JWST peers back at six galaxies becoming one

JWST peers back at six galaxies becoming one

The JWST looked back in time and caught six galaxies in the middle of merging into one. At the heart of the pile-up, a supermassive black hole is lurking. It all unfolded when the Universe was only about 1.5 billion years old — and the red-shifted light is only just reaching us now.

Gobble's Take: Six galaxies, one black hole, zero personal space. The early universe had a type. Source: Universe Today

NASA's ExoMiner++ turns exoplanet hunting into a batch job

Traditionally, exoplanet scientists combed through data from Kepler and TESS one star at a time. NASA's AI tool ExoMiner++ changed that — it can now process thousands of stars at once, with highly accurate results, and has already identified hundreds of exoplanets. Lead machine learning scientist Hamed Valizadegan says the tool is transforming how we search for worlds beyond our solar system.

Gobble's Take: One star at a time was always a terrible way to search an entire galaxy. Glad someone finally told the scientists. Source: Perplexity Search

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• 660 feet deep — that's how thick the Novarupta ash layer can get in Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, the same volcanic wasteland where Apollo astronauts once practiced being on the Moon.
• Apollo astronauts played "the Moon game" in Alaska
• A Moon-training ground born from a monster eruption
• Space has always had a war problem