Astronomers have discovered the first exoplanet with plate tectonics — Pangaea when? Running Hot and Cold Located just 45 light-years from Earth, LHS 3844b is thought to not have an atmosphere. This makes it slightly easier for astronomers to see tectonic processes taking place in thisdistant world. Even under the best of conditions, these measurements are right at the edge of technology. Thisvolcanoplanet, composed mostly of rock like our own world, is slightly larger than Earth....

Astronomers just detected the oldest and most distant quasar ever Let it eat… it’s a growing quasar… This ancient body feedsextreme quasar winds, sending charged particles racing away from the object at 20% of the speed of light. The host galaxy housing J0313–1806 was also a region where vast numbers of stars were born. While just one star is born each year, on average, in the Milky Way, the host galaxy for this quasar sees around 200 stars light up for the first time each year....

Astronomers just discovered the oldest and most distant galaxy ever A long time ago, there was a galaxy far, far away… The galaxy GM-z11 was first seen in March 2016, and astronomers immediately recognized it as one of the oldestgalaxiesever seen. However, this new study refines the age of this distant object, revealing its extreme age and distance. “From previous studies, the galaxy GN-z11 seems to be the farthest detectable galaxy from us, at 13....

Astronomers are increasingly drawing back the curtains on black holes. In the past few years, wehave finally captured actual photosof these fearsome creatures and measured the gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime –that they create when colliding. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about black holes. One of the biggest enigmas is exactly how they form in the first place. My colleagues and I now believe we have observed this process, providing some of the best indications yet of exactly what happens when a black hole forms....

Astronomers think our Sun may have a long lost twin A twin star of the Sun, born with our parent star, may still be floating somewhere in space. A cloud made of mountains At the edge of our family of planets lies the Kuiper Belt — a doughnut shaped halo of icy objects including the dwarf planetPluto. This belt, now being explored by spacecraft for the first time, is also home to short-period comets that journey to the inner solar system roughly once every 200 years....