Topic description and stories

Nobel Laureates of Cambridge

30 Sep 2022

What’s it like to win a Nobel Prize? Does it always come as a surprise? How does it change your life? Professor Didier Queloz, winner of the 2019...

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Artist's impression of stars springing up out of the darkness

Astronomers develop novel way to ‘see’ first stars through fog of early Universe

21 Jul 2022

A team of astronomers has developed a method that will allow them to ‘see’ through the fog of the early Universe and detect light from the first...

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The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) by night

Slow spin of early galaxy observed for the first time

01 Jul 2022

One of the most distant known galaxies, observed in the very earliest years of the Universe, appears to be rotating at less than a quarter of the...

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H1821+643, a quasar powered by a supermassive black hole

Chandra Observatory shows black hole spins slower than its peers

30 Jun 2022

Astronomers have made a record-breaking measurement of a black hole’s spin, one of two fundamental properties of black holes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray...

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Venus, from Mariner 10

No signs (yet) of life on Venus

14 Jun 2022

The unusual behaviour of sulphur in Venus’ atmosphere cannot be explained by an ‘aerial’ form of extra-terrestrial life, according to a new study.

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Largest chemical map of the Milky Way unveiled

13 Jun 2022

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has released a new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy, including stellar DNA, asymmetric...

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Messier 101 (The Pinwheel Galaxy)

Supermassive black holes put a brake on stellar births

21 Mar 2022

Black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three...

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Artists’s impression of the rocky super-Earth HD 85512 b

Cambridge launches new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe

10 Jan 2022

With a £10 million grant awarded by the Leverhulme Trust , the University of Cambridge is to establish a new research centre dedicated to exploring...

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Venus from Mariner 10

Could acid-neutralising life-forms make habitable pockets in Venus’ clouds?

20 Dec 2021

A new study shows it’s theoretically possible. The hypothesis could be tested soon with proposed Venus-bound missions.

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Visualisation of radiation from a cosmic string network

Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology named Intel oneAPI Center of Excellence

26 Oct 2021

The Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology (Hawking CTC) at the University of Cambridge is expanding its Intel Graphics and Visualization...

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Bright red and yellow sun

Have we detected dark energy? Cambridge scientists say it’s a possibility

15 Sep 2021

Dark energy, the mysterious force that causes the universe to accelerate, may have been responsible for unexpected results from the XENON1T...

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Artist's impression of a Hycean planet

New class of habitable exoplanets 'a big step forward' in search for life

26 Aug 2021

A new class of exoplanet very different to our own, but which could support life, has been identified by astronomers, which could greatly accelerate...

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