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Triple Black Holes, Youngest Planet & First Exomoon Candidate
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A single ancient galaxy hosts three actively feeding supermassive black holes — one exceeding the theoretical Eddington limit — while astronomers confirm the youngest planet ever observed and a serious exomoon candidate emerges. Today's space news reveals how next-generation instruments are rewriting the early universe playbook.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Three actively feeding supermassive black holes have been detected in a single ancient galaxy, and what they're telling us about how the early universe built its largest structures may force a rethink of some long-standing assumptions. The galaxy is J0148-4214, sitting twelve and a half billion light-years away.
Elsewhere in the universe's infancy, astronomers have confirmed the youngest known planet ever observed. Elias 2-24 b is a Jupiter-size world, less than one million years old, and it's sitting fifty-five astronomical units from its host star.
Staying with young systems, there's now a plausible candidate for the first confirmed moon outside our Solar System. A Jupiter-mass object has been detected orbiting a brown dwarf in the CD-35 2722 system.
On the human spaceflight side, new data from Artemis I's radiation detectors is refining what NASA expects crews to face near the Moon. Specialized lithium fluoride detectors showed cosmic radiation in the lunar environment is higher than in Earth orbit, but less extreme than some projections suggested.
What connects today's stories is detection capability. JWST, coronagraphs, and precision radiation instruments are revealing objects and phenomena that were simply hidden before.
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