news 2022

A team led by UdeM astronomers has found evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are "water worlds," planets where water makes up a large fraction of the volume. These worlds, located in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, are unlike any planets found in our solar system.

Researchers from Western have shown that a fireball that originated at the edge of the Solar System was likely made of rock, not ice, challenging long-held beliefs about how the Solar System was formed. Just at the edge of our Solar System and halfway to the nearest stars is a collection of icy objects sailing through space, known as the Oort Cloud.

The James Webb Space Telescope reveals another first: a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds in the distant 'hot Saturn" known as WASP-39 b. CONTENU - Known for beaming stunning images back to Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies.

The Winchcombe meteorite, a rare carbonaceous meteorite which crashed onto a driveway in Gloucestershire in 2021, has been found to contain extra-terrestrial water and organic compounds that reveal insights into the origin of Earth's oceans. A new study, published today by Science Advances , led by experts from the Natural History Museum and the University of Glasgow reports the orbital history and first laboratory analyses of the Winchcombe meteorite, which was recovered only hours after its spectacular fireball lit up the skies over the U.K. in February 2021.

A Simon Fraser University physicist led an international team of scientists in reconstructing the laws of gravity-to gain a better understanding of how they work in the larger universe. The study, published in Nature Astronomy and featured in The Conversation , explored whether modifying General Relativity could help resolve some of the open problems of cosmology.

Science, Health & Technology Lou Corpuz-Bosshart If space is the final frontier, it's food that will get us there in good shape, and UBC researchers are making sure that our food will be up to the task. Dr. John Frostad , an assistant professor in chemical and biological engineering who studies the science of food, leads a team that is creating new ways of encapsulating omega-3 fatty acids so that they can go the distance.

A team of Canadian astronomers, including experts from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts & Science, have used the James Webb Telescope (JWST) to identify the most distant globular clusters ever discovered - dense groups of millions of stars that may be relics containing the first and oldest stars in the universe.

Showing how precise it can be, the James Webb Space Telescope detects the first definitive carbon dioxide signature in an exoplanet atmosphere. In a remarkable display of its precision and accuracy, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, has captured definitive evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.

With the help of instruments designed partly in Canada, a team of Université de Montréal astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water. An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. candidate at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth.

Scientists have discerned a sharp ring of light created by photons whipping around the back of a supermassive black hole in a vivid confirmation of theoretical prediction When scientists unveiled humanity's historic first image of a black hole in 2019 - depicting a dark core encircled by a fiery aura of material falling toward it - they believed even richer imagery and insights were waiting to be teased out of the data.

Astronomers at McGill University, MIT and elsewhere have detected a strange and persistent radio signal from a far-off galaxy, that appears to be flashing with surprising regularity. Classified as a fast radio burst, or FRB, this new signal persists for up to three seconds, about 1,000 times longer than the average FRB.

Astronomers at the University of Toronto have spotted some of the most elusive stuff in our universe by taking a deep look at the cosmic web, the network of filaments and knots that trace the large-scale distribution of galaxies. Even though galaxies produce most of the visible light in the universe, they contain fewer than 10 per cent of all the atoms in the cosmos.

This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 PolyCam images collected on Dec. 2, 2018, by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, (NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Wikimedia Commons) This summer, a group of student researchers and professors from Western University is taking part in a new project that will look at the future of asteroid mining in space.

An international team of astronomers has identified only the second and third examples of a rare type of star system comprising two central stars orbiting each other, encompassed by a remarkable disk of gas and dust. "If there were a planet in one of these systems, it would be like the planet Tatooine from  Star Wars ," says  Michael Poon , a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts & Science's  David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics  and one of two University of Toronto researchers involved in the discovery.

Brown dwarfs - celestial objects that fall between stars and planets - are shown in this illustration with a range of temperatures, from hottest (left) to coldest (right). The two in the middle represent those in the right temperature range for clouds made of silicates to form. (Illustration by NASA/JPL-Caltech) A new study led by researchers at Western University provides critical information on sand clouds observed in distant planets and helps affirm a larger theory of how planetary atmospheres work.

The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher instrument, designed in part at Laval University, has successfully made its first observations The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) instrument, designed in part at the University of Montreal and Laval University, has successfully made its first observations. Installed on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) 3.6-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, NIRPS' mission is to search for new exoplanets around stars in the solar neighborhood.

UdeM research team to develop miniaturized technology to monitor the health of astronauts on future deep-space missions - and someday in the Far North. On May 25, the Canadian Space Agency and Impact Canada announced the 20 winning entries in the Deep Space Health Care Challenge , a competition to support the development of new health-care technologies for crews on deep-space missions and residents of Canada's remote communities.

An international team of scientists recently released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated. Named 3D-DASH, this high-resolution survey will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission.

According to a UdeM study, life could have emerged on an exoplanet as a result of a type of biochemical cooperation that is more likely to occur in nature than we might think! Darwin's theory of evolution probably isn't the full explanation for the emergence of life. Even in a barren environment conducive to fierce competition, cooperation between molecular networks may have spawned life on Earth and, by extension, elsewhere in the universe.

May 12, 2022 A new image from Avery Broderick and the Event Horizon Telescope shows the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way By Elizabeth Kleisath Faculty of Science Three years ago, history was made when the first image of a black hole inspired wonder and awe around the world as we glimpsed the shadow of light escaping from the supermassive black hole M87*.