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Every cosmic phenomenon deserves its own unique claim to fame, but Abell 2052 deserves better than this. Its gas jerks back and forth like a drink sloshing around in a glass. It's like the cosmic equivalent of a tipsy uncle. More »
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Something very strange is happening around the star KIC 12557548. Its light dims every 15 hours, as though a planet is orbiting around it...except the dimming varies wildly each time around. A planet is being vaporized before our eyes. More »
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Located some 11 billion light-years from Earth are two clouds of gas. Just two billion years younger than the Big Bang itself, they appear to be the first known clouds that are completely unaltered since the birth of the universe. More »
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This image taken by NASA's Wise Satellite is in the infrared spectrum, meaning it can reveal the light that is normally hidden behind thick, dark clouds of gas. But some clouds are so dark that no light can get through. More »
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That green clump might not be much to look at, but it's one of the rarest sights in the cosmos: a Lyman-alpha blob. They're among the universe's biggest structures, and only now are we starting to understand how they work. More »
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As we learn more about far distant solar systems, it becomes clear just how weird the universe really is. And, more disconcertingly, how unusual our own solar system is. And that starts with our curious lack of so-called "hot Neptunes." More »
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We recently discovered that gigantic gamma ray bubbles were balanced above and below the center of the Milky Way, stretching out 25,000 light-years in each direction. And now we might finally know where these mysterious bubbles come from. More »
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One of the many special products offered to car owners to allow them to get more bang for their buck is nitrogen gas to fill their tires. But tires are tires. As long as they're not filled with gravel or anything that can explode, what difference could the gas inside them make? Supposedly, a lot. Let's examine the evidence. More »
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This is nebula NGC 2174, located about 6400 light-years away. This amazing photograph makes the nebula look like the peak of a giant dust mountain, with strange pink stars dominating its summit. In fact, the stars are locked in cosmic battle with the gas mountain, and it's only a matter of time before the stars emerge victorious and destroy this ghostly peak. More »
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Storage of carbon dioxide was supposed to be a boon to the environment in Canada. But are reports of dead animals and bubbling ponds signs that it's a danger? More »
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No, this isn't a secret UFO installation. It's a natural underground gas tank that contains over a billion cubic meters of helium, important in many industrial processes, located under America's Great Plains. It's covered in mines, domes, and pipelines. More »
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Restaurants across the United States are reporting that thieves are stealing their used cooking oil, turning it into black-market biodiesel made in garage distilleries. In many cities where biodiesel fuel is popular, restaurants can earn up to $1.25 per gallon of the used stuff. Oil pirates, however, are rarely looking to make a buck. They are just whipping up biodiesel for their own uses, cutting out middlemen who go through a complicated certification process with the Environmental Protection Agency in order to distill the fuel from oil. More »
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Newly-discovered x-ray jets literally blanket the face of the sun, launching continent-sized blobs of superhot gas outwards at 200 million miles per hour. Which is just about 5% of the speed of light, and makes us second-think the chances a spaceship like the one in Danny Boyle's Sunshine might have of getting close to that sucker, even for a quick flyby. More »
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