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Source:  MAVEN EPO, NASA

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Early universe’s ‘little red dots’ may be black hole stars

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By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: It’s as if the baby universe had caught a case of measles. Since NASA’s JWST observatory began peering into the distant universe in 2022, it has discovered a rash of “little red dots”—hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation. Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of bright, hot gas, larger than the Solar System, powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole. ...JWST couldn’t resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny—less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars . 
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Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate

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By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Our Sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world’s fate. Using data from the  TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observatory , astronomers  Edward Bryant  of the University of Warwick and  Vincent Van Eylen  of University College London compared systems with stars in the main sequence of their lifetimes—fusing hydrogen, like the Sun—with post–main sequence stars closer to the end of their lifetimes, both with and without planets. “We saw that these planets are getting rarer [as stars age],” Bryant said. In other words,  planets are disappearing as their host stars grow old . The comparison between planetary systems w...
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Planet protector

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By Robin George Andrews , Science.  Excerpt: More than half of the “city killer” asteroids that might threaten Earth remain undiscovered. With an infrared eye, NASA’s NEO Surveyor aims to find them. ...a stone’s throw from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), you’ll find the Neon Retro Arcade. Among its collection of vintage video games is the 1979 Atari classic Asteroids, in which a pixelated spaceship shoots down a barrage of space rocks to stave off fatal collisions. After long days of work at JPL, Amy Mainzer used to rack up high scores on that console. “It was a hoot,” she says. It was also apt, considering she oversees a space mission designed to spot dangerous asteroids before they crash into Earth. That mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, was conceived in the early 2000s and finally got the green light in 2022. Its components are now being built, tested, and assembled in clean rooms across the United States ahead of its planned launch in September 2027.......
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