ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

An international team of astronomers recently observed more than 1,650 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected from one source in deep space, which amounts to the largest set -- by far -- of the mysterious phenomena ever recorded. The source, dubbed FRB 121102, was observed using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, and represents more FRBs in one event than all previous reported occurrences combined.

Physicists have made the most precise measurement of the neutron's lifetime, which may help answer questions about the early universe.

The planet Venus can be seen as the Earth's evil twin. At first sight, it is of comparable mass and size as our home planet, similarly consists mostly of rocky material, holds some water and has an atmosphere. Yet, a closer look reveals striking differences between them: Venus' thick CO2 atmosphere, extreme surface temperature and pressure, and sulphuric acid clouds are indeed a stark contrast to the conditions needed for life on Earth. This may, however, have not always been the case. Previous studies have suggested that Venus may have been a much more hospitable place in the past, with its own liquid water oceans. A team of astrophysicists investigated whether our planet's twin did indeed have milder periods. The results suggest that this is not the case.

New calculations show that a black hole slurping down a star may not have generated enough energy to launch a neutrino.

One of the best chances for proving beyond-the-standard-model physics relies on something called the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. The standard model insists that the CKM matrix, which describes the mixing of quarks, should be unitary. But growing evidence suggests that during certain forms of radioactive decay, the unitarity of the CKM matrix might break.

Astronomers have imaged 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. The observations reveal a wide range of peculiar shapes, from spherical to dog-bone, and are helping astronomers trace the origins of the asteroids in our Solar System.

Where do our elements come from? And how are they made? New research is flipping the script on those age-old nuclear astrophysics questions. The truth is out there -- several light years away among the stars, to be exact.

It has long been theorized that hydrogen, helium, and lithium were the only chemical elements in existence during the Big Bang, and that supernova explosions are responsible for transmuting these elements into heavier ones. Researchers are now challenging this and propose an alternative model for the formation of nitrogen, oxygen, and water based on the history of Earth's atmosphere. They postulate that the 25 elements with atomic numbers smaller than iron were created via an endothermic nuclear transmutation of two nuclei, carbon and oxygen.