nearby

Astronomers’ trick to hunt hundreds of nearby exoplanets: look for suspiciously “quiet” stars

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The hunt for exoplanets in the universe has always depended on our ability to observe the invisible. Until now we have mainly noticed the flickering of a star when it passes in front of one of these planets or the subtle gravitational wobble that it causes, but we have never seen them directly. Now a team of astronomers has perfected a much more ingenious method: searching for planets based on the “false” magnetic tranquility of their stars. And now it works. The project known as Dispersed Matter Planet Project (DMPP) has just confirm the discovery of seven new planets spread across five star systems, and its projections indicate that there could be hundreds of rocky worlds hidden in our closest cosmic neighborhood. And we have not been able to ‘see’ all of these with our traditional systems. How it works. The DMPP method is fascinating because it turns the traditional way of observing the universe on its head. Now, instead of looking for active stars, the team selects bright, very nearby stars that have anomalously low calcium emission. In fact, they show levels of magnetic activity below their basal level. But these samples do not indicate that the star is without activity, but rather that it is hidden. Here astronomers have discovered that these systems host planets very close to the star, which due to the intense heat are evaporating. From this gas that is released from these worlds, a kind of ‘shield’ or orbital cloud is formed that absorbs radiation and hides the activity of the stellar chromosphere. That is, the star’s apparent inactivity is the gas “fingerprint” of a disintegrating planet. Its precision. To confirm these suspicions, the team does not stop at observing the gas, since it uses very high precision radial velocity spectrographs such as HARPS-Nwhich are capable of measuring minute variations in the star’s motion. One of the most intriguing case studies of the project is the system DMPP-4located about 25 parsecs away. In this star, candidates for planets with sub-Neptunian masses have already been detected, on the order of between 8 and 12.2 times the mass of the Earth, orbiting at breakneck speeds, with “years” that last only between 2 and 5 days. Where are they? These planets inhabit what astronomers know as the “Neptunian Desert,” a region very close to the star where planets the size of Neptune are rarely found. The leading theory is that these worlds are actually rocky cores of ancient Neptunes that migrated into the system and whose atmospheres were swept away by intense stellar radiation. Many to discover. The implications of this study are massive for modern astrophysics, as data from the DMPP project suggests that between 10% and 20% of these low magnetic activity stars could host compact systems of rocky planets that we have not known about until now. This not only helps explain certain anomalies in the historical catalogs of the Kepler telescope, but gives us a treasure map. As they are star systems so bright and close to Earth, these newly discovered exoplanets become the perfect candidates to be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the future generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELT). Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | A new “solar system” has just been discovered. There’s just one problem: it shouldn’t exist.

We have detected a mysterious and very potent radio signal of a nearby galaxy. And its origin is a complete enigma

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In March 2025, an energy pulse as powerful as the one that emits our Sun in several days hit the earth. It lasted just a few milliseconds, but its detection, and above all, the location of its origin, mark a before and after modern astronomy. Now a team from Northwestern University has managed to identify the origin of the fast radio gust (FRB) brighter ever registered. Although there are still many questions to answer. What is a fast radius gust. To understand the magnitude of this finding you must first know what we are talking about. The astronomers themselves describe THE FRB LIKE a cosmic lighthouse of immense power that ignites during a fraction of second In a vast and distant universe. These signals are incredibly energy and travel for millions of light years to reach the earth’s telescopes. Detect one of these bursts It is already an achievement. However, the real challenge is Respond to the origin of these bursts of energy. Until now, the frb that were repeated, which gave scientists multiple opportunities to triangulate the position, had been precisely located. Now they have done it with only one signal. A “photo” with unprecedented precision. The protagonist has been baptized as FRB 20250316A which was detected on March 16, 2025. To achieve this, it is where our current technological capacity enters. Thanks to a telescope network called Chime Outriggerastronomers were able to locate this burst of energy with an amazing accuracy of 13 parsecs, which is equivalent to 42 light years. If we move this measure to the universe itself, we could talk that they have been able to point out a specific house in an entire city seen from space. Something that marks preceding, is that the first time it is achieved for a burst that has apparently been a unique event. An origin that was almost empty. The address from where this signal came to a spiral galaxy called NGC 4141. At that time, all the great telescopes of the world, from the MMT in Arizona to him Keck in HawaiiThey turned to observe that little corner of the universe. Everyone tried to look for some explanation to this event, but what they found did not square them at all. And it is that in the exact place of the outbreak of this signal there is nothing. Not a supermagnnetic neutron star (a Magnetar), Neither a nebula, nor any continuous radio source. A very quiet neighborhood. When looking around the point that scientists had located, you could think that there would be something spectacular. But nothing is further from reality. It was seen that the signal could not come from another close place. Specifically, the formation of stars closest to the localized point is 190 Persecs away. In this way, the origin is located in a really quiet region of the universe. There have been no more repetitions of the event. Despite looking intensely for months, the signal has not reappeared. This is key. Many frb are “repeating”, emitting bursts sporadically. If it were, given its closeness and power, we should have detected weaker pulses. Statistical calculations are clear: the probability that it is a known repeater and we have only seen this bright pulse is very small (with a tension of more than 3.7σ, a very high level of certainty in physics). What could cause this signal. This combination of factors puts the main theories about the origin of FRB. The most accepted hypothesis is that they come from young magnetares, neutron stars with incredibly powerful magnetic fields. These objects are usually born in active star formation regions. The fact that FRB 20250316A is displaced from its “cradle” could mean that the Magnetar He is older of the one that is thought (between 200,000 and 3 million years) and has moved away. However, this clashes with the active life that is presupposed to these objects. The study also rules out other scenarios, such as outbreaks gamma rays Recent The “cleaning” of the environment and the lack of any residual glow in radio or X -rays do not fit with the models of cataclysms such as the Fusion of two neutron starsat least not immediately. The beginning of a new era. Beyond the enigma of the origin of this particular signal, this phenomenon marks a before and after in astrology. The capacity of the Chime/FRB system to locate unique events with this precision The field will revolutionize. It will no longer be necessary to wait for a source to be repeated to be able to study it in detail. Now, astronomers will be able to create a large -scale map of the environments of hundreds of FRB, allowing to compare the unique bursts and those that are repeated every so often. Perhaps in this way we discover that, after all, not all FRB are born from the same type of event. We may be facing two (or more) different phenomena that produce the same type of signal. The universe is plagued by mysteries. From how The stars were formed to him How the ‘big bang’ formedthey still have Many intrigues For our scientists. This makes every time there are more fronts in open -open astronomy And also the hardware field for put our best teams pointing to space with the aim of increasing our knowledge. In Xataka | There is a radio signal arriving at Earth since 1988. The pulsar from which an important mystery is hidden

Now we have 74 images of exocomets orbiting nearby stars

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In recent years we have seen images of Supermasive black holes, Stars outside the Milky Way and planetary systems that orbit other solesthe famous exoplanets. Current astronomy allows us to see with a precision until recently unimaginable the environment that surrounds other stars, to the point that we now have 74 images – not exoplanets, but of exocomena. The news. An international astronomer team has published the most detailed images until the date of 74 different exocometa belts: Dust structures and countless icy bodies that orbit other star systems, in the same way as Kuiper’s belt surrounds our solar system. The images They are part of the Reasons surveywhich combines data from the powerful telescopes Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (soul) in Chile and Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii. The context. The exocometer are frozen bodies of at least one kilometer in diameter. Although they are too small to be observed directly from the earth, the collisions between them release dust and small fragments that form extensive rubble belts, exocometaries belts. It is not a new concept. Astronomers first intuited the presence of exocomets around the Beta Pictoris star in 1984, long before the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1995. Specifically, they detected the spectral firms of evaporated ice passing in front of the star. The details. Reasons images reveal a whole diversity of structures. Some form narrow rings, like our Kuiper belt. Others have multiple rings or are more elongated, suggesting that they have been molded by the severity of unknown exoplanets. The discs have ages ranging from 20 million to 2,000 million years, which covers from systems in the protoplanetary phase to mature systems. The astrophysicist Carlos del Burgo, from the University of La Laguna, highlights that this is “the biggest sample to date.” An opportunity to study them. Located in the outer regions of its systems (more than 10 astronomical units), these rings are at extremely low temperatures (between -250 ° C and -150 ° C), which allows volatile compounds such as water to remain frozen . The researcher Isabel Rebellido, of the European Space Astronomy Center, points out “the importance of being able to perform statistical analysis of these discs for the first time.” Especially its evolution. With the passage of time, the discs seem to lose mass and surface area. And those closest to their stars dissipate more quickly due to the impact of star radiation. Image | Alma (ESO / NaOJ / NRAO) / SMA / L. Matrà et al. In Xataka | We are finding galaxies that we didn’t even know that they existed, and all thanks to Einstein

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