A team of astronomers, led by the University of Arizona, announced in July 2016 that they had used the direct imaging technique to discover planet HD 131399Ab. This planet is about 340 light years from Earth and roughly 16 million years old. It has the widest orbit yet discovered for a planet in a multi-star […]

Scientists have concluded that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. They measured the universe’s age using two methods: by evaluating the rate of its expansion and by calculating the age of its oldest star. Astronomers are able to tell a star’s age by how bright it is. Large stars burn brightly, but burn […]

NASA recently released photos of the prototype robot arm for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is planned to launch in 2021. This robotic probe is designed to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid, as well as test out the ‘enhanced gravity tractor’ method of changing the asteroid’s path. Asteroids periodically collide with Earth, causing greater […]