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Did early Earth spin on its side?

New theoretical modelling of the ancient history of the Earth and the Moon suggests that the giant collision that spawned our natural satellite may have left Earth spinning very fast, and with its spin axis highly tilted. The simulations give new insight into the question of whether planets with big moons are more likely to have moderate climates and life.

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Lunar impact: how the Moon’s Mare Orientale was formed

The Moon’s Orientale basin is an archetype of “multi-ring” basins found throughout the solar system. New research has enabled scientists to reconstruct Orientale’s formation using data from NASA’s GRAIL mission. It is now thought that the 580-mile-wide feature was created 3.8 billion years ago by an impacting object some 40 miles across travelling at about 9 miles per second.

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ALMA witnesses the birth of a triple-star system

A rare triple-star system surrounded by a disc with a spiral structure has been discovered by a global team of researchers. Recent observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre / submillimetre Array (ALMA) resulted in the discovery, lending support for evidence of disc fragmentation — a process leading to the formation of young binary and multiple star systems.

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Unexpected gaseous haloes detected around distant quasars

An international team of astronomers has discovered glowing gas clouds surrounding distant quasars. The new survey of these active galaxies indicates that haloes around quasars are far more common than expected. The properties of the haloes in this surprising find are also in striking disagreement with currently accepted theories of galaxy formation in the early universe.

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Hotspots in Cygnus A: an active galactic nucleus

Newly obtained radio images of the dramatic bipolar jets of charged particles being ejected from the nucleus of galaxy Cygnus A were able to resolve hotspots in the jets at the places where they impact the surrounding medium. A bright radio galaxy such as this can beam as much as one trillion solar luminosities of radiation into space at those wavelengths.