-bUx8Uv-bUzurZ-cbXSeU-cbVu6U-84iNci-dKjVwD-cuMMw3-8rvjoP-4WqR7-cQZqYj">NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>"It's nearby, it's Earth-like, and its star won't interfere," Deming told <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/11/earth-like-world-gj1132b-could-be-most-important-planet-ever-found-outside-the-solar-system?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>This newly discovered exoplanet is, however, just a stepping stone.</p><p>The possibility of finding life on it is practically zero. GJ 1132b might be only 16% larger than Earth, but it's surface temperature is a balmy 450 degrees Fahrenheit.</p><p>"Our ultimate goal is to find a twin Earth, but along the way we've found a twin Venus," David Charbonneau, a co-author on the new paper and an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-24">a press release</a>. "We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere, too, and if it does we can't wait to get a whiff."</p><p>The reason for these toasty temperatures is because GJ 1132b sits just 1.4 million miles from its host star - 26 times closer than Mercury is to our sun.</p><p>It takes just 1.6 days for GJ 1132b to complete a single orbit around its star, which is very different from our sun.</p><h2>The most common star in the galaxy</h2><p>The star is what is called a red dwarf, which astronomers suspect is the most common star throughout our home galaxy, the Milky Way.</p><p>Red-dwarf stars are cooler, smaller, and dimmer than our sun. The one that GJ 1132b is orbiting is about one-fifth the size of our sun and only emits about 1/200th the amount of light.</p><p>Here's a diagram comparing, to scale, the size of our sun with a red dwarf (second from the left) and Jupiter (far right):</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Uploaded by Esmera en on Wikipedia" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56439a639dd7cc1a008c9157-960/browndwarfs_comparison_01.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56439a639dd7cc1a008c9157-3000-2250/browndwarfs_comparison_01.png" alt="BrownDwarfs_Comparison_01" data-mce-source="Uploaded by Esmera en on Wikipedia" data-link="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf" /></a><p class="source"><span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf">Uploaded by Esmera en on Wikipedia</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Just because they're different from our sun, however, doesn't mean life couldn't spawn around them. It just means that the habitable zone - the region in space where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface - is closer to the star than it is for our sun.</p><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21350899">Some astronomers estimate</a> that red-dwarf stars comprise 75% of all stars in the galaxy. This means that most of the exoplanets in our galaxy are likely orbiting red-dwarfs.</p><p>Whether any of those planets are habitable, however, is a subject of intense debate, which is why the discovery of GJ 1132b is so exciting. And while GJ 1132b is not likely habitable, it's possible that it has some neighbors that are.</p><p>To first spot GJ 1132b as it passed in front of the star, the researchers used the MEarth-South array, a group of telescopes at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.</p><p>Now that they know it's there, the team has requested time on the Hubble Space Telescope (which observes the same type of light we see with our eyes) and the Spitzer Space Telescope (which observes longer wavelengths than Hubble, in the infrared regime) to study GJ 1132b more fully.</p><p>With the viewing powers of Hubble and Spitzer combined, the scientists could get a much broader spectrum of light to study even more chemical compounds than they otherwise would with just one of the telescopes. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-links-extraterrestrial-life-aliens-2015-11">Here's why aliens might actually exist</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="w3ZXBxeDolmQmCfI8DI7FIZrunatjOe8" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'w3ZXBxeDolmQmCfI8DI7FIZrunatjOe8',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Astronomers are freaking out over this newly discovered Earth-sized planet - and for good reason

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c2b972eab8ea7c03861f37-1200-1488/iyl.jpg" border="0" alt="nasa images"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">These images combine the light detected from several different telescopes.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>In honor of the United Nations' marking 2015 as the <a href="http://www.light2015.org/Home.html">International Year of Light</a><a href="http://www.light2015.org/Home/About.html"> and Light-based Technologies</a>, <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/chandra-celebrates-the-international-year-of-light/#.VMZ822R4pEk">NASA has released</a> a series of stunning new images of the cosmos.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/">The mind-blowing images</a> below show us wispy remnants of stars that exploded long ago and distant galaxies with energetic supermassive black holes at their centers.</p>
<p>What makes this set so interesting is that some of these distant cosmological marvels are invisible to the human eye. In order to create the beautiful pictures shown to the right, NASA has combined the light detected from several different telescopes.</p>
<p>The reason astronomers study light with different wavelengths and energies is because this technique illuminates the universe in ways that would otherwise remain hidden. And the more they see, the more astronomers can understand the cosmos.</p>
<p>What humans see is only a very small part of what scientists call the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum encompasses all forms of radiation - energy that moves through space. The term "visible light" refers to the part of the spectrum that we can see:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54418ac86bb3f72f56f1b8bb-1024-314/6146868258_7e858e60ff_b.jpg" border="0" alt="Electromagnetic spectrum"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/entirelysubjective/6146868258/in/photolist-fV4Edx-3JN4fP-aTFJK6-a3X2W9-3tEqDH-7etree-544Qo1-bfvrSH-eKSrMR-aYGa7-mg8mzD-8TFbmx-bAFfGP-bGZTZa-bQReMX-4DUx9S-9gEnMc-hBUdYu-anbiMd-7TVh72-e74k8w-dWfLLA-cR9LeY-e6XGnn-e6XGon-4wTu6W-cdUaEA-nsSEWg-bBUcdY-drsg9N-bUHcgF-eiC3zb-9S72Jw-e74jH9-csDWJ5-4DUyBL-bUyERZ-5C3Sbm-PmcMw-5BYxyx-ewcQgm-e5R2Ub-6jdGjq-6UQTnX-4wTtFj-4wPkve-7GhFsX-6UUYao-4wPm5e-8RNijP">Johannes Ahlmann/Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">The electromagnetic spectrum. The thin part in the middle is the range of wavelengths our eyes perceive as color.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>NASA'S different space telescopes all pick up electromagnetic radiation from different parts of this spectrum:</p>
<ul>
<li>Chandra X-ray Observatory detects X-rays</li>
<li>Galaxy Evolution Explorer detects ultra-violet rays</li>
<li>Hubble Space Telescope detects visible light</li>
<li>Spitzer Space Telescope detects infrared light</li>
</ul>
<p>NASA also uses telescopes on the ground like the Australia Telescope Compact Array, which detects radio waves, and the Digital Sky Survey, which (like Hubble) detects visible light.</p>
<p>Most of the pictures below are not what you would actually see if you were looking through a powerful telescope. In order to study objects in different wavelengths, astronomers convert the non-visible parts of the spectrum into colors like purple, blue, and red, which you see in the images below.</p>
<h2>Star Bones</h2>
<p>Astronomers can study the bones of stars that exploded in a brilliant light show, called a supernova, millions of years ago.</p>
<p>This image of a supernova remnant, called SNR 0519-69.0, is more than 163,000 light years away in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c26cfa69beddf42e5d7746-864-864/iyl_snr0519.jpg" border="0" alt="X-ray &amp; Optical Images of SNR E0519-69.0"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes; Optical: NASA/STScI</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>If you could hop on a spaceship and travel to this gaseous nebula, you might be disappointed. That's because the image above is not what you would see in reality.</p>
<p>Below is a gif of the two real images - one of visible light from <a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_snr0519_optical.jpg">Hubble</a> (which is what you could see through a telescope) and one of <a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_snr0519_xray.jpg">X-rays from Chandra</a> - and then the final composite image. It's amazing how NASA is able to combine them to create the final composite piece, using the special abilities of each individual telescope:</p>
<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c90796ecad04412e0d3d86/hubble5.gif" border="0" alt="hubble5"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes; Optical: NASA/STScI</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></h2>
<h2>A Star Without A Pulse</h2>
<p>The supernova remnant, called <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/MSH_11-62.html#.VMagX2R4pEk">MSH 11-62</a>, is a bit of a mystery. Judging from its shape, astronomers suspect that there is a rapidly rotating, extremely dense star, called a pulsar, toward the top of this cloud of gas.</p>
<p>Pulsars emit powerful pulses of high-energy radiation and that, together with their spinning rotation, produces a signature-shaped, elongated cloud, like the one in the composite below. But astronomers have yet to detect any pulses within the distant nebula.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c26cfaeab8ea0f449e2904-864-864/iyl_msh1162.jpg" border="0" alt="X-ray, Optical &amp; Radio Images of MSH 11-62"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>This false-color image is made from images created by the Chandra in X-rays (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_msh1162_xray.jpg">blue</a>), the Digitized Sky Survey in <a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_msh1162_optical.jpg">visible light</a>, and the Australia Telescope Compact Array in radio waves (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_msh1162_radio.jpg">purple</a>).</p>
<p>Radio waves are lower in energy than visible light or X-rays, so they're good for detecting low-temperature gas, which shows up in the purple image below:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c907f96da811774be22f15/hubble1-1.gif" border="0" alt="hubble1"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<h2>Millennia In The Making</h2>
<p>About 2,000 years ago, ancient Chinese astronomers recorded a <a href="http://www.space.com/13374-ancient-supernova-mystery-solved.html">"guest star"</a> that seemingly appeared out of nowhere and remained visible for eight months. Modern astronomers suspect that this guest star was a supernova and that the composite image below is the left-over guts of what remains of that star.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c26cfaecad0401693f9717-864-615/iyl_rcw86.jpg" border="0" alt="X-ray &amp; Optical Images of RCW 86"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Castro et al, Optical: NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>The false-color picture above is made from combining a <a href="http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_rcw86_optical.jpg">Hubble</a> shot in visible light and a <a href="http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_rcw86_xray.jpg">Chandra</a> image in the X-ray part of the spectrum (blue/purple). See how NASA puts these two images together in the animation below:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c90837ecad04ea350d3d85/hubble4.gif" border="0" alt="hubble4"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Castro et al, Optical: NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<h2>Hungry, Hungry Black Holes</h2>
<p>Located 700 million light years from Earth is the <a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod1_q12.html">Cygnus A galaxy</a>. This is a fascinating example of the power of supermassive black holes. Cygnus A is known as an active galaxy because the supermassive black hole at its center is emitting large amounts of radiation into space, which this image highlights in blue and red.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c26cfa6bb3f7e0503f9ba0-864-695/iyl_cyga.jpg" border="0" alt="Cygnus A"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/AUI/VLA</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>In reality, this galaxy looks nothing like the image above. But with the help of Chandra and NSF's Very Large Array radio telescope, astronomers can see the dynamic nature of this galaxy's center.</p>
<p>The false-color image above is made from three photos taken by Chandra in X-rays (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_cyga_xray.jpg">blue</a>), NSF's Very Large Array in radio waves (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_cyga_radio.jpg">red</a>), and Hubble in <a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_cyga_optical.jpg">visible light</a>. (Here, red is a false color and not what you would see in reality, unlike the true red color in the earlier Hubble image of SNR 0519-69.0.)</p>
<p>Check out the stark contrast in temperature of the hot X-rays around the center versus the low-temperature gas that the black hole has ejected millions of light years away.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c9085469bedd503013dd96/hubble2.gif" border="0" alt="hubble2"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<h2>The Most Picturesque Of All?</h2>
<p>Last but not least is one of the most picturesque galaxies in the universe: the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2457.html">Whirlpool galaxy</a>. This galaxy floats in space 21 million light years from Earth and is part of a class of galaxies called spiral galaxies because of their distinct spiral arms swirling out from the center.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c2b47769beddd1488a4b0b-1200-1728/iyl_m51-1.jpg" border="0" alt="whirlpool galaxy"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>Spiral galaxies are particularly interesting to astronomers because our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is also a spiral galaxy. Learning more about other spiral galaxies gives insight to our own.</p>
<p>The false-color image above is made from four photos taken by Chandra in X-rays (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_m51_xray.jpg">purple)</a>, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer in in ultraviolet (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_m51_uv.jpg">blue</a>), Hubble in visible light (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_m51_optical.jpg">green</a>), and the Spitzer Space Telescope in the infrared (<a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/iyl_m51_ir.jpg">red</a>).</p>
<p>Astronomers study objects in infrared (red) wavelengths because, as with radio waves, infrared shows low-temperature gas. At higher energies, in ultra-violet (blue) wavelengths, astronomers can detect pockets of star formation.</p>
<p>With that in mind, check out the level of activity at the galaxy's center in all of the images below: The infrared indicates that there's a great deal of dust around the center; the ultra-violet points to bright spots of star formation; visible light shows dark patches where gas is blocking the light; and the X-rays highlight blazing-hot gas, which the supermassive black hole at the center is shooting off into space.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c9088869bedde12f13dd97/hubble3.gif" border="0" alt="hubble3"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/iyl/more.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>Without instruments like Chandra, Hubble, Spitzer, and many more, astronomers would understand very little about our universe.</p>
<p> </p>

Check Out These Mind-Blowing New Images From NASA

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58acc7a754905755008b602c-2400/undefined" alt="trappist 1 seven earth size planets discovery nature 8" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" data-mce-caption="An artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool red dwarf with seven Earth-size planets orbiting it."><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool red dwarf with seven Earth-size planets orbiting it.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><ul><li><strong>TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star 39-light-years away from us, has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it.</strong></li><li><strong>It's likely that all of these worlds are rocky and may possibly harbor liquid water.</strong></li><li><strong>Red dwarf stars are the most abundant type of star in the Milky Way galaxy.</strong></li><li><strong>In the future, telescopes might be able to detect light that passes through the planets' atmospheres - and possibly signal the presence or absence of alien life.</strong></li></ul><p>Less than a year ago, astronomers announced an astounding discovery: They'd found <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-find-3-earth-sized-planets-2016-5">three Earth-size planets</a> orbiting a small, dim red star.</p><p>But as it turns out, their first observations missed a whole bunch of worlds.</p><p>The astronomers now think <em>seven</em> rocky planets similar to our own may circle the star, called TRAPPIST-1 - an "ultra-cool" red dwarf located about 39 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Thirty researchers from around the world announced <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21360">the new discovery</a> Tuesday in the journal Nature.</p><p>The team's surprise didn't end with an increased world count, though.</p><p>Each planet orbits TRAPPIST-1 in the star's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">Goldilocks-like habitable zone</a> - a region where there's enough starlight to permit the existence of liquid water. Four of the seven worlds may even be candidates for hosting alien life, team members said Tuesday during a press teleconference call.</p><p>"This is really the first time we have seven planets that we can say are in terrestrial zone, and it's really, really surprising," said Michaël Gillon, a study co-author and astronomer at the Université de Liège in Belgium.</p><p>The discovery of the new worlds, each within 10-20% of the size of Earth, may have profound implications for the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">search for extraterrestrial life</a> beyond the solar system.</p><h2>An alien, yet possibly common, solar system</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58acc65e5490578d0d8b5e67-1355" alt="trappist 1 seven earth size planets discovery nature 1" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Nature" data-mce-caption="How the orbits of the TRAPPIST-1 star system's planets compare to our own solar system."><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Nature</span></p><p class="caption">How the orbits of the TRAPPIST-1 star system's planets compare to our own solar system.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>The dwarf star and its system of seven known planets - called TRAPPIST-1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, and 1h - is relatively small compared to our own.</p><p>In fact, one "year" on the innermost planet, 1b, takes about a day and a half on Earth. The outermost planet, 1h (which scientists have caught only a fleeting glimpse of), takes about 20 Earth-days to orbit the star.</p><p>"If we put the TRAPPIST-1 star [in] the place of the sun, we'd have all seven planets inside the orbit of Mercury," Emmanuël Jehin, another co-author at the Université de Liège, said on the call.</p><p>But that isn't a deal-breaker for the possibility of life.</p><p>TRAPPIST-1's surface temperature is about half that of the sun's, making it "ultra-cool" as stars go. However, if a planet orbits closely enough, it can receive the same amount of solar energy as the Earth receives from the sun at 93 million miles away. All of TRAPPIST-1's worlds appear to be "temperate" and not close enough to get roasted.</p><p>The team said it's "very hard to know" if they just got lucky with their unprecedented discovery of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, or if such an abundance of worlds is common, said Amaury Triaud, fellow co-author and astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK.</p><p>Either way, the bounty of worlds may vastly improve the chances that humans aren't alone in the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-milky-way-galaxy-looks-like-2016-9">Milky Way galaxy</a>, let alone the universe at large.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bdce7bdb5ce9b61b8b88d6-1800" alt="red dwarf star exoplanet" data-mce-source="Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics" data-link="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009-24"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009-24">Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>That's because <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">red dwarf stars</a> comprise "30 to 50%" of our galaxy's <a href="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/07/22/how-many-stars-in-the-milky-way/">100 to 400 billion stars,</a> Triaud said, which makes them the most abundant and long-lived type of star around. (Sun-like solar systems represent only about 10% of those discovered thus far, the researchers said.)<p>"I think we've made a crucial step toward finding life out there," Triaud told Business Insider during the call.</p><p>"I don't think we've had the right planets to look at," he said. "If life managed to thrive and release gases similar to those here on Earth, then we will know. We have the right targets."</p><p>Another target could also be Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf just 4.24 light-years away - many times closer than TRAPPIST-1. In 2016, astronomers learned this star system may harbor an Earth-like planet <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">called Proxima b</a>.</p><p>NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-habitable-atmosphere-jwst-2016-9">might be able to study</a> the probable world's alien atmosphere for signs of life. A Russian billionaire is also backing an ambitious mission to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-proxima-centauri-habitable-planet-2016-8">laser-propel a fleet of tiny spacecraft</a> toward Proxima Centauri and its close neighbor Alpha Centauri to directly study and photograph any worlds around the stars.</p><h2>Why there could be life around TRAPPIST-1</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58acc65f5490571d008b6084-2400" alt="trappist 1 seven earth size planets discovery nature 7" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" data-mce-caption="An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth."><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>Since astronomers verified the discovery of the <a href="http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/25yearsofexoplanetdiscoveries">first exoplanet 25 years ago</a>, scientists have gradually come around to the idea that life is probably common in the universe. (Whether or not it's intelligent, angry, friendly, or indifferent, however, is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-aliens-have-not-contacted-humans-2015-9">a different matter</a>.)</p><p>The transit method, where a planet passes in front of a star and dims its light ever-so-slightly, showed humanity that perhaps trillions of planets may exist in our galaxy alone.</p><p>Gillon and his colleagues used the same method to discover the seven new worlds. They found the first three in previous years using a ground-based telescope named TRAPPIST. They detected the four additional worlds featured in the new study by staring down TRAPPIST-1 for 20 consecutive days with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.</p><p>And, as previously mentioned, more-abundant stars that are much cooler than the sun can warm up rocky planets enough to melt water; that is, if they have enough insulating gases in their atmospheres.</p><p>"It's possible their atmospheres are very similar to the Earth, or Venus, or something completely different," Gillon said.</p><p>The study suggests that the diameters and masses of each planet, estimated based on the amount of starlight dimming they cause, match up with that of rocky worlds, and possibly those that harbor <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10">water as ice or liquid oceans</a>.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58acc65e5490579f038b4d21-2400" alt="trappist 1 seven earth size planets discovery nature 2" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" data-mce-caption="An illustration of TRAPPIST-1's planets."><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of TRAPPIST-1's planets.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>That's not to say life is guaranteed around TRAPPIST-1.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-storm-risk-map-united-states-2016-9">Dangerous space weather</a>, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections, could endanger any aliens by blasting them with dangerous high-energy particles. And unfortunately, red dwarf stars - more than most other types of stars - are known for such temper tantrums.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/570fe38f52bcd024008bccd1-1440/giant_prominence_on_the_sun_erupted.jpg" alt="solar flare" data-mce-source="Wikimedia Commons" data-link="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_prominence_on_the_sun_erupted.jpg"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_prominence_on_the_sun_erupted.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p><p class="caption">A giant solar flare erupting from the sun.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>The planets also seem to orbit in "resonance," which could mean that they may be tidally locked and always facing the star with the same side, much like Jupiter's largest moons.</p><p>But neither of these necessarily mean doom for any life that may exist there, the researchers said.</p><p>For one, Gillon said, TRAPPIST-1 "is a very quiet star" as far as giant balls of fusing plasma go.</p><p>Gillon also says orbital resonances and tidal locking may actually be an advantage.</p><p>"This could lead to a huge tidal heating in the cores of the planets," he said, by kneading them with gravitational strain.</p><p>Such warmth could melt ice into liquid, belch insulating gases into the planet's atmosphere through volcanism, and generally stir up the ingredients for life.</p><h2>What's next for TRAPPIST-1</h2><p>Gillon said the team's discovery of TRAPPIST-1's seven planets "is just the beginning."</p><p>Direct photographs of the planets may not be possible, the researchers said. But in the near future, the scientists hope to use telescopes like JWST - scheduled to launch in 2018 - to peek at starlight that passes through the atmospheres of the planets.</p><p>The technique could help them measure how much oxygen, ozone, and other gases the worlds might contain.</p><p>"For instance, oxygen can be produced by photolysis of water on a water-rich planet," Gillon said. "It's really the molecules and their relative abundances that enable us to give the plausible or restricted extent of life. We'll see."</p><p>And even if TRAPPIST-1 seems to be a dead or sterile planetary system now, that still doesn't mean it's an unlikely place to seek out aliens in the future.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58acc81254905724008b607d-960/undefined" alt="trappist 1 seven earth size planets discovery nature 6" data-mce-source="IoA/Amanda Smith" data-mce-caption="An illustration of how the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system looks from above. The planets are labeled 1b through 1h."><p class="source"><span>IoA/Amanda Smith</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of how the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system looks from above. The planets are labeled 1b through 1h.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>"Could any of the planets harbour life? We simply do not know," <a href="https://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/11932/">Ignas A.G. Snellen</a>, a researcher at Leiden University who wasn't part of the research team but reviewed the study for Nature, wrote in an accompanying editorial.<p>"But one thing is certain: in a few billion years, when the Sun has run out of fuel and the Solar System has ceased to exist, TRAPPIST-1 will still be only an infant star. It burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live for another 10 trillion years" Snellen wrote, adding that's "more than 700 times longer than the Universe has existed so far, which is arguably enough time for life to evolve."</p><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:56%"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/AggravatingScaredBaiji" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:66%"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/UnhappyTastyGermanspaniel" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:56%"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/SecondBlaringIcefish" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RzeTAyNjE6gtR_2DvSKCIS3S7yEAsIlS" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'RzeTAyNjE6gtR_2DvSKCIS3S7yEAsIlS',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Astronomers have found 7 Earth-size planets circling a dwarf star - and they might harbor life

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58ac77ed54905755008b5db3-2400/undefined" alt="trappist 1 seven earth like planets PIA21421" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" data-mce-caption="An artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool red dwarf with seven Earth-size planets orbiting it."><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool red dwarf with seven Earth-size planets orbiting it.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><ul><li><strong>TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star 39-light-years away from us, has seven rocky, Earth-size planets.</strong></li><li><strong>It's possible all of the worlds could harbor liquid water.</strong></li><li><strong>Red dwarf stars are the most abundant in the universe.</strong></li><li><strong>Future studies of the planets may show the presence or absence of alien life in their atmospheres.</strong></li></ul><p>Less than a year ago, astronomers announced an amazing discovery: They'd found <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-find-3-earth-sized-planets-2016-5">three Earth-size planets</a> orbiting a small, dim red star.</p><p>But as it turns out, their first observations missed a whole bunch of worlds.</p><p>Now the astronomers think <em>seven</em> rocky planets that are similar to our own may circle the star, called TRAPPIST-1 - an "ultra-cool" red dwarf located about 39 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Thirty researchers from around the world announced <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21360">the new discovery</a> Tuesday in the journal Nature.</p><p>The team's surprise didn't end with an increased world count, though.</p><p>Each planet orbits TRAPPIST-1 in the star's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">Goldilocks-like habitable zone</a> - a region where there's enough starlight to permit the existence of liquid water. Four of the seven worlds may even be candidates for hosting alien life, team members said Tuesday during a teleconference call.</p><p>"This is really the first time we have seven planets that we can say are in terrestrial zone, and it's really, really surprising," said Michaël Gillon, a study co-author and astronomer at the Université de Liège in Belgium.</p><p>The discovery may have profound implications for the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">search for extraterrestrial life</a> beyond the solar system.</p><h2>An alien, yet incredibly common, solar system</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58ac784054905720098b5cde-1355" alt="trappist 1 seven earth like planets nature" data-mce-source="Courtesy Nature" data-mce-caption="How the size of the TRAPPIST-1 star system compares to our own solar system."><p class="source"><span>Courtesy Nature</span></p><p class="caption">How the size of the TRAPPIST-1 star system compares to our own solar system.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>The star system's size is relatively tiny compared to our own.</p><p>"If we put the TRAPPIST-1 star [in] the place of the sun, we'd have all seven planets inside the orbit of Mercury," Emmanuël Jehin, another co-author at the Université de Liège, said on the call.</p><p>But that isn't a deal-breaker for the possibility of life.</p><p>TRAPPIST-1 is about half as hot as the sun. However, if a planet sits very close to the red dwarf star, it can receive the same amount of solar energy as the Earth receives from the sun at 93 million miles away.</p><p>It's "very hard to know" if the team just got lucky with their unprecedented discovery of seven Earth-size worlds around a single star, or if such an abundance of planets is common, said Amaury Triaud, fellow co-author and astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK.</p><p>Either way, the discovery may vastly improve the chances that humans aren't alone in the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-milky-way-galaxy-looks-like-2016-9">Milky Way galaxy</a>, let alone the universe at large.</p><p>That's because <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">red dwarf stars</a> comprise "30 to 50%" of our galaxy's <a href="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/07/22/how-many-stars-in-the-milky-way/">100 to 400 billion stars,</a> Triaud says, which makes them the most abundant type of star around. (Sun-like solar systems represent only about 10% of systems discovered thus far.)</p><p>"I think we've made a crucial step toward finding life out there," Triaud told Business Insider during the call. "I don't think we've had the right planets to look at. [...] If life managed to thrive and release gases similar to those here on Earth, then we will know. We have the right targets."</p><p>Another target could also be Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf just 4.24 light-years away - many times closer than TRAAPIST-1. Astronomers in 2016 learned that star system may harbor an Earth-like planet <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">called Proxima b</a>, whose alien atmosphere NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-habitable-atmosphere-jwst-2016-9">might be able to study</a>.</p><h2>Why there could be life around TRAPPIST-1</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58ac6b4501fe581c008b5b4d-2400" alt="trappist 1 seven earth like planets PIA21423" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" data-mce-caption="An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth."><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>Since astronomers discovered the <a href="http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/25yearsofexoplanetdiscoveries">first exoplanet 25 years ago</a>, scientists have gradually come around to the idea that life is probably common in the universe. (Whether or not it's intelligent, angry, friendly, or indifferent is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-aliens-have-not-contacted-humans-2015-9">a different matter</a>.)</p><p>The transit method, where a planet passes in front of a star and dims its light ever-so-slightly, showed humanity that perhaps trillions of planets may orbit stars in our galaxy alone.</p><p>Gillon and his colleagues used the same method to detect the seven new worlds. They found the first three using a ground-based telescope, then found the other four (in the new study) by staring down TRAPPIST-1 for 20 consecutive days using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.</p><p>And, as previously mentioned, more-abundant stars that are much cooler than the sun can warm up rocky planets enough to melt water; that is, if they have enough insulating gases in their atmospheres.</p><p>"It's possible their atmospheres are very similar to the Earth, or Venus, or something completely different," Gillon said.</p><p>The study suggests that the diameters and masses of each planet, estimated based on the amount of starlight dimming and how they orbit TRAPPIST-1, match up with that of rocky worlds, and possibly those that harbor <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10">water as ice or liquid oceans</a>.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58ac6b4401fe5877368b5582-2400" alt="trappist 1 seven earth like planets PIA21425" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech"><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>That's not to say life is guaranteed around TRAPPIST-1.</p><p>Powerful space weather, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections, could endanger any aliens by blasting them with dangerous high-energy particles. And unfortunately, red dwarf stars, more than most other types of stars, are known for such temper tantrums.</p><p>The planets also seem to orbit in "resonance," which could mean that they, like Jupiter's large moons, may be tidally locked and always facing the star with the same side.</p><p>But neither of these necessarily mean doom for any life that may exist there, the researchers said.</p><p>For one, Gillon said, TRAPPIST-1 "is a very quiet star" as far as giant balls of fusing plasma go. Gillon also says orbital resonances and tidal locking may actually be an advantage.</p><p>"This could lead to a huge tidal heating in the cores of the planets," he said, by kneading them with gravitational strain.</p><p>Such warmth could melt ice into liquid, belch insulating gases into the planet's atmosphere through volcanism, and generally stir up the ingredients for life.</p><h2>What's next for TRAPPIST-1</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58ac849001fe580f018b5b8e-975/trappist-1-seven-earth-like-planets-1b-01.jpg" alt="trappist 1 seven earth like planets 1_b 01" data-mce-source="IoA/Amanda Smith" data-mce-caption="An illustration of how the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system looks from above. The planets are labeled 1b through 1h."><p class="source"><span>IoA/Amanda Smith</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of how the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system looks from above. The planets are labeled 1b through 1h.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>Gillon said the team's discovery of TRAPPIST-1's seven planets "is just the beginning."</p><p>In the future, the scientists hope to use the infrared-seeing JWST to peek at the atmospheres of the planets and see how much oxygen, ozone, and other gases they may contain.</p><p>"For instance, oxygen can be produced by photolysis of water on a water-rich planet," Gillon said. "It's really the molecules and their relative abundances that enable us to give the plausible or restricted extent of life. We'll see."</p><p>And even if TRAPPIST-1 seems to be a dead planetary system now, that still doesn't mean it's an unlikely place to seek out aliens.</p><p>"Could any of the planets harbour life? We simply do not know," <a href="https://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/11932/">Ignas A.G. Snellen</a>, a researcher at Leiden University who wasn't part of the research team but reviewed the study for Nature, wrote in an accompanying editorial.</p><p>"But one thing is certain: in a few billion years, when the Sun has run out of fuel and the Solar System has ceased to exist, TRAPPIST-1 will still be only an infant star. It burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live for another 10 trillion years" Snellen wrote, adding that's "more than 700 times longer than the Universe has existed so far, which is arguably enough time for life to evolve."</p><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:66%"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/TinyVibrantHorsefly" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RzeTAyNjE6gtR_2DvSKCIS3S7yEAsIlS" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'RzeTAyNjE6gtR_2DvSKCIS3S7yEAsIlS',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "Spitzer Space Telescope" and got 12 results

I'm one of only 26 Black women astrophysicists in America. Acting helped me overcome the stereotypes I felt as a woman of color in STEM.

Yoonji Han

27 stunning photos of the cosmos taken this year

Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Dana Va…

Astronomers discover three planets orbiting younger Sun-like star

IANS

Invisible massive galaxies producing 1,000 suns a year could rewrite how the universe works

Prabhjote Gill

A bizarre interstellar object called 'Oumuamua continues to perplex astronomers a year after it vanished. Here's why a few scientists still wonder if it was alien.

Dave Mosher

The movie 'Interstellar' came out exactly 5 years ago. Since then, new discoveries have changed our understanding of black holes.

Aylin Woodward

There was a big spark — 75 times brighter than usual — from the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way

Prabhjote Gill

A NASA scientist's incredible animation shows how dinosaurs roamed the Earth on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Astronomers are freaking out over this newly discovered Earth-sized planet - and for good reason

Jessica Orwig

Check Out These Mind-Blowing New Images From NASA

Jessica Orwig

Astronomers have found 7 Earth-size planets circling a dwarf star - and they might harbor life

Dave Mosher

Astronomers have found 7 Earth-size planets circling a dwarf star - and they might harbor life

Dave Mosher